LITMIR.BIZ

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he’d come to in the aftermath of his imprisonment, after his friends had been killed.

      But in late 2000, some veterans of Diciembre decided it was important to commemorate the founding of the troupe. A series of shows was planned in the city, and a Diciembre veteran named Patalarga even suggested a tour. Naturally, they called on Henry, who, with some reluctance, agreed to participate, but only if a new actor could be found to join. Auditions for a touring version of The Idiot President were announced for February 2001, and Nelson, a year out of the Conservatory at the time, signed up eagerly. He and dozens of young actors just like him, more notable for their enthusiasm than for their talent, gathered in a damp school gymnasium in the district of Legon, reading lines that no one had said aloud in more than a decade. It was like stepping back in time, Henry thought, and this had been precisely his concern when the proposal was first floated. He sighed, perhaps too loudly; he felt old. Since his divorce, he saw eleven-year-old Ana on alternate weekends. His students were his daughter’s age; they completed science “experiments” where nothing at all was in play, where no possible outcome could surprise. Lately this depressed him profoundly, and he didn’t know why. Whenever Ana came to stay, she brought with her a bundle of drawings tied with a string, all the work she’d done since they’d last seen each other, which she turned over to her father with great ceremony, for critique. Unlike his old friends, unlike himself, his daughter was not pretending: she was an artist, in that honest way only children can be, and this fact filled Henry with immense pride. They would sit on his couch and discuss in detail her works of crayon and pencil and pastel. Color, composition, stroke, theme. Henry would put on his most elegant, most highfalutin accent, and describe her work with big words she didn’t understand but found delightful, funny, and very grown-up—poststructuralist, antediluvian, protosurrealist, aphasic. She’d smile; he’d rejoice. The anthropomorphic strain running through your oeuvre is simply remarkable! More often than not, hidden within his daughter’s artwork, Henry found a terse note from Ana’s mother, which was, in content and tone, the exact opposite of Ana’s lighthearted drawings: a list of things to do, reminders about Ana’s school fees, activities, appointments. Words free of warmth or affect or any trace of the life they had once attempted to make together. The playfulness would cease for a moment as Henry read.

      “What does it say, Daddy?” Ana would ask.

      “Your mother. She says she misses me.”

      Henry and his daughter would dissolve into fits of deep-throated laughter. For a girl her age, Ana understood divorce quite well.

      The revival of Henry’s most famous play was timed to coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of its truncated debut and the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the company. When he told Ana’s mother the idea, she congratulated him. “Maybe you can get locked up again,” his ex-wife said. “Perhaps it will resurrect your career.”

      A similar notion had crossed his mind too, of course, but for the sake of his pride, Henry pretended to take offense.

      Now, at the auditions, his career felt farther away than ever. Whatever this was—whether a vice, an obsession, a malady—it most certainly was not “a career.” Still, this dialogue, these lines he’d written so many years before, even when recited by these inexpert actors, provoked in Henry an unexpected rush of sentiment: memories of hope, anger, and righteousness. The high drama of those days, the sense of vertigo; he pressed his eyes closed. In prison, Rogelio had taught him how to place a metal coil in the carved-out grooves of a brick, and how to use this contraption to warm up his meals. Before that simple lesson everything Henry ate had been cold. The prison was a frightful place, the most terrifying he’d ever been. He’d tried his hardest to forget it, but if there was anything about those times that had the ability to make him shudder still, it was the cold: his stay in prison, the fear, his despair, reduced to a temperature. Cold food. Cold hands. Cold cement floors. He remembered now how these coils had glowed bright and red, how Rogelio’s smile did too, and was surprised that these images still moved him so.

      For their part, the actors were mostly too nervous or excited to notice Henry’s troubled, uneasy countenance; or if they did, they assumed it was in response to their own performances.

      Some, it should be noted, had no idea who he was.

      But Nelson did recognize Henry. He’d heard him on the radio that day, and not long after, decided to become a playwright. All these years later, and in many ways, it remained his dream. What did he say to Henry?

      Something like: “Mr. Nuñez, it’s an honor.”

      Or: “I never thought I’d have the chance to meet you, sir.”

      The words themselves aren’t that important; that he insisted on approaching the table where Henry sat, absorbed in dark memories, was enough. Picture it: Nelson reaching for his hero’s hand, his eyes brimming with admiration. A connection between the two men, the mentor and his protégé.

      When we spoke, Henry dismissed the idea.

      I insisted: Did the playwright see something of himself in the young man? Something of his own past?

      “No,” Henry responded. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, I was never, ever that young. Not even when I was a boy.”

      No matter. On a Monday in March 2001, Nelson was summoned to rehearsals at a theater in the Old City, a block off the traffic circle near the National Library, where his father had once worked. After a dismal year—a breakup, a protracted tenure at an uninteresting job, the disappointing aftermath of a graduation both longed for and feared—Nelson was simply delighted by the news. Henry was right: Nelson, almost twenty-three, had a backpack full of scripts, a notebook jammed with handwritten stories, a head of unruly curls, and seemed much, much younger. Perhaps this is why he got the part—his youth. His ignorance. His malleability. His ambition. The tour would begin in a month. And that is when the trouble began.

       2

      NORMALLY, Nelson would have shared news of this sort with Ixta. Now he doubted himself. She’d been his girlfriend until the previous July, and they’d parted ways, not amicably, on a day that Nelson considered to be the dead heart of winter. Ghoulish clouds, a fine, gray mist. It was entirely his doing—he wanted freedom, he said. She scoffed, “What am I, your jailer?” and in response, selfish but authentic tears bubbled in his eyes. He was going to the United States and couldn’t be beholden to her or anyone in pursuit of his future. They didn’t speak for three months, during which time he made no plans and took no steps toward this supposedly brave and life-changing move.

      In early October, Nelson and Ixta met for a coffee, a tense affair which led, nonetheless, to another meeting, a few weeks later. Quite unexpectedly, midway through this second encounter, he found himself laughing. And Ixta laughing too. It wasn’t tentative, or self-conscious, or polite. And this shook him, the realization that, had he more nerve, he could reach across the narrow table that separated them, and—in front of all these strangers—casually lay his hand upon hers. No one would notice or think it odd. They might even smile at the sight, or say to themselves something like:

       Oh, what a handsome young couple!

      He didn’t, of course—not that day—but he did make some progress. Slowly. Patiently. At the steady rate of an ant gathering food, or a bird building a nest. And it paid off: by the start of the Christmas season, they were sleeping together again. It happened almost by accident at first, but the second time filled him with hope. They began meeting every two weeks or so, more if Mindo, Ixta’s new boyfriend, was working nights. These encounters were the source of both happiness and torment for Nelson, but he was, in any case, unable or unwilling to push things any further. In their nakedness, they talked about everything except what they were doing together, the future, and somehow the vagueness of their new relationship was why it felt so very adult. Ixta never asked if he still intended to leave for the United States, nor did he mention it. He would—someday soon, he felt certain—tell her he loved her, that he missed her, that he was sorry for everything,

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