The Paper Swan Page 15

  It was slowly starting to make sense. When the pain got too much, Damian shut down. He blocked everything out. It was a coping mechanism. I could only imagine the horrors he had witnessed through all those years with El Charro. He had learned to turn his emotions off. I remembered when he cut my finger off. He’d gone on to make potato salad, as if he mutilated people every day.

  I watched him adjust his pillow. I knew that sleeping on that side had to hurt—his stitches were still raw. So I flipped over, and stared at the wall. A few minutes later, he shifted back around. I could feel him staring at my back. In a little while, I would get up and give him another dose of his pills, but for now I was content with not being invisible, with having this flickering acknowledgment even though I knew he would look away the moment I turned to face him. Still, there was a lingering undercurrent of fear. Except this time I wasn’t afraid of Damian.

  I was afraid for him.

  All my life, people had looked after me. My every whim had been catered to, every need fulfilled. I stood in the kitchen, staring at the shelves, realizing how ill prepared I was to care for someone. I could do coffee and toast, or a bowl of cereal, but now I was looking at condiments and jars of stuff that could no doubt be combined to make something nice, but I had no idea how.

  I pulled out a can of tomato soup. Sick people did well on soup. And crackers. I grabbed a packet of those. I looked out of the window as the soup heated on the stove. The contrast of azure waters against the rough limestone wall looked like something out of a travel magazine. A tropical breeze swirled through the kitchen. It was painted soft and earthy, like marzipan and pumpkin butter. I couldn’t imagine Damian choosing the color scheme. On the other hand, it was the perfect retreat from the cold, harsh world he lived in. Here, there was warmth and sunshine and light.

  Damian eyed me warily when I entered the bedroom with his lunch tray. Clearly, he didn’t enjoy being dependent on anyone, but I knew he was just using his gruffness to mask the vulnerability. He hated that he was weak and needed looking after. He hated the guilt that went with being looked after by me. But it was exactly what he needed. He needed to know that he was worth caring for, that I wasn’t going to abandon him like he thought I’d done all those years ago, that in spite of everything that had happened, I was still standing by his side. I didn’t know for how long though, because lord, just getting him to co-operate so I could prop him up to eat was a whole production.

  I placed the tray on the bed and turned the spoon his way. He just stared at the tray. I knew he was thinking of all the times he had done the same for me on the boat, bringing me food, except under much different circumstances. I knew what it took for him to pick up that spoon. He held it over the bowl and put it down again. His throat spasmed as he fought whatever was tormenting him.

  It dawned on me that no one had cared for Damian, not since MaMaLu, not when he was sick, and not when he was hurt. The world had denied him tenderness, and he didn’t know what to do with it now, or how to react. He had singlehandedly brought down a drug lord, but a bowl of soup was breaking him down. He wanted me to hate him for what he’d done. An eye for an eye. That made sense to him. Not this, not kindness where he expected loathing. It was turning his whole world upside down.

  I wanted to put my hand on his clenched fists and tell him it was okay, but I got up and left. I knew he would never eat while I watched. A few hours later, when I went back to his room, he was sleeping. He had taken his pills, but left the food untouched.

  Rafael was right.

  Damian was a bull-headed prick.

  I opened more cans of soup. More trays went untouched. I was ready to hold him down and force feed him when I found a jar of roasted peanuts. When Damian opened his eyes that afternoon, I was sitting on a chair watching him.

  “About time,” I said, tossing a handful of peanuts into my mouth.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  He looked from me to the cone of peanuts that I’d fashioned out of a magazine cover, but didn’t say anything.

  I continued munching. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  He had to be hungry. Starving. He was just too fucking proud to let me do anything for him.

  “I thought you were allergic to peanuts,” he said.

  “You know very well I’m not.”

  For a fleeting second, the hint of a smile played on his lips.

  There it was, a memory that had gotten past his defenses: me discovering chocolate peanut butter ice cream and hiding the container under my bed so I could share it with him. There was nothing left when he climbed through the window that evening. I had eaten the whole thing and was trying not to be sick.

  I failed, and he helped me clean up the evidence.

  “You knew,” I said, realizing why he hadn’t blinked when I told him I was allergic to peanuts. I thought of him moisturizing his feet. “You asshole.”

  He laughed, catching the peanut I threw at him.

  Damian fucking Caballero laughed. And it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I pretended it didn’t matter, like my breath hadn’t caught, like my throat wasn’t clenched, when I dumped the rest of the peanuts in his lap and walked away.

  I needed to be alone so I could hug that moment, the moment his face had cracked into a smile. He needed to be alone so he could eat those peanuts without feeling like I had prepared anything special for him.

  Damian got better. He finished his food. When we ran out of soup, I moved on to refried beans and cans of chili and peaches and pears. I hit the motherload when I opened the freezer and found TV dinners I could nuke in the microwave. I was going positively gourmet, adding a pinch of paprika to the mac and cheese, and a floret of thawed out broccoli (which Damian flicked out of the way, the ungrateful bastard).

  Sometimes when he was sleeping, I turned on the radio. There was no TV, so I had to rely on crackly news broadcasts. They repeated my name and description, along with Damian’s. He was considered armed and dangerous. I listened to a short plea from my father, addressed to Damian. He had a hotline and a reward set up for any leads. I had disappeared almost two weeks ago, and I could hear the strain in my father’s voice. He was coming after Damian, guns blazing, not knowing the root of the story. He had no idea that Damian was Esteban, that he was paying for the repercussions of his own actions. I wavered between anger over what he’d done, the lies he’d told, and a deeper conviction, that there was more to the story. I knew my father, just as I knew Damian. I wanted to tell my father where I was, to put an end to his obvious distress, give him a chance to explain himself, but that meant exposing Damian, and I wasn’t about to betray him, like he thought I’d betrayed him all those years ago.

  I busied myself with nursing Damian back to health and not thinking about anything else. One night, I opened up a can of tuna and decided it was time I made something. I looked in the fridge and found some lemons, an overripe tomato, and a lone onion rolling around in one of the drawers. I figured I could make ceviche. It was a summertime staple at my favorite restaurant. I had ordered it countless times, and let’s face it—how hard can fish cured in lemon juice be? Granted, it was normally made with fresh, raw seafood, but I was all about innovation. I emptied the tuna into a bowl and juiced the lemons over it, being careful to keep my bandaged pinky out of the way.

  Marinade. Done.

  Next, tomato and onion. I tried to chop the tomato, but it was all squishy so I pulsed it in the blender with the onion, added a dash of hot sauce, and stirred the mixture into the fish.

  Voila!

  Feeling quite accomplished with my culinary venture, I arranged tortilla chips on the tray and placed the bowl in the center. I carried it to the bedroom and deposited it on Damian’s lap.

  “I made you something,” I announced.

  He eyed the lumpy concoction without touching it.

  Dear God, he looked so rough and rugged with his almost-beard.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “It’s ceviche.”

  “Ce
viche?” He examined it.

  “Yes. It’s fish with—”

  “I know what ceviche is.” He was definitely wary. “You first.”

  “Fine.” I shrugged, scooping up a mouthful with a tortilla chip. “Mmmm,” I said. “It’s really good.”

  Damian had a taste of it. We both chewed in silence. I swallowed. He spit out a lemon seed and swallowed. I went for another. He followed. Neither of us broke eye contact.

  It was the most vile, putrid, goopy thing in the world. It tasted of bile and rotten tomatoes and Bart Simpson’s butt.

  I spit it out, but Damian kept going, bite after foul, rancid bite, until it was all gone. When he was done, he leaned back, holding his tummy like he was trying to keep it all down.

  “Wha—?” I stared at him. “Why did you finish it?”

  “Because you made it,” he replied. “Don’t make it again.” He turned onto his side and went to sleep.

  Damian got out of bed early the next morning. The threat of more of my cooking may have hastened his recovery. The first thing he did was to move the boat under a canopy of coconut trees. He covered the roof with palm fronds and secured them with a rope so no one could spot the boat from above.

  Watching him work, lean and shirtless, I wondered how I had ever thought of him as ordinary. He was sculpted, but not overly muscular, with the kind of back and shoulders that came from hard work. His skin was the same color I remembered: warm sand with a dusting of bronze. He rarely combed his hair, but far from a tangled mess, it looked wind-worn and sexy, with the ends curled up from the humidity.

  When Damian looked my way, I pretended I was engrossed in the seashell at my feet. I thought of our Sunday strolls on the beach, the two of us racing ahead of MaMaLu, ready to pounce before the next wave pulled its treasures back into the ocean. We only picked shells that had been battered by the waves, smashed and worn so thin that they turned into iridescent slivers of light. Those were the ones MaMaLu loved best. We made necklaces for her. I sorted them by size and shape while he carefully made a hole through them. That was the hardest part—tapping a nail through their fragile forms without breaking them.

  I collected a few shells before heading back inside, feeling like I was reclaiming little pieces of me. Here, on this remote island, with no beach chairs or loud music or attentive hostesses topping up my cocktail, I was getting back in touch with myself. I didn’t care if my hair was frizzy, or what time dinner was being served, or my massage appointment, or the private cruise. There was a sense of freedom, a sense of simplicity that I didn’t know I’d been missing.

  That night, Damian cooked crabs on the beach over a small fire and a pot of water. We ate them with melted butter dribbling down our chins. Okay, so he was a much better cook than me, and he would make a hell of a contestant on Survivor, but all of that aside, I thought he was a motherfucking bad-ass because he had survived my ceviche.

  He slashed open some green coconuts and we sipped the sweet, light water inside. Damian didn’t look at me. Much. He kept his eyes on the water. Occasionally, he looked up at the sky. I wondered if he was scanning the area for boats or helicopters. I was pretty sure he’d tuned in to the news.

  Once or twice when his eyes settled on me, he looked away quickly. I didn’t know what he was thinking or how long we were supposed to lay low. There were so many things I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to know, but sitting beside him, watching the fire as the waves rolled in, filled me up. I felt safe with Damian. I wanted to curl up and put my head on his lap, like I had done all those years ago at the start of our friendship.

  But Damian was busy. He was making holes in the shells I had picked. He was so gentle, so careful with each piece that I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His fingers felt each shell, before picking the right spot. Sometimes he caressed a shell, turning it over, giving it his full attention, before putting it aside. Those were the ones that would crack from the slightest dent, and Damian didn’t want to damage any.

  When he was done, Damian threaded a cord through the shells and tied the ends. He held it up before the fire. The necklace glowed in the golden light, frail and ethereal.

  “Here.” He gave it to me.

  Damian had never made a seashell necklace for anyone except MaMaLu. Suddenly, I realized what he was doing. He was saying sorry. He was making up for the necklace he had thrown overboard, the necklace that had taken his mother away from him.

  Have you ever held a life in your hand? He had dropped the locket in my hand and closed my fingers around it. Here, feel it.

  I’d thought he was nuts, but my mother’s necklace had cost his mother’s life. And yet, here he was, giving me a memory of his mother to make up for taking away mine.

  “She was my mother too,” I said. “MaMaLu was the only mother I knew.”

  Huge, heavy sobs ripped through me. I reached for him, wrapping my arms around him, wanting to share this pain, this grief. Had anyone held him when she died? Had anyone comforted him? He stiffened, but let me cry. I cried for him. I cried for MaMaLu. I cried for our mothers who were gone, and for all the years we’d lost in between.

  When I was done, I realized that he was holding me just as tight as I was holding him. I felt like Damian was starting to thread his way through all the broken, battered, beautiful pieces of himself, back to me, back to us, and I held him tighter.

  SLEEPING NEXT TO DAMIAN WITHOUT touching him was torture, and not in a romantic or sexual way. I felt like a part of me that had been cast away had floated back, and I wanted to hold it, hug it, keep it from slipping away. I knew it would freak Damian out, so I suppressed the urge, although I may have accidentally, in my sleep, draped an occasional arm around him. For those few seconds, I allowed myself the luxury of re-acquaintance, the warmth of his skin, the realness of my long-lost best friend lying beside me. Then Damian would slowly pick up my hand and return it to my side. I had a feeling he knew it was a ruse. After all, I had stuck tenaciously to my side of the bed on the boat, my body as stiff and straight as a board, lest any part of me touch any part of him. And now I was all arms and legs. I knew he knew, and that made me smile, because he inched away, and I inched closer, until he was perched at the edge of the bed, and the only thing that kept him from falling was the mosquito netting tucked under the bed.

  Whether I stuck to my side or invaded his, Damian was up at the crack of dawn. Not surprisingly, he looked after the cooking, although he left me chores without saying a word: a broom and a mop, standing square in the center of the kitchen, laundry detergent sitting on a stack of towels, a toilet brush dangling from the bathroom doorway. I fumbled through my tasks, but if Damian noticed that I mopped before I swept or that the towels were now a weird shade of pink, he didn’t say anything.

  He brought in all my shopping bags from the boat, and although my sequin skirt wasn’t exactly toilet scrubbing gear, I caught him checking out my sparkly ass. I trailed him all day in that skirt, a cropped top, and the shell necklace he’d given me. I had pretty much been stuck to Damian’s side the whole time he was recovering, so it was my first real look at the island. It was just a few square miles around, hemmed in by a white, sandy beach on one side, and lush, tropical forest on the other. The little house was nestled in between, under the shade of tall trees. The front faced mirror-calm waters, protected by a coral reef, and the back opened up to palm groves, papaya trees, and shrubs with thick, glossy leaves.

  It was obvious that Damian knew the island like the back of his hand. He knew where to find small, red bananas with a texture so creamy that they tasted like thick, sweet custard, with a hint of raspberry. He knew where the sun hit, at what time, and where the coolest breezes came off the ocean.

  “Do you come here often?” I asked, as he checked on the generator. It seemed like the place was pretty self-sufficient. A generator, tanks to collect and process rain water, propane to heat up the water we used for cleaning and bathing.

  “It was home for a while,” he replied.


  “You mean when you and Rafael were hiding, after the incident with El Charro?”

  “How do you know about El Charro?”

  “Rafael told me.”

  It didn’t seem to bother him. He was who he was, with no pretense about his past or the things he had done.

  “Does anyone know you’re out here? I mean, whose property is this?” I asked.

  “It’s mine now,” he said. “No one else had much use for it. It’s too small for tourism, too much beach for farming, too remote for fishermen.”

  “But you don’t live here?”

  “No. I go where my work takes me.”

  “So . . .” I fiddled with the hem of my top. “We are okay here?”

  Damian stilled at my words. “There is no ‘we’, Skye. We grew up. We became different people. We live in different worlds. As soon as it’s safe, I’m dropping you off at the mainland.”

  “You’re just going to drop me off?” I stared at him incredulously. “What about MaMaLu? You said you were going to take me there. I need to see her, Damian. I need to see her grave. I never got to say goodbye.”

  “Neither did I,” he spit out. “I was taking you there so you could see, so you could understand why I did what I did. But you already know the truth.”

  “So that’s it? You unload me somewhere they can find me, like some unwanted cargo? And what am I supposed to do? Forget everything that happened? Forget that you abducted me, turned my life upside down, and then turned me loose? Just like that? Well, you know what? I did forget. I forgot about you until you came back into my life. You’re a selfish fucking bastard, Damian. Pick me up when it suits you, drop me off when it suits you. I’m not some mindless, emotionless pawn you can move from here to there in this game you’re playing with my father. I’m real and I’m here and I care about you.”