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“Your son?”
“That’s me.”
I startle as a man steps out from a door in the kitchen. I’d assumed that thin door was the pantry. A mistake I can’t help but chastise myself for as the man whose blue overalls has a nametag that reads Geraldo moves farther into the kitchen. He’s a big, tall and wide-shouldered—barely fits through that doorway into the kitchen. He leaves the door open behind him, and I look into a tidy and compact bedroom with a twin bed. How does he sleep in that?
“Hola,” I say.
“¿Que es esto?” Geraldo responds.
What is this?A little rude, Geraldo, and a bit young to be this woman’s son. He couldn’t be older than twenty-four and has direct blue eyes with a skin tone much darker than Sylvia’s lighter one.
Sylvia gently tells her son, “Sister is here to check on me.”
Geraldo blinks and does a double take. His eyes widen. “Perdoname, Sister. I didn’t see...” He trails off.
We stare at each other. Me because, coño, how did he not notice I’m a nun? After all, I’m wearing the full getup, habit and all. Will I ever get this right? “It’s quite all right, my child,” I say, feeling like an absolute fraud.
Nervously, he drags his hand up and down the front of his chest, then speaks slowly, as if searching for words. “I’m to fix the pipes in 4C.”
With that announcement, he kisses his mother on the cheek and walks out.
Sylvia watches his retreating back and her eyes fill with love. She points to him. “Forgive him, Sister. He hurt his head years ago, but he is a good boy.”
It sounds like Geraldo has had a hard life, but also continues to work hard to help his mother and to do his job. “You’re lucky to be surrounded by so many good men,” I say.
She smiles at me, then points to the ceiling, to Heaven. “The best one of all.”
I smile back. This is the part of my job I love, meeting people who are full of joy for life. It’s so necessary for me because, sometimes, in my world, it seems the bad guys are winning.
The teapot whistles, and Sylvia uses an oven mitt to grab the handle and pour the steaming water into two cups. Every part of me wants to get up and help, but her competence and delight in making the coffee is so obvious that I force myself sit still.
Turns out, with a little café in her, it’s easy to get Sylvia to speak of Juan, to tell me his apartment number, to reveal he leaves early and comes home around one on Tuesdays. With my skills, it’s going to be even easier to break into his apartment.
* * *
Sean’sone-room apartment includes a kitchenette, breakfast bar with three barstools, a frameless bed on the floor in a corner, and lots of paint and paintings. There’s barely a bit of empty wall showing with all the paintings in here. It smells like an artist’s studio—brushes soaking, pencils and charcoals in metal tins, paint drying, crisp paper, and a touch of adhesive.
I’d known that Sean—for some reason, I can’t mentally call him Juan anymore—painted. That’s what he’d been doing in El Salvador. Still, it feels personal to see his artwork up close. It’s so… revealing.
Taking time I really don’t have, I walk around, admiring and touching things—his paint palette, his charcoals, easels, drawings, and paintings.
There’s a lifelike painting of Sylvia on the wall that captures her spirit in the twinkle of her brown eyes, the laugh lines around her mouth, and the gleaming cross around her neck. Sean’s talent is its own kind of magic.
Oh. I just love that bright pastel painting of the town with all the blues and pinks and greens. A magnificent artist, Sean uses sharp and exacting lines in his work. He has meticulous attention to detail and a penchant for drawing humans.
The slouching old men, youths who sit back on their heels as if thrusting out their pelvis, and women with hips knocked to one side. I laugh, realizing he uses posture to convey character.
I stop by an etching still on the easel and nearly swallow my tongue. Although, at this point, it’s only a sketch, and though he’s never seen me in anything other than this drab tunic, I recognize the figure. Without touching, I run my fingers above the edges of a body he’s gotten exactly right.
My body.
Swallowing my rising heart, I imagine his hand holding the pencil, imagine him tracing lines, mentally stroking my body.
Stop it.
Shaking myself, I drop my hand, then get down to more appropriate searching. Not difficult, really, because there’s nothing hidden here. His one-room apartment includes art supplies and paintings and bags of stolen passports from all over the world. They’re stacked on a wood drafting table, spread across his unmade bed, deposited on the breakfast bar by the kitchenette.
Along with the passports is the technical equipment to alter them—multiple tools for cutting and pasting, printing machines, blue lights, and lighted magnifying lenses.
