“I’m just going to pee,” I tell him.
Fireworks are booming near and far. I look for the lights in the sky, but only the noise floats in the air. As I urinate, I think about my house. A huge house, way too big for four people, a mansion for two kids. We’re probably going to talk about the house again now, about the years we lived there without the blessing—or tragedy—of having it all. We’ll talk about Libardo again as if it were yesterday, now when there are some days I don’t think of him at all. Libardo has returned from a time that doesn’t exist and become real time, a date, a number, a death certificate, and he will make a place for himself where he will stay. And I’ll go back to being “Libardo’s son” or “Larry, Libardo’s kid” and nothing more.
11
Larry was drinking to process his trip home too. Charlie got up to fetch two more glasses of gin, and when she stood she noticed she was already feeling the effects of the drinks. She’d become more limber again, as if the alcohol had lightened her pain.
The rumpled blanket and the cushion dented with her weight remained in the seat. She left her shoes on the floor, next to her purse, and Larry spotted the little packet of Kleenex he’d given her in one corner.
She reappeared with two brimming glasses and said, “The first memory I thought of when I heard the news was this one time when I got lost at Disney World. I was five years old, and I was lost for half an hour, terrified with all those people milling around me. But I kept looking for my parents, positive they’d appear at some point. I feel the same way now, except one of them I’m never going to see again.”
She started crying again and tried to console herself with a couple of sips from her glass. Larry shifted in his seat.
“The ‘never’ part is what kills me,” Charlie sobbed.
“Do you have any other siblings?” he asked.
“A sister. Two years younger than me,” she said quietly, with the volume of sadness, of nighttime, her eyes glassy. Then she added, “This is where everything ends. I can’t see anything beyond this moment.”
“Parents leave us so much, but they take something too,” Larry said.
Charlie shook her head, took a long swig, and said, “I feel like he took everything.”
Two fat tears welled up in her eyes, and she swiftly wiped them away with her hand and let out a wail that disarmed Larry.
“Your father’s death,” he said, “obeys the laws of life. My father’s obeys a natural law in Colombia—the law of the jungle.”
“Was he murdered?” Charlie asked, worried she might be prying.
“He was kidnapped,” Larry said.
Charlie raised her eyebrows, opened her swollen eyes wider, and sighed.
“He disappeared one day, and I never saw him again,” Larry said, then fell silent. She didn’t ask anything else.
The airplane shuddered with a couple of powerful jolts. Instinctively, she grabbed Larry’s hand, and he was caught off guard more by the squeeze of her fingers than by the turbulence. Though the flight smoothed out again after a few seconds, Charlie downed the rest of her drink.
“Death gets a kick out of scaring us,” Larry said.
12
Despite the sense of unease provoked by Escobar’s death, that December, free of his shadow, felt different. Getting out of Colombia on that vacation made us believe things were going to get better. Libardo allowed Fernanda to convince him we should go back so Julio and I could finish high school at our old school. They’ve only got one year left, she said, and then they’ll go do college somewhere else.
We returned at the end of January. There was a strange feeling in the air that nobody could identify. A mix of uncertainty, fear, and calm. People talked about how there might be some attempt to seek vengeance, retaliation, but there was also talk of opportunities and rebuilding, starting over. I deluded myself that people would stop looking at us like they had before, that Libardo’s sins had died along with Escobar’s, even though lots of people were still scared, waiting for him to lash out one last time from beyond the grave.
Rumor had it that his hand was out there somewhere, that when they’d opened his casket at the cemetery so the crowd could get a look before he was buried, somebody who loved him had removed his hand and swore to use it to seek vengeance.
“But how did they manage that?” I asked. “It’s not like the casket would have been left open that long.”
“Somebody cut it off,” said Julio.
“Nobody cut anything off,” said Libardo.
“How do you know?” I asked. “You weren’t at the funeral.”
Libardo gave me a reproachful look. He hated to be reminded he’d let fear keep him away. As a precaution, he claimed, though I didn’t see the distinction.
“It’s a symbol,” said Libardo. “The hand business is a legend to show that Pablo’s still got the power—his hand is still active, he lives among us.”
“Who has it?” Julio asked.
“Nobody,” Libardo replied. “I told you it’s like a symbol. He’s still here, people loved him a lot, they respected him.”
“So everything’s going to stay the same?” I asked.
“Yes . . . no,” Libardo said. “I mean, Pablo’s legacy means we can live in peace, and like I said, with him gone, the government won’t be fucking with us anymore.”
“What’s a legacy?” Julio asked.
But Libardo failed to tell us—maybe didn’t want to mention—that Escobar’s enemies weren’t going to be satisfied with his death. And Escobar’s enemies were also Libardo’s enemies, my family’s enemies—which means they were my enemies, even though I had no idea who they were.
We started to suspect it, though, as Libardo shed the optimistic tone he’d had at the start of the new year and became irritable and paranoid. He wouldn’t let us leave the house without his men, and even Fernanda had to have bodyguards when she went to the casinos.
“I might as well not go,” she said. “Those guys bring bad luck.”
Julio and I started our final year of high school, which would also be our final year in Medellín. Libardo already planned to send us to France so we could improve our French, and then we’d go on to college, also abroad. He was sure he’d be able to handle the pressure without our noticing. But the noose swiftly tightened on him. Pablo’s inner circle shrank as members were killed or kidnapped, or fled, or turned themselves in. There were a lot of rumors about who had actually killed Escobar, and the more theories that emerged, the more enemies we had: the gringos, the government, Los Pepes, the Cali cartel, the Norte del Valle cartel, the victims, and on and on. But the only ones who publicly claimed responsibility for all those deaths were Los Pepes, and they were the ones Libardo feared most. The group, whose full name was Persecuted by Pablo Escobar, went from victims to victimizers. They celebrated their acts of vengeance by leaving triumphant messages with each corpse.