The Lucky Ones Read online

  The Lucky Ones is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Julianne Pachico

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Some of the stories in this work have been previously published: “Lucky” in Lighthouse Journal and subsequently in The Best of British Short Stories 2015; “Lemon Pie” in different form in Shooter Literary Magazine; “Honey Bunny” in The New Yorker; “The Tourists” as a pamphlet by Daunt Books and subsequently in The Best British Short Stories 2015; “The Bird Thing” in The White Review.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Pachico, Julianne, author.

  Title: The lucky ones : a novel / Julianne Pachico.

  Description: New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016033951 | ISBN 9780399588655 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399588679 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Colombians—Fiction. | Civil war—Psychological aspects—Fiction. | Guerrilla warfare—Psychological aspects—Fiction. | Colombia—Fiction. | New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Cultural Heritage.

  Classification: LCC PR6116.A315 L83 2017 | DDC 823/.92—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016033951

  Ebook ISBN 9780399588679

  randomhousebooks.com

  spiegelandgrau.com

  Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Alex Merto

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Lucky

  Lemon Pie

  M+M

  Siberian Tiger Park

  Honey Bunny

  The Tourists

  Junkie Rabbit

  The Bird Thing

  Julisa

  Armadillo Man

  Beyond the Cake

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “Here,” he said, not really joking. “The bullet we didn’t shoot you with.”

  —GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ,

  News of a Kidnapping

  Inside a single moment, you can live many lives.

  —FRANCISCO GOLDMAN,

  The Art of Political Murder

  VALLE DEL CAUCA

  Her parents and brother are spending the holiday weekend up in the mountains; they’re going to a party at the Montoyas’ country house. Before getting into the car her mother asks her one last time: Is she sure she doesn’t want to come? Isn’t she going to be bored all weekend, with only the maid around to keep her company? And she says of course not, don’t be silly, and in any case the impossibly long drive on that endlessly winding road always makes her carsick (she shakes her head, sticks out her tongue, and makes a face like she can already feel the nausea). She’s been there several times anyway, remembers what it’s like: She’s seen the automatic shampoo dispensers in the bathroom that fill her hands with grapefruit-scented foam, the shiny mountain bikes that have never been ridden propped up on the porch, the indoor fishpond and the seashell-patterned ashtrays. Her brother will run around the yard screaming with the other kids, weaving and ducking around the water fountains and angel statues, begging the gardeners to let them feed the peacocks, hold the monkey, cuddle the rabbits. She always gets so bored, sitting in a white plastic chair and batting away flies while the adults drink beer out of green glass bottles and talk, talk, talk for hours about things she either doesn’t care about or doesn’t understand. When she hears the word guerrilla she’ll picture a group of men dressed up in gorilla suits, roaming the jungle while carrying rifles, wearing black rubber boots with yellow bottoms, and she’ll have to choke back laughter to prevent Coca-Cola from snorting out of her nose. The sinewy meat and burnt black corn from the grill always get stuck in her teeth and hang down from her upper molars like vines for Tarzan, and she’ll inevitably end up prodding them with her tongue for the rest of the weekend. Mariela Montoya will be there too, of course, most likely wearing an oversized T-shirt, glowering in the corner, sucking on the tip of her long black braid, and they’ll turn away from each other gracefully without even a kiss on the cheek, let alone a greeting. Hi, Mariela, Stephanie will never say. It’s been so long. How have you been?

  So no, she tells her mother again, but thank you very much, and she brushes strands of hair away from her eyes, smiling sweetly.

  “Fine, then,” her mother says, a little sharply. “You’re lucky Angelina was willing to cancel her weekend off and stay here instead. Was that church thing of hers tomorrow or next week?” She says this last part to her husband, who shrugs without looking up, still fiddling with the car radio knobs. One of the announcers is saying in a highly amused voice, Communist rebels? Those words don’t even mean anything anymore. You might as well call them cheese sandwich rebels. Her brother makes a face at her through the car window and she makes a face right back.

  “Well,” her mother says. “Since you’re going to be here all weekend—just keep something in mind.” She glances over her shoulder at the hedge, leaves barely rustling in the wind. The sweat stains in the armpits of her pale green blouse look like tiny islands.

  “If the phone rings,” she says, “or the doorbell sounds—let Angelina deal with it. And make sure she tells any men who ask that we’re not in the country anymore. Could you do that for me?”

  “What kind of men?” she asks.

  Her mother tucks a strand of hair behind her ears—brown like hers, but gray at the roots. “You know what kind I mean,” she says in her soft accent.

  So they want their revolution? the radio asks. Listen, I’ll tell you what I’d do to them! Her mother’s head flicks sharply toward her husband, and he quickly switches it off.

  After they drive away she finds her mother’s cigarettes almost immediately, hidden at the bottom of one of the woven baskets Angelina brought back from her village marketplace. She smokes one under the trees by the pool, taking quick little puffs, watching carefully for Angelina at the window. What she didn’t tell her mother is that she has plans to meet up with Katrina in the city center mall on Monday. Katrina’s chauffeur will take them there and drop them off at the entrance, where they’ll hover just long enough to make sure he’s gone. Then they’ll cross the highway together, ducking fast across the busy intersection, laughing and running past the wooden sticks of chicken sweating on grills and giant metal barrels of spinning brown peanuts, the clown-faced garbage cans and men in zebra costumes directing traffic. The plan is to head to the other mall across the street, the one with the upper floors still closed off with yellow electrical tape from when the last bomb went off. On the first floor is the food court that serves Cuban sandwiches and beer in lava lamp containers. That’s where the members of the football team will be, dark hair slicked back and glistening. She and Katrina are going to sit at the wooden picnic tables and yank their jeans down as far as they can go, tug at their tank tops to reveal the bra straps underneath, peach and pink and black. She has this way of crossing her legs at the ankles, tilting her head to the side, and smiling as though whatever is being said is the most interesting thing in the world and there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. She’ll accept their smiles, their eyes scanning her up and down, their low murmurs of approval, even th
e breathy whispers of Hey, beautiful, with the same icy sense of destiny that she accepts everything else in her life.

  —

  Later that night, instead of going through catalogs for college applications in the United States, she sits on the couch rereading one of the Arthurian fantasy novels from her childhood. It’s the kind filled with knights kneeling before queens and saying things like, My lady, perchance you have misunderstood me. Rereading kids’ books is one of her sneaky, most secret treats, saved for holiday weekends or summer vacations, something that someone like Katrina has no need to ever know about. As she reads she never needs to raise her eyes to know where Angelina is or what she’s doing—the sound of her black plastic sandals slapping against the floor tiles is like a noise made by the house itself. Without looking she knows when Angelina’s opening the silverware drawer, lighting the candles to chase away flies, setting the last of the dishes on the table. The radio in the kitchen crackles loudly with static, which drowns out the newscasters’ gruff voices.

  She’s turning pages rapidly, eager to arrive at the climax (the knight finally encounters the magician who blessed him with shape-shifting skills—or did he curse him?), when she feels a stubby finger gently tracing her scalp. “We really need to fix your hair, mija,” Angelina says in that same shrill voice Stephanie’s been listening to her whole life. “It’s bad to have it in your eyes all the time like that.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she says, not looking up from the page.

  When Angelina’s hands linger close to her face, she uses the book to push them away, ducking irritably from their overwhelming smell of onions and stale powdered milk. She turns a page as the sandals slap slowly back to the kitchen.

  During dinner she drips a giant spoonful of curry sauce onto her plate and swirls around the lettuce leaves and onion slices to make it look like she’s eaten something. When she pushes the chair back from the table, Angelina is already there, reaching for her plate with one hand and squeezing the flesh on her lower arm with the other. “My God, but you’re skinny!” Angelina says in the same high-pitched shrill. “Eat more! How are you going to fight off men?”

  “Could you please not touch me?” she says, jerking her arm away, but the tiny nugget of pleasure that’s formed inside her just from hearing the word skinny is already giving off warmth.

  Angelina says something else, speaking in a low voice this time, but her words are muffled beneath the trumpets of the national anthem blasting from the kitchen radio, in its usual slot just before the news.

  “What?” she says, but Angelina’s already abruptly turned away, her white apron swirling through the air like a cape.

  “Don’t worry about it, mija,” Angelina says, not looking back. “It’s nothing.”

  —

  She doesn’t wake up till midmorning. Because Katrina won’t be coming by until Monday, she doesn’t shave her legs and wears a baggy pair of yellow basketball shorts instead of jeans. The day is already uncomfortably hot. She heads outside to the pool and smokes a cigarette under the grapefruit tree, careful to stand in the shade to protect her skin. It never feels like a holiday weekend to her until she’s smoked, until she gets that jumpy feeling in her stomach that makes her want to stand very still.

  Back in the kitchen, she opens the refrigerator and drinks directly from the pitcher of lemonade, careful not to bang her teeth against the ceramic. As she puts the pitcher on the counter there’s a loud blast of the doorbell. It echoes through the house, followed by six blunt buzzes, as though it’s a signal she should recognize.

  “Angelina!” she calls out. She waits but there’s no sound of sandals slapping against the floor tiles, heading to the front door.

  The buzzing is long and sustained this time. “Christ,” she says. “Angelina!” When she was very young she would stand in the middle of a room and scream Angelina’s name over and over again, not stopping until Angelina came running, apron flying out behind her, but that’s not the kind of silly, immature thing she would do now.

  She takes another long swig of lemonade to hide her cigarette breath, just in case it’s one of her mother’s friends. It would be just like her mother to send someone to check up on her. As she walks down the hallway it’s hard to decide what feels worse, the damp cloth of the T-shirt sticking to her armpits or the sweaty bare skin of her collarbones. At the front door she runs her fingers through her hair, tucking it carefully behind her ears. Sometimes when she’s standing in the sunlight, if she tilts her head just right she can almost pass for blond.

  The first door is made of heavy dark wood, covered in stickers Angelina gave her years ago, with a yellow bolt that slides open easily. She stands behind the second door, the one made of white crisscrossing bars, forming diamond-shaped gaps that reveal the front yard and crackly bushes, the dried-out banana trees and hedge surrounding the property. Behind the hedge is the gravel road winding down to the main highway, past the neighbors’ houses with bulletproof windows and security guard towers, and beyond that are the palm trees and fields of sugarcane, the eucalyptus forests and the mountains.

  Standing a few steps away, in the front yard, is a man. He’s grinning in a way that makes him look slightly embarrassed, rocking on his heels, arms behind his back. There’s a lumpy purplish-red scar running down his face, from the bottom of his eye to the top of his lip.

  “Well, here I am,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  He’s wearing a shapeless brown poncho, which hangs off him as if empty. His feet are bare and caked in red clay, his legs thin and hairless.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says. He brings an arm forward, a dirty plastic bag hanging from his wrist. “It took me a lot longer to get here than I thought. I came as fast as I could.”

  She stares at the plastic bag, which sways, hitting the front of his thigh. “Lord, am I thirsty,” he says. “Does that ever happen to you, when you have to walk a long way?” He licks his lips. “Never mind, don’t worry about answering now. We’ll have time to talk later.”

  “Can I help you?” she says, taking a step back.

  The man’s face suddenly becomes a mass of deeply ingrained lines. “She didn’t tell you I was coming?” His voice comes out high-pitched and sad in a way that sounds deeply familiar to her, like something she’s been listening to her whole life, though she cannot say why or how.

  “Daddy!” she calls out over her shoulder, her voice echoing down the hallway. “There’s somebody here to see you!”

  “Princess,” he says, the lines in his face growing even deeper. “Come on. Don’t do that. You know that I know they’re not here.”

  She stares at the scar on his face. It’s shaped like a fat river leech and shiny, as if covered in glue. Looking at it makes her suck in her breath. She takes another step back, tucking her body behind the door so that only her head is poking out. Without taking his eyes off her, he kneels and starts ripping grass out of the ground. It’s a habit she recognizes in herself, sitting on the edge of the football field at school, tilting her head back so that her hair falls down her back like a waterfall. The material of his poncho is rough and scratchy-looking.

  “I just don’t understand why she didn’t tell you about me,” he says. “It doesn’t make any sense.” His voice gets more high-pitched the longer he talks.

  “Look, I don’t even know you,” she says. It creates a sudden fluttering in her chest to use a loud voice like that, to be rude without caring. It reminds her of the time she saw her father slap the hands of the street children reaching for her leftover ice cream on the park picnic table.

  “Don’t know me?” He rubs a hole into the ground, sticks his index finger into it, and wiggles it around before covering it up again. “Don’t know me,” he repeats. “How about that.” His mouth turns downward, an exaggerated sad smile like a clown’s. “Well. At least it’s a beautiful day for us to run.”

  His head snaps up and he looks directly at her, narrowing his eyes in a way that makes her st
omach leap and hit the back of her throat.

  “Are you ready,” he says, “to run?”

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.” Her mouth tastes the same as when she’s carsick. She’s closed the door to the point that she’s looking at him through the thinnest crack possible, her torso leaning forward in an L shape.

  “Hey,” he says, rising quickly to his feet, blades of grass drifting down from his robe. “Mija. Seriously. How lost are you? I’m here to help you—”

  “I’m sorry,” she says again, right before closing the door completely, not finishing her sentence: I don’t have the key. She’s staring at the Bert and Ernie sticker now, plastered there by Angelina years ago, their smiles bright and beaming as they drive their fire truck. The jumpy feeling in her stomach is still there.

  Angelina’s room is at the back of the house, next to the washing machine and the stacks of cardboard boxes filled with champagne. She forces herself to walk there as calmly and slowly as possible, the doorbell blasting and buzzing. The pale green door is covered with a giant sticker of Baby Jesus, dimpled elbows raised, smiling heavenward. On the floor, lined neatly against the wall, is a pair of black plastic sandals. She places her hand on the center of Baby Jesus’s face but doesn’t knock. “Angelina?” she says, softly at first, then louder. “Are you there?”

  She checks the rest of the rooms in the house, just to be sure. She checks her parents’ bedroom, her brother’s, her own. She makes sure the back doors are locked and tugs experimentally at the bars over the windows.

  With Angelina gone, she has no choice but to prepare lunch herself. She props the fridge door open with her torso, scooping the rice and lentils out of the Tupperware containers with her hands curved like claws. The doorbell is still going, one long, sustained note. By now the annoyance is bubbling inside her like the suds fizzing at the top of a shaken Coca-Cola bottle. She’s already rehearsing the words in her head, picturing herself standing furiously in front of Angelina, arms akimbo, head tilted just like her mother’s that time she addressed the electricity repairman, the one she suspected of stealing from them. How could you do that, she’ll say. Unacceptable. You know that I’ve never been left home alone before—completely un-fucking-acceptable. Good luck finding another job; I hope your bags are packed and ready. Are they ready?