Savior by Anthony Caplan

smart clothes exited onto the sidewalk and pulled their luggage along behind through the glass doors of the airport entrance. Around the back on the tarmac, airplane engines whined, and the airplanes wheeled slowly into position for takeoff or disembarkation. In the alien sky, above the distant, dark green mountains, were clouds, small puffballs of white cotton in a sea of dark blue that threatened rain.
    The two children, dressed in matching khaki pants and buttoned shirts, waited on the sidewalk with the luggage and their mother. She grabbed their hands and pulled them towards the building, away from the road. Ricky smiled at her and wished he could say something in French to thank her.
    Thank you for the ride. I will try and find my parents now and get some money.
    No, no. Not necessary. She clucked with her tongue. They stared at each other. I wish you best of luck. Your parents are inside, I'm sure. I hope so. Her voice was soft and appealing. It pained him.
    I hope so, too.
    Ricky waited for her to go inside the building with her husband and children. Then he wandered around the back, watching the coming and going of taxis and buses, wondering how to get something to eat. He'd made it this far. Maybe he could even get on a plane. From a fence along the main road into the airport, he observed the taxiing patterns of landing airplanes and the way the airport workers marched up and down the runway in their blue uniforms and orange hats. Then he turned around, light-headed from hunger, and walked inside and looked around for the French family. They were just about to pass through the customs line and into the security area. The mother looked around and caught his eye and looked crestfallen, as if disappointed to see him alone in the crowd, before she turned and passed through the checkpoint.
    Through that long day, Ricky wandered in and out of the airport and along the road—thinking he might keep walking until they found him collapsed on a sidewalk in the busy industrial sectors—then turned around and hastened to march back inside the airport with a crowd spit out from the tourist buses. If he did it right he might be able to pass through customs and get on a plane, any plane, and confess to the pilot that he was running from the Santos Muertos and needed to get back to Florida where his father would be waiting in the kitchen with a lemonade on the coffee table and sandwiches from the Shrimp R Us. But he usually stalled in the crowd in front of the long Delta counters.
    There was a twenty-something girl, with long black hair in a ponytail working the counter who looked at him every time he walked by feigning nonchalance and smiled at him with a haunting look that promised succor if he could just get up the nerve to confess his plight, but he wasn't there yet. The afternoon dragged into the early evening. The number of arriving and departing flights hit a peak and then subsided. Janitors began long sweeps through the halls with brooms, and security guards on the night shift appeared to congregate in strange, cloistered doorways with small cups of coffee in thimble-sized plastic cups.
    You miss your flight? It was the Delta girl.
    I, yes.
    Come with me.
    Where?
    To the police. You must make a report and they will help. No, don't worry.
    She could see the fear in his eyes. He fought back the panic.
    No. I don't want the police. I'm waiting for my father. He said to wait here. He's a geologist with the State Department and he knows where I am. It's okay.
    He was speaking so fast she couldn't understand.
    Okay. Okay. You want some food, no?
    Yes.
    She tugged at his arm.
    Come with me.
    I. . .
    She shrugged and began to move away. Ricky followed, catching up to her side. They took the escalator to the second floor, and she held a door open for him that led through to the departure lounge and a restaurant called El Grano de Oro. There were two Asian men drinking martinis and watching the television screen above the bar, which