Getting phone calls in the middle of the night is in the fine print section of my job description, right between the requirements of ‘high stress tolerance’ and ‘self-sufficiency’. There’s no such thing as overtime when you’re constantly on the clock. There were times when I was upset it did not reflect in my paystubs but after a while that frustration becomes a static, a background noise you can simply ignore. Jules used to hate how often I’d get called away before daybreak. I always tried to make as little noise as possible as to not wake her, there was no reason for her to have a bad night’s sleep as well, but she told me later that was the worse; going to sleep with me next to her, waking up alone. I got what she meant, maybe a little too much; it’s been decades but I always hated how Rae would disappear from my room come morning light. I can’t recall the last time I had a full night’s sleep, it’s gotten to the point I feel guilty when I do. Like I missed something.
I don’t miss the buzzing of my phone on the night stand; my mind’s still foggy but the caller ID – Maya – punches me in the stomach.
“Is everything okay?”
No ‘hello’, no ‘what is it’, I know there’s only one reason she’d call. Well, to be fair, it’s one thing dressed as a myriad other: she’s not okay. She might simply go and say, ‘my neighbor’s blasting that stupid music again and I can’t sleep’, or ‘the dishwasher’s leaking again’, or ‘they switched off my electricity again – no, I DID pay the bills!, but it’s just code for her not being okay and wanting someone there. It might seem futile, me driving over to her place sometimes for a couple minutes and then leaving again – because I always have to leave –, or sometimes just telling her on the phone to close the windows but I rather do this than suffer the consequences of not answering.
I know the way her life turned out isn’t my fault – I wasn’t the one using, abusing and hurting her, I wasn’t the one stealing her money, I wasn’t the one forcing her to do drugs to get easy to deal with or something to perk her up, depending on whatever need arose. I’ve attended enough therapy sessions through the years to know that, logically. I’m not to blame for that, I can’t blame myself for not getting somewhere sooner or not figuring something out, or not getting the court order we needed. I can’t get rid of the feeling that I could do more, though. It’s not my responsibility but then whose is it?
“I can’t sleep, this stupid noise…”
Her voice is small and her words blur together. She may be drunk. There’s absolutely no noise in the background.
“Are you getting bad again?”
“… I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to go and…?”
“No.”
It’s only then I realize I’m not even home yet, I had a training to attend in Quantico; I’m starring out the hotel window overlooking the airport. I’ll be back by the late afternoon, though, and I tell her I’ll pop over.
By some miracle, I do manage to get back in time, my plane lands on JFK at three, and I manage to get an Uber to the HQ in Manhattan to pick up my response car from the garage. Jamie was always very disappointed that neither me nor my colleagues often get assigned ‘big black SUVs with tinted windows’, since we don’t need to transport gear; if we need to be seen, the FBI doesn’t like being subtle, otherwise I’m very happy with the standard, five-year-old KIA I got assigned. It’s much easier to park with here.
It's been some time since I’ve caught up with her, so I have her spare keys, or at least one of them, and I know the code to the front door by heart. One thing I hate in this building is the old elevator; I always eye it and then always decide against it. I’ve heard it rattle up and down before, thanks but no thanks. The stairs take some air from my lungs still, so I stop midway to have a breather. By the time I reach the correct floor, I can feel the hot air from the take-out in my plastic bag chill down a bit; it’s still warm though, as I rummage around for the right key on my chain.
I don’t need it though; the door opens up as I try to turn it in the lock, and I’m staring into a face I’ve only seen on a cutout from a newspaper. Maya told me that her daughter doesn’t let her have pictures of her in the apartment, she was pretty grumpy about it, and then showed me the well-hidden colored photo that she cut out from the paper. She’s so pretty, isn’t she. Reminds me of myself.
She first sought me out when her daughter was in jail and suddenly she was alone; I can’t remember if I’ve read the papers before that or if she was the one who caught me up on the news. Obviously, she said that Alba was innocent, she said it with all the conviction of a fiercely protective mother. I only knew her for a few months when she was a child so I tried not to pretend like I knew anything about her in the first place. She either did it or not, it wasn’t for me to decide.
But now she was here, facing me, and I wondered for a brief moment if I’m looking at someone who has killed a child. It’s a fleeting thought, because then she makes it obvious she wasn’t expecting me.
“Hi,” I end up saying calmly, her polar opposite. “Your mother’s not here?” She mustn’t be, it’s way too quiet in there. I nod, yeah, I get it – I get her standoffishness and the fact she also came for Maya. “May I come in…? I’ve bought food,” I raise the bag with the logo of a local taqueria plastered across it, which I place on the countertop as soon as I’m allowed inside.
“Your mother called me at 3AM, saying something… About a loud noise or something,” I explain, leaning against the counter, my holster clinking against the tile. Just like her, I look like I came from the office. “I was in DC, I just got back. Did you find out what it was?”

She clearly isn’t comfortable with me being here, which comes as no surprise. For one, when I show up at people’s doors, most of the time they aren’t happy to see me, since I’m either intruding on a fragile emotional and intimate scene regarding one of their loved ones, or I’m there to ask questions. Nobody likes these questions, and I can’t blame them for it. The sheer directness of them, no matter how much you try to sugarcoat them in Southern courtesy, comes off as rather rude and insensitive.
The way Maya would talk about her daughter sometimes made it seem like they spend time together daily – which I knew to be not true. I don’t know if Maya was as open with everyone as she was with me, especially when she was on something, but I doubted it – I’m not the best company on my better days, but she always seemed overly chatty, to the point where it must have been for the lack of other outlets. She was afraid of being reported by someone to ICE, afraid of being discovered by someone from Las Palmas, and it made me want to promise her some protection. I couldn’t, though; the most I could do was appearing at her door with lukewarm barbacoa tacos.
Part of me thought she’d had mentioned me at least once. Clearly, I was wrong.
My eyes scan the room as I’m let inside; there’s a few mugs still in the sink, a still-damp sponge lays in a pan. It’s not unusual for Maya to abruptly stop what she’s been doing, she seems more easily distractable by the day. I can kind of sympathize with that, the number of times I’ve ‘lost’ my glasses or my phone only to be found again in the most obvious places.  
“I’m sure she will,” I agree with her, deciding to slide past the clear venom in her voice. My first thought is that Maya might have told her something, something that wasn’t real. She sometimes had these warped images of reality in her head, that she saw someone do this or say that and it always turns out to be mere confusion on her part.
Only then do I realize that Maya isn’t here – which is obvious, but her absence at this hour is concerning. Or at least I think it should be; Alba, on the other hand, seems only moderately agitated, which could be attributed to my presence. There’s no other noise coming from inside the apartment, the TV is switched off, the bedroom where the door is ajar is quiet, and I can’t see any light coming from the shoebox of a bathroom, either. My mouth opens to ask about her whereabouts but she’s faster.
“Sometimes,” I nod along. “Usually, I visit her in the late afternoon, though, after work.” She pins me down with her stare, but it carries more anxiousness than anger or annoyance, which all start to make sense once her next question follows, making my eyebrows jump higher on my forehead. Talk about straight shooters. “Where would you even get this idea…?” Maya is a perfectly nice woman, don’t get me wrong, I’m not irritated by the assumption, just surprised. To me it was clear why I’m here – needing to do something, needing someone to need me, and some long-matured, old-fashioned guilt –, but I guess I see where it can come off the wrong way. “No, we’re not involved that way.”
She’s clearly not satisfied with that answer though, and I have to admit, the way she shoots question after question so easily makes me think she could be a good interrogator. Since she’s clearly in a heightened state, I want to think through my answers, find the best approach before saying anything so she has time to go on and broaden my perspective about what she thinks is going on. Honestly, it makes me feel dumb as a fence post. Sometimes those few months in LA feels like it happened yesterday; most of the time, it seems less and less real. How could I forget that most people don’t know? As far as the gang was concerned, I got sent to another state prison in Nevada for armed robbery; the remaining members were spread out over the system for a reason.
It never occurred to me that Maya was keeping me such a secret.
A deep exhale flows through my nose; only now do I realize that I actually don’t know much about her, either. Maya said that she had ‘an important job’, and she was married but like I said, her reality sometimes differed to the actual one.
“I’m not here for money. Or for business,” I say, reaching into my back pocket with deliberate, slow, wide movements. She’s jumpy, and her gaze clearly falls to the gun on my side, I’m not trying to scare her. Once I retrieve the ID card with my badge on the other side of the black leather flop, I stretch it out towards her, making a small movement with my head, urging her to take it. “I’m not here because of this, either,” I add on quickly before it’d make her misunderstand again. “That’s simply why I have the gun. It’s protocol for every field agent to be armed at all times. Even on planes.”
It's my turn to eye her quizzically now. “Your mother never told you…? I thought… Well, it doesn’t matter.” For Maya back then, my identity wasn’t that important – or more likely, my fake one proved her point that no one could be trusted. I’m sure she wouldn’t have contacted me later on, had she another option. “I’ve been in contact with her again for a few years now. ” I figure it’s best not to explicitly mention why. “She calls me sometimes when she needs someone to help around here. Or when she doesn’t want to be alone… I usually just bring tacos though.”