“Hector!” he screams again when he receives no answer.
“Hector Jaén!”
Before long, an older man, looking extraordinarily annoyed, thrusts his head through the tower window and shouts in response, “What the hell do you want?”
“Can you let me up?” Danilo asks.
“Danilo?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Who is with you?”
“This is Miraflores.”
“I don’t have time for games, okay?”
“That’s really her name. We need your help. Can you let us across?”
He glares at us uncertainly before ducking his head back through the window.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Come on,” Danilo says.
We start across the top of one set of closed gates. It’s like being on a concrete balance beam three stories high. A few steps in, with my hand gripping the metal yellow railing that spans the length, I stop. Danilo is sauntering on ahead of me as if he’s just taking a walk through the park.
“Danilo!” I call.
He turns around. “Holy shit, Miraflores. Don’t stop now. They’re going to need this gate in a minute. You can’t stop.”
“I can’t go.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t know what to say.
“Danilo!”
He starts back toward me. And suddenly all I want is for him not to get to me. All I want is for him not to have to pry my hand off the railing and escort me, like a child, across the gates. I want to be able to do this by myself.
“Don’t look down,” Danilo advises as he nears me.
I look down. My black-and-white sneakers are planted firmly in the middle of the concrete. Somehow, seeing them helps. The gate has to be about six, maybe seven feet wide, but at that height, it feels more like six or seven inches. I slide one pointed toe forward, move my hand, then drop my heel. Danilo stops. Come on, I tell myself. I want to wipe my sweaty hand against my jeans but I don’t dare peel it off the railing. I move again, and again, until finally I’m walking at a halfway decent pace all the way to where Danilo is standing. I wait for him to make fun of me, but he just smiles and keeps on.
As soon as we’re safely on the other side, Danilo makes his way to the base of the tower. Hector Jaén is waiting there with the door propped open.
“What is it?” he asks.
Danilo claps him lightly on the shoulder and says, “Long time no see, friend. How have you been?”
“You don’t have clearance to come up. I have told you and I have told Hernán before,” Hector says.
“That’s why I’m down here. If I had clearance, I’d be up there already.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
I’m standing by, my body still pulsing with a hundred feverish vibrations, incredulous and optimistic.
“It’s important” is all Danilo says.
Hector Jaén rolls his eyes. Quickly, he scans the grounds around the tower, then motions us in.
The top of the tower is one large room, crowded by a replica of the canal and other miscellaneous equipment—reams of paper, binoculars, compasses, maps, tide tables, and at least five clocks mounted on the wall displaying various time zones. Two men sit at instrument panels directly in front of windows that look out over the canal.
I elbow Danilo. “See? I could work at a place like this.”
“What do you need?” Hector mutters. “You’re going to get me in trouble, Danilo.”
“Hernán says hello.” At this, a glimmer of a smile passes across Hector’s face. “This is Miraflores,” Danilo says.
“Again, the same joke?”
“I swear that’s her name.”
“Buenas,”
Hector says, dutifully shaking my hand.
“Buenas.”
“Miraflores is visiting us from the United States. She’s looking for her father.”
Hector blanches. “Not me? It couldn’t be. I was not with that many women when I was young. I did not—” he stammers, until Danilo laughs.
“Relax. It’s not you. It’s someone by the name of Gatún Gallardo. He used to work here.”
“She’s Miraflores and he’s Gatún?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Gallardo,” Hector repeats thoughtfully.
I feel the electricity in my toes, the tingling of potential.
“It sounds familiar,” he says.
“Think hard,” Danilo urges.
“Years ago. In the seventies, no?”
“Yes, he worked here then,” I say, and in my voice there’s a mounting hope, like a kite skimming up through the air.
“He used to work here in the control tower, I think. If I am remembering the right person. He almost caused a big accident here. After that, he moved over to the maintenance crew.”
I wonder, for a fleeting second, about the accident, what that means exactly, but I don’t want to get off track. “Does he still work here?” I ask.
Hector shakes his head. “I haven’t heard about him in a while. I don’t know what happened to him. It was a long time ago. He had a small beard, yes?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Hector, is there any way to find out if he’s still here, or if not, where he went?”
“I have access to the employment records, I guess.”
Danilo claps his hands. “That’s what I’m talking about! Can we look?”
Hector eyes both of us. I can’t imagine what I look like then, how eagerly poised my body must be for anything that might come next.
“I’ll look and tell you,” he says.
For a moment, it appears as though Danilo is going to argue with him, but he takes a step back and raises his hands. “Whatever you want. We’ll wait here.”
When Hector returns minutes later, Danilo says, “So?”
“He quit in 1987.”
“Where is he now?” I ask.
Hector shakes his head lightly. “That was all it said. No forwarding information. He worked here, in a number of different divisions, but he quit in 1987.”
Nineteen eighty-seven. Three years after I was born.
“That’s all you know?” Danilo presses.
“I’m sorry,” Hector says. “That’s all I know.”
Hernán is
at the hotel when we return. I detect a slight frown on his face when he first sees us, but when I look again he’s smiling brightly with his arms outstretched.
“Where have you been?” he asks.
“At the canal,” I say.
“To Miraflores, yes? Miraflores went to Miraflores.” He smiles giddily and watches us as if waiting to see whether he can laugh at his own joke. “And how did you like it?”
“Very impressive,” I say.
Without a word, Danilo has walked past us. I watch the slender curve of his back as he leans over to retrieve his flower bucket tucked under the steps.
“Do you know,” Hernán continues, stepping into my line of vision as soon as he notices me watching Danilo, “that I used to work at the canal?”
“You did? Danilo didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m not surprised. He has trouble expressing any pride in me.”
“When did you work there?”
“From 1977 to 1987. Ten years.”
My breath catches. “Until 1987?”
“Until December of that year, yes. I worked in the control tower at Miraflores, with a man named Hector Jaén, whom I would imagine is still there. He always took his job too seriously. He was the only Panamanian to hold a position of real authority back then, though, so he had a good reason. Mostly, it was the North Americans who ran the show.” Hernán shakes his head, remembering.
“Hernán,” I say, trying to remain poised, “did you know someone who worked there named Gatún Gallardo?”
“Gatún Gallardo! I haven’t heard that name in a long time. He used to bring his lunch every day in a brown paper bag and eat it on the ground next to the control tower. I used to look down and see him, eating by himself and then smoking a cigarette for a long time after. Sometimes he would lie back on the concrete and take a nap, even though that sort of thing was frowned upon. He never seemed to care much about the rules.”
My heart races wildly through the cave of my chest. “You knew him?”
“We were not friends. Nothing against him. But we said hello to each other from time to time. He always seemed pleasant enough.” Hernán narrows his eyes. “Is that who you were looking for? The other day, in Santa Ana?”
Danilo has plopped himself on the hotel stoop, his bucket between his legs. He’s pulling out stems one by one and rearranging them. It doesn’t appear that he’s listening to our conversation.
“He’s my father,” I say.
The color drains from Hernán’s face and he blinks a number of times in an exaggerated way. “Gatún Gallardo? Your father?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? I don’t understand how . . . But your name is not Gallardo.”
Blood is pounding in my chest, in my ears. “My mother met him when she lived here.”
“Your mother lived here? When? What is her name?”
“Catherine Reid.”
Hernán shakes his head, pale, bewildered. “An American?”
“Yes.”
“She must have lived in the Zone,” Hernán mutters. “And now you’re looking for him? Your father? Gatún Gallardo? Why? He and your mother didn’t marry?”
“No. I’ve never met him.”
He looks heartbroken, a series of pained expressions flashing across his face. “I see,” he says finally.
“But if you knew him, you could help me find him.”
“I didn’t really know him,” Hernán says carefully. “As I said.”
“What you just told me about him, about eating his lunch outside every day, that’s almost as much as everything I’ve ever known about him. Please, Hernán.”
He wipes his handkerchief across his forehead and cheeks.
“Danilo is helping you?”
“He’s trying. But he knows even less than me. I mean, he knows the city. But he doesn’t know anything about my father.”
“How long will you look for him?” Hernán asks.
“I have to go home in a few weeks. But I want to find him as soon as I can. I mean, if I found him tomorrow, I would still have some time to spend with him before I have to go back home.”
“And you are planning on staying here until you find him?” He gestures toward the hotel.
“I guess so.”
“No, Miraflores”—he says it in the same way as Danilo, delicately, liltingly—“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Oh, you don’t even know. In a lot of ways, it’s a terrible idea. There’s all this other stuff going on right now. But I have to look for him. It’s sort of now or never. I mean, it’s only going to get harder from now on. I don’t know when I would be able to come back.” I stop when I realize that Hernán has no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t feel like filling him in on everything at the moment. I just want his help.
Hernán coughs. He darts his eyes around like an animal that has suddenly realized it’s in a cage, trapped. He looks panicked. Then he takes a breath and says, “Of course. What I meant was the hotel. It’s so expensive to stay here. Maybe you want to come stay with us, in our apartment. It’s small, but that way you could save money, and I would feel better about it, and we could help you, Danilo and I.”
The invitation doesn’t startle me. Not that I expected it. It never crossed my mind that Hernán would offer to let me stay with him, but it’s not surprising somehow. I have a sense by now that Hernán has a decent heart and that, for some reason, that decent heart has a soft spot in it for me. There’s something about how he treats me that feels almost like family.
“I don’t know,” I say, stealing a glimpse at Danilo. He’s in a retiring pose on the steps now, his eyes closed against the warm rays of the sun, the shadow cast by a palm tree cutting jaggedly over his body, like feathery claws.
“It would save you money,” Hernán says again.
I look briefly at Danilo again and bite my lip.
“Do you have room?” I ask.
“We will make room.”
“You really don’t have to offer.”
“Of course not! But I want to. You can think about it,” he says, obviously pleased with himself and the fact that I haven’t yet turned him down.
I think he expects me to leave it at that and walk inside, but instead I look him in the eye. “Okay. If you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“You’ll stay with us?”
“If you’re sure.”
“Of course! Good!” He claps his hands together and beams. “We’ll clear a space for you. You can walk home with us tonight. You can check out of the hotel right now if you want, and then just tell them that you will collect your things later tonight.”
I smile in spite of the fact that part of me wonders why in the world I just agreed to this.
“Danilo!” Hernán cries, turning to his nephew on the steps. “Miraflores is coming to stay with us!”
Danilo sits up, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“She is going to stay with us while she is in Panamá.”
“Really?” Danilo says, a smile spreading across his face as slow as syrup. He looks at me. “Welcome.”
The apartment
is on the second floor of a two-story building, above a laundromat and across the street from a bakery. Hernán points out the laundromat, closed for the night, and notes that I should consider taking my clothes there if I need them washed, because they do a good job. “Fifteen cents per pound. They will iron, too, if you want. And if you take your own hangers, they give a discount.”
Gallantly, he carries my suitcase up the stairs and heaves it through the front door when we arrive, placing it against a wall off to one side.
“This is it!” he announces. He hasn’t been able to stop grinning since I agreed to this arrangement.
It’s eleven o’clock—we waited until Hernán finished his shift—but even at night the space has a brightness to it, an airiness so acute that it barely feels like I’m inside at all. All the windows—single-paned, unadorned by curtains or blinds— are wide open, as are a set of louvered French doors, painted turquoise, that lead to a faux balcony. The front door opens directly into a sitting area with a couch, a wooden rocking chair with a printed yellow cushion, and an old television set resting on a cotton doily. The lamp shades are still wrapped in plastic. The sitting area funnels into a narrow hallway that has three plywood doors along one side. Across from the doors is the kitchen, outfitted with plain wooden cabinets, a gold refrigerator, a stove piled high with aluminum pots, and a small kitchen table. Every wall is painted sea-foam green, and on the one behind the television three diorama-like Panamanian houses, each roughly the size of a clock, hang in a row.