“Pardon me, señorita, may I walk with you?”
Tina opened her eyes wide, almost paralyzed by surprise.
“I find you quite charming — you struck me the moment you got on the bus. You have very expressive eyes.”
“Excuse me, señor,” Tina finally managed to say, “but I don’t make a habit of talking to strangers.”
“If you’ll allow me to introduce myself, I won’t be a stranger anymore,” said the man. “Why don’t you give me the opportunity? I think we’ll be friends, don’t you?”
Tina picked up her pace as much as she could, wanting to arrive as soon as possible at her friend’s house, to spare herself from this impertinent man. She crossed a street at a red light and had to run to avoid being hit by a car. When she reached the sidewalk she breathed in satisfaction, thinking she’d managed to give him the slip.
“If we had a mutual friend, he would introduce us . . .” There he was again by her side. “But I very much fear we don’t have one. Won’t you give me a chance?”
Tina didn’t answer. She decided it would be best not to say another word to him, so that he would tire of the chase and leave her in peace.
“Really, I find you very charming,” he said, undeterred by Tina’s silence. “You made quite an impression on me.”
Rosa’s house had never seemed so far away. And what if Rosa weren’t there and she found the door locked? She was always waiting for her on Fridays at this hour . . .
“But it’s so simple to be friends,” the man insisted.
What if Rosa had gone to the doctor and wasn’t back yet? Last week Rosa had said she wasn’t feeling well . . .
“You won’t tell me your name?” the man asked.
Finally she made it to Rosa’s house, and she gave a sigh of relief when the door had closed behind her. She remained standing next to it for a few minutes until she heard his footsteps finally move away. Rosa was ironing when Tina appeared, flustered, her cheeks flushed, panting after the dash she’d made. After drinking a glass of water, Tina told her friend about the incident, in all its details. Rosa laughed in amusement and wanted to know what the fellow looked like.
“I didn’t even see his face,” Tina confessed.
For a while Rosa went on joking with Tina about what had happened. Suddenly she stopped and appraised her friend knowingly.
“You are looking good today, no doubt about it,” she said, dying of laughter. “Really, that blue sweater is lovely on you.”
Tina protested that it wasn’t what Rosa thought, but, as if without meaning to, she inched toward a mirrored wardrobe and contemplated her reflection, first with a certain shyness, fearing that Rosa would notice she was looking at herself, and then carefully, with all her attention. Her hands slid over her breasts and rested on her narrow waist. She wasn’t bad at all — to be honest with herself, she had to admit that she looked quite good, but how sad, what awful luck that this body, so well formed, would wither away in the shadow of solitude, without knowing a single caress, a single moment of pleasure. She couldn’t help lamenting it.
“All right, stop looking at yourself so much,” Rosa said.
Tina blushed and sat down in a rocking chair. She had the air of a little girl caught misbehaving. She began to rock in the chair and grin. How good she felt whenever she saw Rosa! When they chatted, the hours flew by and she forgot her sorrows. She would love so much to see her every day, like back when they were neighbors and Rosa hadn’t married yet and she was living with her parents . . .
They were almost definitely going to give Santiago a raise, Rosa was saying, and with that, he wouldn’t have to work overtime at night anymore. They were very happy. Apart from the fact that it meant a little more money, which would solve some things for them, they would be able to see each other more.
“There are days when we hardly see each other at all,” Rosa complained.
“You don’t even know how happy I am to hear this,” said Tina, thinking that it was about time their finances improved, after so many years of scraping by.
Another piece of good news was that a clerk at the factory where Santiago worked was going to get married and her position would be open.
“Santiago thinks he could get it for you. Wouldn’t that be fabulous?” Rosa asked.
The news thrilled Tina, because she had always coveted that job. But she also couldn’t help feeling bad thinking that if she got the position as clerk, it was because the other woman was leaving it to get married. The whole world had the chance to get married, thousands of girls got married every day, except her. But she had no more time to go on thinking about her bad luck because Rosa began chatting about other things. As they were cooking dinner, Tina caught herself making plans: she was surely going to earn more money, and then she could rent a little apartment near Rosa and Santiago. How marvelous it would be to leave that horrible room forever and never again lay eyes on the Bluebeard, that sordid dive that she despised with all her soul; a different job where she wouldn’t have to meet an obligatory quota, unlike the sweater factory where she had to make a hundred sleeves or collars without a chance to catch her breath . . .
While they ate dinner, Rosa commented that the cold was coming and the kids didn’t have anything decent to wear. She asked Tina if she could get some sweaters from the factory at a markdown. Tina assured her she could, saying that they gave the employees a good discount. They then started to take the children’s measurements and choose the most suitable colors. The kids were excited to know they would have new sweaters, and they picked colors Rosa didn’t agree with. She always bought them clothing with the idea that it would last them a long time and not make them look like such bumpkins.
They had a hard time putting the children to bed, and once they’d managed it, they cleared the table and sat down to chat awhile longer. Rosa listened to a radio drama twice a week, a lovely and very interesting story; the only thing that bothered her was that sometimes she missed an installment, but since they always gave a short summary of the previous episodes at the start of the program, you could still follow the story, which was truly moving and often made you cry — even she, who almost never cried, found herself shedding tears when she listened to Anita de Montemar. Tina had also listened to an episode one day, when the workshop supervisor had to go out and left the radio there. He always put on baseball games or things she didn’t understand, but what could she do about it?
Since it was already past nine and Santiago wasn’t there to walk her to the bus, Tina decided to leave before it got much later. When she reached the corner, she had her second surprise of the day: there was the man who had followed her that afternoon. She hadn’t seen his face but she remembered his height and the color of his suit. She thought about turning back to Rosa’s house, but since she saw her bus pull up at that very moment, she boarded it without further hesitation. She didn’t think he’d managed to get on, and she began to calm down. The bus swerved sharply and Tina nearly fell. Someone steadied her just in time. When she turned to say thank you, she saw with fright that it was the same man, and swallowed her words. He only smiled. Then she saw his face: “He’s quite young and not bad-looking at all.” In fact, she found him attractive, and she almost wished that, instead of a stranger, he were a friend of Santiago and Rosa’s — she might have liked getting to know him under different circumstances . . . “Here, Tina, this is X, he’s my best friend . . . X says he’s very interested in you, and he’s such a fine young man . . . X says that once they give him a raise he’ll ask you to marry him, I swear you won the lottery, he’s a real catch . . .” Someone asked about a stop and the fare collector answered that it was the next one. Tina realized, then, that she had taken the wrong bus. In her haste to board she hadn’t noticed. The blood pounded in her temples and her legs went weak. Very shaken by what was happening to her, she stepped off onto the street.
“I was waiting
for you,” he said. “I had a hunch you would come back out.”
Tina looked around, trying to orient herself and see where she could catch a bus that would take her back to her house.
“See, it’s destiny,” he said, pleased.
Those words were like a lightning bolt suddenly striking her. She felt that she had gone down a dead end, and her mind began to whirl like a spinning top. All of a sudden she remembered all the stories she had read in the newspapers: this was how they all began, it was always identical, the same thing had happened to that poor girl named Celia, she’d read about it not long ago, she remembered it very well . . . She paused at the corner, not knowing what to do or where to go. She didn’t see a bus stop anywhere. Across the street there was a bustling ice cream shop; she thought to ask there. Then the man said:
“May I invite you to a soda?”
She knew it was too late to try to escape; no one ever managed to outrun their destiny. She could try a thousand things and all would be useless. Sometimes destiny suddenly presented itself, just like death, arriving one day when it’s too late to do anything about it. All that was left was for her to resign herself to her sad end. Convinced of her fate, she meekly let herself be led along.
They sat at the only free table and he ordered two Coca-Colas. There were lots of people and lots of noise, voices, peals of laughter, the jukebox blaring. Tina was completely dazed and very frightened.
“I still don’t know your name,” he said. “I’m Juan Arroyo.”
“Cristina Reyes,” said Tina, and instantly reproached herself for not having given another name — but then, what did it matter in the end?
“Cristina — Tina — that’s a very pretty name, I like it,” said the young man, smiling.
When he smiled his eyes lit up. His eyes were black, somewhat almond-shaped. “He really does have a handsome gaze,” Tina couldn’t help thinking. The waitress arrived with the sodas. While he poured them, she closely observed the bottles and the liquid. She was well aware, thanks to the newspapers, that her drink could be drugged — and since the sodas had been served uncapped, it would be very easy . . .
“Tell me about yourself, Tina. What do you do?” the young man asked, showing an interest she knew was completely false.
Tina began to tell him, with great difficulty, that she worked in a sweater factory. She recited the words reluctantly; fear had parched her throat. She took a sip of Coca-Cola, just a swallow, enough to wet her mouth and also try to discern if it had a funny taste, but she didn’t notice anything strange about the soda and this calmed her down a little. Although maybe they put something flavorless in it. They had slipped something in Celia’s drink, and the poor girl didn’t realize a thing until the next day when she woke up . . .
The young man insisted on knowing more details about her: her family, who she lived with, what she liked to do, where she liked to go . . . Tina began to exhume her dead and invent brothers and sisters. She couldn’t tell him she lived alone and had nobody to protect or rescue her. If he found out, he was capable of coming into her room and right then and there . . . They had suffocated one poor girl with her own pillows, in her own house, after . . . “How horrible!” And icy water poured down her spine, making her shiver.
He told her that he worked at a printing press; this wasn’t, of course, what he wanted, but since jobs were scarce and hard to find, he had to be satisfied with it. It had been a year since he’d come here from Ciudad Juárez, where the rest of his family lived. He had risked leaving home, thinking that there were more opportunities in the capital. He was living in the house of some distant relatives, where he went only to sleep, and he still missed his home and his family enormously . . . Tina listened, knowing ahead of time that everything he said or might possibly say was false. A lesson learned by memory and practiced many times, God knew how many. All guys like him operated the same way. It seemed as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, and they lied up until the final moment, when they unmasked themselves with the utmost cynicism. She didn’t deserve such a cruel end: her loneliness and poverty were hard enough on her. She began to feel miserable and was terribly close to breaking down and crying, and she desperately wondered what she had done, why and in what way she was going to be punished.
There were three couples at the next table. Against her will, Tina saw a woman with dyed blonde hair throw her arms around the neck of the man next to her, kissing him in front of everyone with total shamelessness. Tina immediately looked away, sensing herself blush all the way to the roots of her hair. They were just like the girls she saw come out of the Bluebeard, she couldn’t understand them or excuse them — she was so different, she believed in love, in holding hands, in moonlit nights, in tender words and gazes; for a long time she’d imagined what her white dress would be like, how the church would be decorated on her wedding day and the music they would play . . . She suddenly felt a terrible fear of the hours to come: Where would he take her? How would he begin? Her mind, full of anguish, was trapped in a blind alley.
“Do you want another soda, Tina?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” she said.
“Really, feel free,” he insisted.
Again, she refused, but then she thought it was a good idea to spend as much time as possible in the ice cream shop, because nothing could happen to her there. They drank another soda, and he went on chatting and asking questions, coaxing words from her. He conversed with a smooth and well-modulated voice, in caressing tones. “He must have a lot of practice . . .” And a kind of burning tingle swept through her whole body each time she thought: How would it begin? Was he one of those men who beat girls brutally? Or perhaps with no further explanation he would pounce on her and rip her clothes off; then again, there were some who killed their prey first and afterward . . . She felt very hot; she took out her handkerchief and fanned herself with it, then wiped her forehead.
He asked if she was feeling ill; Tina could barely answer no, she wasn’t, but that it was very hot in there. Then the young man paid the bill and they left the ice cream shop.
“We’ll have to take a cab,” he said. “There aren’t any more buses at this hour.”
This was the usual method, what she’d read about in the newspapers — they were always in league with a taxi driver, maybe he planned to take her outside the city, bringing her to one of those sinister places . . . That’s what had happened to poor Celia . . .
He suggested they go to a nearby corner, because taxis always passed there, at all hours. And Tina went on telling herself that of course the accomplice taxi would be there. But she let herself be carried along, convinced that this was her destiny, and that it had to be fulfilled whether she resisted or not. And sure enough, as soon as they arrived, a taxi pulled up.
When the young man asked for her address, she gave it to him without hesitation, certain that he would take her to another very different location. She settled into the back seat, shrinking against the door, and watched him out of the corner of her eye: the poor man thought he was deceiving her, as if she didn’t understand what was going on. Many times she almost had the desire to laugh, but when she remembered that the end was near, she felt as though the tightrope she’d been balancing on had snapped and she was falling into the void, plunging all at once into the darkness.
“What a beautiful night!” the young man remarked, drawing closer to Tina. “I think it’s the company that makes it seem that way. It’s not cold at all. Did you see how big the moon is?” And he took Tina’s hand between his own.
The Houseguest Page 8
