A Summer for Scandal

by Lydia San Andres

  Susana looked doubtful. “Wouldn’t that take a long time? We only have three weeks.”

  “I’m sure it won’t be a problem. I’ll go speak to Mrs. Espinosa tomorrow.”

  “Well, if she decides it would be too much trouble, I can always embroider some handkerchiefs or pillowcases to sell in one of the booths.”

  “You ought to do that anyway,” Emilia told her. “Embroider book motifs and quotes from your favorite authors. Mrs. Espinosa will like it and I’m sure they’ll sell well.”

  Susana brightened. “I think I’ll do that. I got some lovely green thread yesterday that I could embroider into vines like the ones on the cover of Endless Love. Maybe I could make a handkerchief for Luis, with a funny little dog on it like on those books he used to read when he was a boy.”

  “I remember those— in fact, I’m sure I still have some of them put away. He used to give me the ones he’d already read, so I wouldn’t follow you when you went to Mr. Zapata’s.”

  Susana put one last clean plate on top of the freshly washed stack. “He’d always insist on bringing you back some penny candy. He made such a pet out of you. I swear, sometimes I thought he was far fonder of the idea of having a little sister than of me.”

  “He may have one yet, and I might turn out to be more than he bargained for,” Emilia said, laughing.

  “I’m sure he knows what he’s in for. Mr. Torres, on the other hand…”

  “What about him?” Emilia asked, plunging her hand inside the water that filled the basin and groping around for the plug. “He’s got a younger sister and he doesn’t seem terribly pleased about it.”

  “You haven’t noticed, have you?”

  “That he’s a pretentious ass? I have,” Emilia said cheerfully. It was true he’d been perfectly nice during their ride into the city that morning and later that afternoon, and she couldn’t quite ignore the frisson of excitement that had spread through her when she’d seen him again, but she’d received no indication he thought her attractive, as Susana was implying. And even if he did, there was no reason to acknowledge it when Emilia had no intention of acting on it.

  Susana, who knew Emilia could make herself quite obtuse when she didn’t want to acknowledge something, gave up. Spreading the dishtowel on the edge of the sink so that it would dry faster, she opened the top cupboards and began to put the clean dishes away.

  Emilia looked at her thoughtfully. “Have you made plans with Luis to meet again?”

  “Not really, but I will see him at Carmen’s dance next weekend.”

  “You should ask him to help us sort through the books we’re donating to the fair.”

  Susana looked doubtful. “Won’t he find it boring?”

  “He’ll do anything if means spending time with you.” Emilia dried her hands on a clean dishtowel. “It’ll give you some time to talk in private—and him an opportunity to declare his everlasting love. I have to be there, for propriety’s sake, but I’ll find a way to slip out every now and then. It’ll be up to you to inspire passion and…and fan the flames of desire.”

  “Emilia. You’re not suggesting I seduce him in some way, are you?” Susana said, halfway between scandalized and amused. She placed a handful of knives in a drawer and shook her head in exasperation.

  Emilia had been on the receiving end of that particular gesture more times than she could count. Giving her sister a cheeky smile, she said, “Why not? These are modern times, you know. Just make sure Papa’s out of the house for the afternoon. The last thing we want is for him to barge in and spoil the mood.”

  “You’re a regular Hortense, aren’t you?” Susana said, referring to the matchmaker character in a popular series of books.

  “Yes, and I mean to make a Sonia out of you. You could be a seductress, you know, if your gowns were more daring and if you were would let me darken your eyelashes with a little ash so you could flutter them alluringly.”

  Susana laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind in case I should suddenly feel the need to seduce some poor man. For now, though, please don’t do anything to embarrass me in front of Luis.”

  “Me? Embarrass you? Why would you think that? I’m the picture of decorum,” Emilia said in as innocent as tone as she could muster, not altogether surprised when Susana answered with a groan.

  Chapter 5

  Though Luis continued to call on them almost daily, there were no amusements to be had for Emilia and Susana for the following days. Though school had let out two months before, Susana’s involvement in the adult literacy program meant she had just as much work to do this summer as during the school year. As for Emilia’s job, that was never-ending.

  Early on Wednesday morning, Emilia was lingering over the dregs of her coffee and Susana, who wouldn’t leave until later, was looking over her lesson plan for the day as they sat at the kitchen table in companionable silence. At length, Emilia stood up and began to gather her things, aware she’d been dawdling to avoid the inevitable. Cristobal hadn’t been in the office the day before, but would surely be in today and in the office’s close quarters, it would be almost impossible to avoid him.

  Once she finished pinning her hat, there was nothing else she could do to delay her departure. So she took her handbag from the table and said goodbye to Susana, who replied with a distracted wave.

  She was almost out of the door when Susana exclaimed, “Oh, wait! Have you any money? We need to settle our accounts at the butcher and the dry goods store and I won’t get paid until next week.”

  Emilia came back inside, opening the clasp on her handbag. “Here. Ten pesos ought to be enough. No, wait. Have fifteen—I forgot about all the wretched jelly jars I bought.” Emilia hesitated over the remaining bills in her change purse. The thirty pesos she’d received from Mr. Ortiz would be supplemented with Susana’s paycheck in only a few days but she was loath to part with any of it in case it should be needed. But getting their father out of the house that afternoon would be worth a peso or two.

  Reluctantly, she dug into the bottom for a silver coin. “Here’s fifty cents for Papa.”

  “Only fifty?”

  “You’re too kind hearted,” Emilia grumbled, but she relented and gave Susana another bank note. “Here. This ought to be more than enough for him to have a cigar and a cup of coffee in La Tacita this afternoon. I told Luis to come at five thirty so Papa should be gone before then.” He usually spent all afternoon at the taproom, stumbling home only when he was so close to insensibility that Emilia didn’t know how he managed to navigate the streets without ending up in the next town. There ought to be no danger of his arriving while Luis was in the house but if he did, Emilia was sure she could find a way to hide him.

  It wasn’t that Luis didn’t know about their father—very few people in Arroyo Blanco didn’t—but it had been a long time since he’d spent any amount of time in the town and probably had no idea how bad things had gotten. Emilia didn’t think Luis was the sort to slight a girl, much less one like Susana, just because her father had a tendency to overindulge, but the appearance of said father, especially if he were in the later stages of inebriation, would most certainly kill the romantic mood she planned on setting.

  “Make sure Papa eats well before he leaves,” she told Susana. Not that it would make any difference—there was not enough food in Arroyo Blanco to soak up the spirits he was sure to guzzle.

  “I’ll do what I can.” Susana tucked the money into her pocket and glanced at the clock. “It’s ten to nine. You’ll be terribly late if you don’t leave right now.”

  Emilia followed her gaze. It was getting late, and after her absence on Monday it wouldn’t do to be tardy. Giving Susana a reassuring smile, she snapped her handbag closed and set off for work.

  By early afternoon, Mr. Mendez, Cristobal’s father, had stopped twice by Emilia’s desk to give her approving smiles. He really was a nice old gentleman. It wasn’t his fault his son had turned out to be a snake. Emilia felt a twinge of guilt as she smiled back an
d prayed he wouldn’t glance at the paper in her typewriter. She was not, as he supposed, struck with a fit of productivity, but was typing up ideas for the collection of local legends.

  The windows were open in case a breeze should deign to blow by, but none had obliged thus far. It was an overcast day, and the heat and humidity had built in intensity until Emilia felt as though she had been liquefied. Wishing she could unbutton her high-necked blouse, Emilia put a new page into the typewriter and began to write down a quick draft of the first story.

  It was one that her father used to tell her when she was younger, about a man who’d been snatched off his boat while rowing at the lagoon one night. Hearing that story had always sent shivers up and down her back and she was aware of being filled with a deliciously creepy feeling as she began to describe the eeriness of the twisted mangrove roots as they rose from the shadows like… she’d thought of them as serpents that day of Ana Maria’s boating party, hadn’t she?

  The sound of the door opening interrupted her train of thought. Cristobal, dapper in a new suit and slicked-back hair, came into the office.

  It was the first time she’d seen to him since the boating party. Though Emilia had always thought he was a beast, and though it was clear to her there was something about her he disliked, there had never been any open hostility between them. She meant to keep it that way, too, both for Susana’s sake and because any display of animosity on her part would surely lead to losing her job.

  There was no way to avoid him but thankfully he seemed disinclined to do much more than nod in her direction. Bypassing her desk, he stopped by Miss Baez, one of the other typists who was all of nineteen years old, and began to ply her with questions about her weekend.

  As if the girl didn’t have enough to do.

  Feeling her dislike of Cristobal growing by the minute, Emilia put her story into a drawer and rose to take a stack of envelopes she’d addressed earlier to his father’s secretary. She had absolute control over her temper and she was not spoiling for a fight.

  Not even a little one.

  Not even when she returned to her desk and saw he had perched on a corner of Miss Baez’s desk, now openly trying to flirt with her despite the obvious wariness in her face. Cristobal could be charming when he wanted to be, and he generally employed his charm to very good effect, but Miss Baez did not seem to be a willing recipient. She had half-turned away from him and was answering him politely but with a distinct lack of enthusiasm as she attempted to finish organizing the documents that Mr. Mendez’s secretary had dropped on her desk earlier that afternoon.

  The other typist, Miss Santos, was far more interested in Cristobal’s description of the trip into the city that had taken him out of the town the day before. Ignoring the sheet of paper fluttering inside her typewriter, she was leaning forward on her elbows in a way that would have put her bosom on display if she hadn’t been wearing a high-necked blouse like the other women. Cristobal paid her no attention, so determined he was to make Miss Baez respond to his flirting.

  He reminded Emilia of the duke in her stories—wealthy and lazy and so very good looking it was inconceivable to him that a woman wouldn’t swoon if he so much as glanced her way.

  “It all sounds so exciting,” Miss Santos breathed.

  Cristobal spared her a glance. “There’s amusement enough be had in the city but I find Paris vastly superior,” he said. “The entertainment is better and so is the wine. Tell me, Miss Baez, have you ever heard of the Folies Bergère?”

  Judging by the way her pale skin flushed, it appeared she had. Cristobal, however, proceeded to tell her all about the scantily-clad dancers. Emilia was sure the girl’s face would have burst into flame if she hadn’t called out to her, “Miss Baez, I think my ribbon has jammed. Would you be so kind as to help me untangle it?”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth before Miss Baez jumped out of her seat and hastened over to Emilia’s desk, where she bent over the typewriter and began to fiddle with it. “Sorry,” Emilia murmured under her breath, “but you looked so uncomfortable.”

  “I was. I wish his father gave him more to do so he wouldn’t have to hang around here all the time,” Miss Baez said.

  “Well, the office has its amusements, you know,” Emilia whispered in a close approximation of his drawl, “though Paris is vastly superior.”

  Feeling Cristobal’s eyes on them, they managed to suppress their giggles. He shot Emilia a black look—blacker than her intervention warranted, she thought—but did not say anything until later, when he caught her on her way back from the storeroom, a box of pencils in one hand and two rolls of typewriter ribbon in the other.

  “If you wanted my attention, all you had to do was ask,” he said, leaning a shoulder against a wall.

  Emilia’d had her fill of his attention at Ana Maria’s boating party but she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing his words had stung her.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she asked irritably.

  “Calling Miss Baez away from me was nothing more than a ploy to make me notice you. Jealousy doesn’t become you, Miss Cruz.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I can assure you, Cristobal, that jealousy was not what inspired my intervention.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  Had his smile always been so smug? Dislike turned to loathing but Emilia strove to keep her temper. “Think what you want. I haven’t go time to talk to you.”

  Intending to hurry back to the main room, Emilia began to walk past him. He took a half-step sideways that put him in the very center of the hallway and made it impossible for Emilia to pass without brushing against him—or shoving him aside in the event he didn’t want to move, something that seemed more appealing by the second. An unpleasant sensation began to grow in her stomach and she cast a glance at the frosted glass that separated the hall from the rest of the office. Through the thick glass, she could hardly make out the silhouettes of Miss Baez and Miss Santos at their desks, and even the sound of the typewriters, so deafening in the other room, was muffled and seemed somehow far away. They would hear her if she screamed, but screaming seemed a bit excessive when he was only standing there, his hands at his side, apparently harmless.

  Yes. Harmless as a snake in the grass.

  “Don’t you dare touch me,” she said sharply.

  There was a flicker in his eyes and Emilia thought he really would strike her. Her grip on the box of pencils tightened but unsharpened, there wasn’t much damage she could do with them. Then the moment passed and Cristobal stepped aside, sweeping into an ostentatious bow as he ushered her past him.

  “Really, Emilia, I had no intention of touching you,” he drawled. “Do try to keep a grip on your sense of humor.”

  Unsharpened or not, Emilia might have been tempted to put the pencils to use but she was kept from doing so by the sudden appearance of Mr. Mendez’s secretary at the far end of the hallway. “Miss Cruz,” said Miss Contreras, almost huffing with impatience, “can one not count on you to make your way to the storeroom and back in the length of a single day?”

  “I’ll be right there, Miss Contreras,” Emilia called out in as close an approximation to cheerfulness as she could manage. Then, without a second look at Cristobal, she followed Miss Contreras to her desk.

  Arroyo Blanco was hardly proving to be the ideal retreat for Ruben. When Luis had convinced—or, rather, wheedled—him into coming for the summer, he’d told Ruben it was a sleepy little town, with few people and absolutely no distractions. And while it was true that life in the town was not quite so hectic as the city, it was not quite as distraction-free as Ruben had expected.

  One of those distractions nearly ran into Ruben as he stepped out of the post office one afternoon towards the middle of the week. She’d been striding down the main street as the church bells were striking the hour, looking as if she were getting ready to commit murder, and was passing the post office at the very moment Ruben was emerging from it. Their collision was jarring
but fatal only to Ruben’s hat, which fell and was stepped on before he could retrieve it.

  It was a chance encounter, but he couldn’t have planned it better himself—though he ought to have realized in a town so small, chances were they would meet again before long without his having to go to great lengths to engineer an encounter.

  She dusted off his hat, asking if he was all right.

  “I am, no thanks to you,” he said, giving her a pleasant smile as he swept up his correspondence from the floor and stuffed the envelopes into his pocket, even though he was sure there wouldn’t be anything in them that would give away his secret identity. “Anyone would think you’d been hired to do away with me, the way you carry on.”

  “How do you know I haven’t?” she replied.

  “Because you’d have succeeded already.”

  “Maybe I’m failing on purpose.” She returned his smile, her black mood seeming to dissipate slightly.

  “Is the ruthless assassin falling for her victim? Sounds like one of those stories you’re so fond of.”

  “Maybe you ought to pitch it to the magazine,” she said, unnettled by his teasing.

  “I assure you, that much excitement is beyond my powers of invention. You’d do a much better job of it. Luis has told me you’re a writer yourself. Not just a dabbler.”

  “Has he?” Neither confirming nor denying it, she lifted an eyebrow in his direction. “And has he said if I’m any good?”

  “He didn’t need to. I read some of your work.” He waited for a heartbeat, but she gave no indication that he was prodding a sensitive spot. He hadn’t imagined she would expose herself so easily, but he was beginning to wonder if there was anything he could say to provoke a confession.