The Dew Breaker - Edwidge Danticat [52]
We made our way out of the crowd and down an alley into a quieter street, where we found a taxi. Romain jumped in and told the driver, “We’d like to go to La Sensation Hotel.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” the driver said, “with all the people on the streets.”
“Take all the shortcuts you know,” Romain said. “You’ll be paid well.”
The drive to La Sensation confirmed that we couldn’t escape what was going on, short of leaving the city or the country. Everywhere we went, even through the narrowest side streets, byways, back ways, there were people jumping out of corners, waving flags, ripping old posters of the president and his wife, and carrying containers of kerosene, hoping to find a macoute to punish.
When we finally made it to the walled oasis of the hotel, Romain sent me ahead to wait for him in the garden while he settled things with the driver; then we walked over to the front desk together, only to find out that all the rooms were booked, mostly by desperate foreign journalists who were due to arrive within the next twenty-four hours. Romain had been counting on a former classmate who worked as a porter at the hotel to get him a room, where we would hide out until things calmed down. Our escape was going to be financed by Romain’s mother, who left him a big wad of cash whenever she went away.
Surprising even myself, I suddenly wanted to go home. I was missing my mother. What if she got so worried that she lost her mind, went running down every street in the capital screaming my name? What if she thought I was dead and my body taken to a mass grave?
Romain’s friend was nowhere to be found, and the pretty young woman at the check-in counter gave us such a disdainful look that it seemed she wouldn’t have offered us a room even if one had been available.
There was nothing preventing us from sitting here a while and having a drink, though, was there? Romain said. After that we’d go home.
We walked through the lobby, down a flight of stairs to a table under a large umbrella by the side of the heart-shaped pool. A man wearing a dark suit and a bow tie asked us what we wanted to drink. Romain ordered a Coke and so did I. It seemed like such a stupid thing to come all this way for, a Coke.
Romain looked up toward the steep hills above the hotel, and higher still at the row of mountains in the distance. A cloud was passing over the nearest and most prominent one, Mòn Lopital. Then, just as suddenly, the cloud moved on and the sky was as blue as cornflowers again.
Watching me staring up at the mountains, Romain said, “Imagine, a mountain named Hospital. Maybe we should go there.”
We had already failed at our small adventure. We were certainly doomed to botch a larger escapade, like a complete retreat to Mòn Lopital. Still, I replied, “Okay,” hoping that Romain wouldn’t want to follow through with that particular idea.
While we were sipping our Cokes, watching the fizzy dark liquid rise through the straws, a man about Romain’s age hesitantly wandered over to our table and sat down. Romain seemed relieved to see him. The man was meticulous-looking, clean-shaven, and tense. He shook Romain’s hand, nodded in my direction, then made some guarded remarks about the new political situation, how the hotel was going to lose a lot of its faithful clientele, the call girls, and the macoutes who’d hired them.
Romain casually said, “It must be rough, camarade.”
Then the man looked over at me, then back at Romain as though there was something he wanted to tell Romain but wasn’t sure I should also hear it.
Finally Romain said, “Man, it’s okay.” Then I realized there was a larger purpose to our coming to that particular hotel. As with everything else with Romain, this too was not simple.
“You can tell me in front of the little guy,” Romain said, lowering his head to sip more of his Coke. “Is he here?”
“No, man.