Brother.
22
WHEN SHE ARRIVED at work on the dot Monday morning, Maite told Diana that she’d gone to Cuernavaca for the weekend, but in her version of events it was with a new suitor. Diana seemed impressed when Maite said he’d be picking her up in his car. She asked if Diana could cover for her.
“Do I get to meet him?” Diana asked.
“Not today,” Maite said. “But later on, maybe.”
“What’s his name?”
“Rubén,” she said proudly.
“Is he good looking?”
“Very.”
They continued in that vein for a few more minutes, before the arrival of their co-workers made it necessary to retire to their desks. Maite smiled. Not only did the latest issue of Secret Romance show Jorge Luis waking up from his coma, but the lies she’d told perked her up. Besides, she’d leave the office early and in a car, no need to ride the stinking bus this time.
That’s not to say that the morning didn’t have its hiccups. Twice the phone rang, and she nervously picked up the receiver, fearing it might be that dreadful man from the DFS. But first it was a wrong number, and then it was Maite’s mother calling to say that the mechanic had phoned her and how dare Maite give out her number and why was Maite always suffering from money trouble. Maite really hadn’t had any money trouble other than with the mechanic. The reason she’d given her mother’s number was because she needed a guarantor when she bought the car, and then the mechanic had also asked for an emergency contact. Most women put down their husband’s name, but since Maite didn’t have a husband, she was subject to this extra layer of scrutiny.
Maite told her mother she couldn’t speak because she was at work, but then her mother threatened to phone her at home that night. Maite hoped she forgot to do it and almost considered asking her sister if she wouldn’t get her mother off her case.
Around eleven a.m. Maite made up a migraine and said she needed to go home early and explained Diana had promised to finish her work. Her boss didn’t seem pleased, but he said fine, and at one o’clock she took the elevator downstairs and waited for Rubén to show up.
She smiled, thinking if Diana poked her head out the window she’d see her getting into the car.
“Good day at work?” Rubén asked.
“Fine. And you?”
“Work was all right. But worms keep coming out of the woodwork to prop up the president. Look at Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes, that couple of boot-lickers. And you should have seen Excélsior: they had a letter signed by José Luis Cuevas, Rufino Tamayo, Ramón Xirau, and all that lot, praising the president. Intellectuals and artists with Echeverría! Fuck them! You hear people saying it’s ‘Echeverría or fascism,’ like there’s no other choice, and you can’t trust anyone these days. Changing things from the inside! The bullshit they spout. And we…even we are not immune to this crap.”
Maite frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Asterisk,” Rubén said, “it’s winding down.”
“It’s closing?”
“I went to see Jackie before I picked you up. She says it’s too dangerous to keep meeting like we have.”
“She’s probably right.”
“There are so many opportunists waiting for their slice of cake. Political dilettantes. I feel helpless.”
Rubén gripped the wheel. He looked young and haunted; it was easy to feel sorry for him.
When they arrived at Sócrates’s apartment building, he still wasn’t home or was pretending he couldn’t hear the buzzer. Luckily they managed to slip into the building when a couple of people were leaving and walked up the stairs to the apartment, which lay at the end of a hallway.
The door was open a crack, and they walked in.
“Hey there, are you home?” Rubén asked.
On a messy bed someone had left a cup filled with cigarette butts. The light was on in the bathroom. Rubén walked ahead, brushing aside a curtain with wooden beads.
A young man, stripped down to his underthings, sat on the toilet, his chin pressed against his chest and his hands on his lap. Maite immediately noticed the little round burn marks on his skin and the rope binding his feet. He wasn’t moving.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
Rubén didn’t reply; instead he stepped forward and placed a hand against the young man’s neck. “Yes,” he muttered.
“Oh, my God. What—”
“Let’s go,” Rubén said, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her out of the tiny apartment.
They rushed down the stairs. Their escape was so loud she feared the whole building heard them, but no one poked their head out the door.
“We need to phone the police,” she said when they reached the car and Rubén fumbled with the keys. He looked up at her, his eyes sharp.
“No.”
“But he’s dead. He’ll have to be buried.”
“Get in.”
Maite obeyed, but as soon as she was in the passenger’s seat she spoke up again. “We can’t just leave him there.”
Rubén started the car. “What do you think they’ll do to us if we tell them, huh? You want to end up at Lecumberri? With my history—”
“What history?”
“I’ve been arrested. I’ve had my run-ins with the pigs.”
“But he’s dead!”
“I know he’s dead, and we’ll be dead soon if we call the cops.”
Maite laced her hands together tight, resting them against her lap. Rubén reached into his jacket pocket and took out a cigarette. When they stopped at a red light, he lit the cigarette and turned to her.
“I’m going to drive around for a bit. Then we’ll go back to your apartment.”
“You’re going to let a man rot in a bathroom.”
“Better him than me.”
She tried to think of something, anything to say, but as she squeezed her eyes shut, the image of the dead man haunted her, and she forgot how to utter words. When they reached her apartment, still mute, she decided to boil water for a coffee, but she fumbled with the tin and ended up dropping it in the middle of the kitchen. Grains of coffee spilled across the laminate floor.
She grabbed the broom. The phone rang. She guessed it must be her mother and considered letting it ring, but knowing her, Mother would simply phone again in ten minutes and then get even angrier at Maite because she hadn’t been there to answer the first time. She propped the broom against the wall and took a deep breath before lifting the receiver.
“Yes?” she asked and closed her eyes, already imagining the harsh recrimination she was going to have to endure. Maite, you can’t handle money. Maite, you can’t handle anything. She pressed her back against the refrigerator and waited.
“Hello? It’s Leonora,” a woman said, her voice soft.
She clutched the phone cord, astonished, her eyes snapping open. “Where are you? We’ve been looking all over for you!”
“I was reading the early edition,” the girl said, and then something else Maite didn’t catch; the girl was talking in whispers.
Rubén, who was sitting on the couch, raised his head and stared at her. “Who’s that?”
“It’s Leonora! It’s so good to hear you. What about the early edition?”
“You have the cat? And the box?”
“Yes, and yes. When can we see you?”
“Tell her to hang up.”
“Huh?”
Rubén stood up, whip quick, and rushed toward Maite. He pulled the phone from her grasp, shoving her away. Maite lost her balance and stumbled down. “Hide! It’s not safe!” he yelled into the receiver and hung up.
Maite stood up, holding on to the kitchen counter. “Are you crazy? We’ve been trying to find her for days!”
She rubbed her knee, but he glared at her, as i
f she’d pushed him and it hadn’t been the other way around.
“That was before Sócrates wound up dead. She can’t come back. She’s in real danger now.”
“She can’t hide forever,” Maite said. She took a few steps out of the narrow kitchen and into the living room, then turned to look at him and stepped back into the kitchen. “What about Jackie? Can’t she do something?”
“What’s Jackie going to do?” Rubén muttered tiredly, rubbing his jaw.
“I don’t know! You said she’d help. What about Emilio?” Maite snapped her fingers. “That’s right, we’ll phone Emilio.”
She grabbed the phone, but Rubén immediately took it from her hands and hung up. She stared at him, mouth open.
“You can’t tell anyone she called.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you get it? It’s not safe. You can’t trust anyone.”
“Why should I trust you then? I don’t even know you. Step away from the door. I’m going to see Emilio.”
“Calm down.”
“You step away! It’s my house!”
“I’m telling you to calm down. Someone is going to start banging on the door asking what the hell is going on if you keep this up.”
“I don’t care!”
She stomped toward her atelier, and when she walked in she cranked the volume up and let the needle fall upon a record, the music like a clap of thunder, so loud, making the whole room tremble. “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” began playing.
“For God’s sake, Maite, don’t be doing this,” he said and turned the volume down with a swift flick of the wrist. “You want to make it worse? Don’t you see we’re in a mess?”
But all she could see right then and there was the dead man again. Slumped over, with the horrible burn marks on his legs, and his neck bent and his eyes—for a quick second she had seen those eyes, glassy and open, staring back at her.
She felt so lost, so utterly alone, and wanted to clutch something. She turned to him and grabbed onto his jacket with both hands. But she was also furious, the anger boiling up because none of this was her fault, it was all that girl’s fault, that girl she didn’t even know, and it was Rubén’s fault too. He had allowed her to get involved in this reckless quest.
Maite lunged up and bit him hard, on the mouth. He stepped back, startled, pressed a hand against his lips and stared at her, drawing back. His fingers were stained with blood.
He grabbed her face between his hands and bit her back. For a moment they both froze, stunned by what was happening, and there was this pause, like the crackling of a record.
“You should fuck me before I change my mind,” she said.
She meant it, too. She had fantasized about a similar encounter but never dared, she had even pictured herself with this man in a fit of boredom. And there she was now and there he was, and for all of Maite’s deficiencies, he seemed willing and interested in her.
The music was a low hum as she undid his belt buckle and he pulled up her skirt, pressing her down against the cheap red-and-white carpet. Wary, perhaps, that she might bite him again, he did not attempt to kiss her. It was not as if she felt in the mood to be kissed. Kisses were for the pages of Secret Romance, they were for sweethearts, and this wasn’t an episode that belonged in any of her magazines.
They were both angry at the world, that was why this was happening. It was a kiss of scorpions, both heavy with poison. Both weary too. The tension and excitement of the past few days was the kindle they required.
Still half-dressed, Rubén thrust into her. She wondered, for a brief, flickering second, how she might compare to the beautiful Leonora, and she drew him closer to her, pressing her face against his neck so he wouldn’t look at her.
It had been so long since she’d had a lover, she feared she’d forgotten how human bodies worked, but they found a rhythm, something between sorrow and delight.
She felt his tongue, wet and warm, sliding against her neck. She thought about Emilio, handsome, cultured, interesting Emilio, and let herself play-pretend for a minute, imagining it was him with her. Then she thought it was one of the men of her comic books, that perhaps both of them were taking turns having their way with her. Rubén grunted something, lifted his head, and she looked at him and the fantasy was broken.
She came a few minutes after that; it caught her by surprise. It was a brief, low tremor, like a butterfly brushing its wings against her skin, not a precipice of pleasure, but at least he’d had the decency of waiting for her. Some men didn’t care.
He thrusted once, twice, then lay still above her for a couple of minutes before rolling aside. Music was still playing, but it was a different song and faster tempo. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again he was staring at the ceiling. She felt nervous, wondering what he was thinking, whether he felt guilty.
“I’m jumping in the shower,” she said, lifting the needle from the record player as she headed into the bathroom.
She didn’t take long, vigorously scrubbing her stomach and legs, washing off the sweat and semen, removing any makeup. She stopped in front of the mirror to contemplate her face, free of any adornment, flushed with the warmth of the hot shower, and, in the aftermath of lovemaking, somewhat pretty. When for a split second, the face was angled in the mirror, it even seemed almost beautiful.
Perhaps it was merely her imagination, merely the need to be desirable, but it was a nice illusion.
When she walked back into her bedroom in her ratty pink robe, she saw that Rubén had settled on the bed. He leaned on his elbow and looked up at her as she toweled her hair, then ran a hand across the objects arranged on her vanity, her little treasures—like jewels snatched from a shipwreck. She caressed the statue of San Judas Tadeo and the bottle of perfume. She thought about faceless men wielding sacrificial knives and maidens bound upon stone altars.
“You all right?”
“Hmmm?” she replied.
“You look worried.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course. But I’d like to not think about it before I take a nap. Fuck, I’m tired.”
“I can’t stop thinking about things, ever. Sometimes I look at a word in a dictionary and I wonder, how did that word come to have this meaning? How did hot mean hot or cold mean cold, and why some words sound the same but mean different things. Then I also think about how things might be and how they aren’t.”
He looked at her curiously, as if she were singing in an unknown language.
“You’re not like that,” she said. “You don’t overthink.”
“I suppose it depends who you’re asking.”
“Leonora, what does she say?”
She assumed he would be upset if she mentioned the girl, but Rubén merely shrugged. Maite opened a drawer and took out her nightgown. It had buttons going up the front and ruffles on the wrists. Holding it up, she realized how hideous it looked and felt a bit embarrassed to be wearing it, but she changed into it and slipped under the covers.
Rubén took off his clothes but did not bother getting changed into pajamas. He also didn’t shower. She wondered if he had even brought pajamas. Perhaps he slept naked. He and Leonora together, the apartment musky with their scent.
“I still think we should let Emilio know.” Maite turned her head and looked at him. “It would be selfish not to tell him she’s okay.”
“Emilio is a rich junior who is in the pocket of the PRI, I’ve told you that. There’s no reason to dig deeper there.”
“You’re so annoying,” she muttered. “Where’s the gun, anyway? If an assassin walks in here now, he’ll shoot you dead. You’ll die without underwear.”
“You do overthink things,” he said, but he was smiling. “It’s not a bad way to die, having had a good fuck and sleeping in bed. If I do end up in the damn sierra with the guerilla, I
’ll remember you fondly.”
It wasn’t quite a declaration of love, but she liked that. She wondered if she’d been wrong and Rubén might have the raw material to be a hero from a comic book, after all. “Soldier” sounded exciting. She supposed if he was the member of a guerilla it wasn’t quite like being a soldier, but close enough. A rebel with a cause.
23
MONDAY AT EIGHT a.m. Elvis and the Antelope parked their car in front of Sócrates’s building. Elvis had slept little, in fits and bursts. First he’d told himself that Justo was lying, that El Gazpacho was alive. But sometime near dawn he’d admitted the truth. El Gazpacho must be dead. Whether El Mago had a hand in it, he couldn’t tell. He also couldn’t phone El Mago and ask if he’d murdered a man.
The Antelope chewed bubble gum and took a nap. Elvis looked at the crossword resting on his lap and couldn’t fill in the missing letters. He hadn’t picked a word of the day. In one pocket of his jacket he had his screwdriver and in the other he carried a pack of cigarettes, but he’d forgotten his lighter.
Around one-thirty p.m. the Antelope nudged him. “Isn’t that the woman we’ve been tailing?” he asked.
It was Maite, walking together with her friend, that same man he’d previously seen her with. They made a mismatched pair. He looked like a student, his hair too long, and she was prim and proper in a suit. Elvis wondered who the man was and what they were doing there. They went in, but came out rushing like the devil was after them.
“Follow them,” Elvis said.
“I thought we were watching this building.”
“Change of plans; when someone runs like that, you follow.”
However, rather than leading them to an interesting location, the couple simply returned to Maite’s apartment building. Elvis parked the car, and they found El Güero, who had been keeping watch all this time alone and rolled his eyes when he saw them.
“Finally! Ready to relieve me?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Elvis said. “Anything happening here?”
“It’s dead. The woman just came back home.”
Velvet Was the Night Page 22
