Page 33 of After the Fire
A cell phone pinged twice, immediately followed by a loud ring.
“Who is it?” I said as Santiago took out his phone from his shorts pocket. His biceps bunched with the movement, the T-shirt sleeves clinging to them. Water dripped from his fingers on to the screen.
“Hello?” he yelled over the sound of the rain.
There was a voice on the other side, but I couldn’t distinguish who it was. He nodded his head a few times.
“We got caught in the rain,” he said, looking at me. “We’re heading back into town now. Okay, see you soon. Thank you.”
“Who was that?” The rain was stopping. Large drops lingered on the leaves, slowly dripping to the ground around us. “What happened?”
“The director at the community center can see us today.”
“Oh, okay. That was fast. I thought that lady was out of the office.” Santiago had asked around, and it turned out that the woman who was currently the director at the center was the same one that had been there all those years ago.
“Yeah, she technically is, but she’s going in to see us.” He winked at me. “A little favor.”
This was exactly who Santiago was. He was a charmer, and his intentions were pure. He loved helping people, and I was seeing it firsthand with how he was managing this whole situation with my grandfather.
“Right.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ll go change, and we can meet there in an hour?”
An hour later, we were standing in the courtyard inside the community center. It was the old railroad station, back when the town was inhabited by English railroad workers in the late nineteenth century. The building was small and quaint. It seemed that the courtyard had once been the railroad track, no longer operational. It divided the building in two sections. The closest one to the street housed all of the different rooms for events and classes, and the farthest one had a few offices, a kitchen, and the restrooms.
“Ready?” Santiago asked me, turning to face me with his whole body.
“As I’ll ever be.” I sighed dramatically.
“It’ll be fine. We can just ask a few questions or maybe to see the town archives. My grandfather told me that the town used to keep very accurate records a few decades back, so they should have at least something for us to look at.”
He turned, offering me his hand without hesitation. My body reacted automatically, extending mine to meet him halfway, like this motion was meant to be, like my hand belonged there.
We walked silently until we reached the office. The door was wide open, and a woman who must have been in her late sixties sat behind the desk, slowly humming a tune I didn’t recognize and reading something on her computer screen.
Santiago knocked on the door frame with his free hand while simultaneously squeezing mine.
“Good afternoon,” he said in a formal tone. I didn’t remember hearing him ever use such a tone, but maybe this was his lawyer voice.
“Look what the cat dragged in! I haven’t seen you in ages, Santi. You must be Victoria?” she said, standing up from her seat and taking a few steps to greet us. She looked at our joined hands and smiled. She immediately kissed Santiago’s cheek, then turned to me. “Nice to meet you.”
We walked forward and took a seat on the chairs across from her.
“How can I help you?” she asked, smiling softly. She took off her glasses and placed them by her computer mouse. “You sounded a little cryptic in your voicemail.”
Santiago looked at me and squeezed my hand once again before he let go.
“We were wondering if you could help us find some information about a man that lived here in the eighties. If nothing else, maybe show us any data from that time and we’ll see what we can find.”
“Oh sure, that’s easy,” she said, grabbing her glasses and waking her computer up. “We actually just digitized all our records, so it’ll take us no time to bring those up. What’s the name?”
Santiago looked at me and lifted his eyebrows, encouraging me.
“Enrique Aguirre,” I said quietly. The woman stiffened immediately and looked at me. “He was my grandfather.”
“Oh, um. Sure, let’s see here.” She turned to her screen again, typing something on the keyboard. “Here we go.”
I heard the printer fire up behind us. The office was dated but cozy, with wood paneling on the walls and unflattering overhead lighting. The director’s desk was a mess of paperwork and folders stacked in overflowing piles. There was a plant in the corner behind the woman and a large bulletin board full of photos, event calendars, and copies of newspaper clippings.
The director stood up to go to the printer and grabbed the few pages that it spat out.
