The World in Half by Cristina Henríquez

father’s house?”
    “Yes.”
    “No!”
    “Yes!”
    “And?”
    “It isn’t his house. There was only an old woman who didn’t know him.”
    “He doesn’t live there anymore?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “But you went there?”
    “I did.”
    “To Santa Ana?”
    “Yep.”
    “I hope you didn’t wander into Chorrillo, though.”
    “I don’t think I did.”
    “You would know.”
    He looks impressed. There’s a strange satisfaction in knowing that I’ve surprised him just now and, even more, that I have the ability to.
    “So why are you here so late?” I ask.
    “Nardo, come on,” Danilo yells toward the bar. “Another game. I didn’t mean it, man. I love beating your ass.”
    Nardo holds his hand over his shoulder and gives Danilo the finger.
    “What did you say?” Danilo asks, turning back to me before shuffling the deck, the cards spraying like a fountain.
    “Why are you here so late?”
    “Eh, waiting for Hernán to get off his shift. He doesn’t like to walk home alone, so I usually wait for him even on his late nights. He thinks someone is going to rob him. For what, I don’t know. He doesn’t have anything worth taking. But that’s what he thinks. What time is it, anyway?”
    I check my watch. “Almost one.”
    Danilo takes a gulp of his drink before pushing it to the center of the table. He shoves the deck of cards into his back pants pocket. “Old man should be done by now,” he says, standing. Then he extends his hand. “I’m glad you went out today,” he says. “You can’t be scared of your own life, you know. That might be the worst thing.”
    When I grasp his hand, it’s damp from being cupped around the perspiring glass, but it’s also smooth and cool against my palm.
    “I know,” I say. “I’m not.” I feel a little indignant at the suggestion.
    Our hands are still locked when he says, “So what are you doing tomorrow?”
    “I’m not sure yet.”
    “I could still help you, you know.”
    “Tomorrow’s Wednesday. Do you have time?”
    He smiles as he blinks drowsily and says, “Meet me here tomorrow morning,” then lets go of my hand.

Five
    Infiltration
    I f anyone had asked me what my father looked like, I would have described a man with thinning silver hair and a blunt silver mustache. I would have said that his skin was smooth and dark, that his eyes were piercing. I would have said that his build was diminutive—neither a wall of corded muscles nor a tower of flesh and blood—and that he walked confidently, with a certain swagger, in tasseled leather loafers. I would have said that he wore a watch on his left wrist and that he had always seemed to me the sort of man who wore a ring, maybe gold and onyx, on his right ring finger.
    If anyone had asked me about his habits, I would have said that he had been smoking cigarettes for decades and that he carried a black plastic barber’s comb in his back pocket, smoothing it over his silver hair whenever he hoped to light a woman’s heart on fire. I would have said that he pulled the skin off fried chicken before he ate it and that he licked his fingers when he was finished. I would have said that he sat alone on the side of his bed every evening and polished his leather shoes to a dull shine using a kit that he kept in a cardboard box on the floor—polish, cotton briefs as rags, a buffing brush, and a nailbrush for the cracks in the soles—rubbing in small circles, his hand like a makeshift foot in the shoe, holding it at arm’s length every so often to examine his work. I would have said that he washed his face with soap and scraped the dirt from the undersides of his nails with a small Swiss Army knife that he kept behind the faucet; that he drank water without ice but with a squeeze of lime; that he flashed a brilliant smile at nearly everyone who passed him in a day; that he hummed in the shower; that he snored faintly in his sleep.
    Because even though for twenty years I have been mostly okay about