“Your position is safe,” he said.
“For how long, really?” Lillian said. Gustavo smiled. He blushed. “Considering how much I do here, Gustavo. Considering I do most of your job, give me a number.” Lillian’s voice turned sharp. “How many days or is it weeks or is it months, how long is safe, how long is paid, how long is this place my home if I don’t show up? How long will the paychecks come?”
Gustavo started to speak. Lillian actually reached out and put a hand over his mouth.
“Don’t say it,” she said. “I know you, Gustavo. I know you well. A date. Something real. Until when will you pay me for a job undone?”
“Lillian,” Frida said, but she wasn’t sure why.
The hand came down. Gustavo buttoned his jacket, he straightened his cuffs. Today he was the one with tears in his eyes.
“Honesty is all I have left,” Lillian said.
“You have more than that,” Gustavo said. “The lawyer—how was Tello? Do your best, I told him. Send me a bill.”
“Is there a date?” Frida said. “Tell her if there’s a limit.”
Gustavo, who could not look at Lillian, hissed at Frida through clenched teeth. “You know who’s coming,” he said. “There’s no time for this.” Only then did Lillian notice his good shoes, his good cuff links: Gustavo dressed to the nines. “They can’t walk in and find a scene.”
“Then tell her,” Frida said.
“I’m telling you, not Lillian. Go to your desk and look busy. Right now all our jobs are on the line.”
“Tell her she’s safe forever,” Frida said. “Tell her you’ll pay her forever.”
Gustavo looked at them both, his jaw tight.
“No one gets paid forever,” Gustavo yelled, and then he smiled a beautiful smile that went right through them. It was meant for the venerable, the powerful, Judge Ocampo and his wife. They were as important a pair of clients as one could wish for. To insure even the scraps from their table would keep a man afloat.
“You asked about the lawyer,” Lillian said, as Gustavo greeted his clients. “You asked about Tello.”
Gustavo was the picture of calm but for what was left of his blush. He said, “Excuse me for a moment,” to his clients and turned to Lillian.
“Tello,” she said. “Your lawyer was useless. He offered no help at all.”
“I’d wondered,” Gustavo said, getting back to his welcome, the matter dealt with.
The judge, who was not deaf, couldn’t resist.
“It wouldn’t be the first instance,” he said to Lillian. “Useless lawyers I see by the bucketful. Enough to fill the whole of Río de la Plata so that we could walk over them to the other side.”
Gustavo laughed too loudly. The judge’s wife laughed just the right amount. Lillian and Frida pursed lips and tilted their heads in the woman’s direction. The men followed suit.
Celia Ocampo then asked, “And what happens to the most useless of the lot?” Her husband smiled and kissed her on the cheek—yes, a family routine, a set question. After the pause, he chucked Gustavo’s chin and answered. “Those are the ones who are chosen to judge.”
All laughed, Lillian too. The color began to even out in Gustavo’s cheeks, and the meeting continued in his office. Lillian and Frida sat outside at their desks. Framed through Gustavo’s doorway and on display for the clients, it looked like just the kind of boutique business to do delicate work for a judge.
When Gustavo walked the couple out to their car, Lillian grabbed her coat and her bag and announced that she was done for the day.
“Can you wait a minute?” Frida said.
“Not even for a second.”
“Well, then,” Frida said, “I guess I’m ready now too. Can I walk you home?”
“That would be lovely,” Lillian said, and she went into Gustavo’s office. She held her bag between her knees and bent over Gustavo’s Rolodex. Frida followed her in.
“Whatever you’re about to do, Lillian, I guarantee it’s beyond what Gustavo can handle.”
Lillian spun the wheel.
“Let it spin,” Frida said, “and let’s go.”
“The general,” Lillian said. “If he and his wife can produce a child out of thin air, they can do it a second time for me.”
“Babies are easier.”
“Then it will be a challenge for them,” Lillian said. “Let them muster a full-grown son.”
“The general—” Frida said and stopped. They both knew these were dangerous people and that Lillian didn’t care. Frida thought about it and then said only, “Gustavo.” Lillian knew what she meant.
“I’ve been the provider long enough,” Lillian said. “Kaddish can be the breadwinner for once.”
Lillian continued to spin the wheel one way and, against the momentum of the deck, used a fingernail to slow the cards in the other. She pulled the general’s loose.
“Just copy it down,” Frida said, “and let’s go.”
Lillian dropped the card into her bag.
“No one left to stand by their actions in this country,” she said. “No secrets for me. Lillian Poznan leaves a trail.”
[ Twenty-eight ]
THE ELEVATOR OPENED ONTO A HALLWAY that led into a foyer. This is where they were left waiting, at the foot of a vast staircase with marble stairs and an oriental runner held down with polished brass bars. From the top, behind the balustrade, peeked a boy with slicked hair and a monogrammed silk robe. It was past his bedtime. He had sneaked out without his slippers. Lillian and Kaddish pretended not to see.
A butler came and they followed. There was a glimpse of the general’s wife in the sitting room as they were led past. The living room beyond offered another entrance to the sitting room with the sitting wife, but they were taken through the far door into a library, whose ladder was affixed to a rail curved expertly in the corners so that, perched on a rung, one could circumnavigate the whole of the room. A servant disappeared through a section of wall as they entered a connecting hallway. The butler finally deposited them in a formal dining room and was gone.
The room was vast and chilly. A tapestry, faded, chosen clearly for its width, was hung on one long wall. The opposite wall in this endless apartment was one of windows, with a narrow balcony beyond. In the center of the room but favoring the windows was a long table, wooden and medieval in its design. It wasn’t apparent in any particular touch, only that the deeply polished, deeply worn wood made Kaddish think he could still feel the tree in the table. It was accented by eight high-backed chairs placed along one side. There were two more, these with arms (the rough plugs of the pegs sticking out of the armrests), one at each end. Along the window side an upholstered bench ran the length of the table. It looked even stiffer than the chairs. This is where Lillian and Kaddish were deposited, in a room that swallowed them up.
Lillian adjusted the strap to her dress. She ran her finger along its edge to make sure her bra was hidden underneath. A single small diamond on a thin platinum chain hung around her neck. It was reset from her mother’s engagement ring, her heirloom, the family jewel. Lillian centered it below her collarbone.
“You look elegant,” Kaddish said.
“If a woman can’t have a new dress, at least she should have a new face to jazz things up.”
Kaddish sat at the head of the table.
“We could have become used to a life like this,” he said. “Servants trotting around with gravy boats. Us waiting for the echoes to reach the end of the table to hear what was said. If things had worked out differently, we wouldn’t need a favor. We’d be granting them. If Perón hadn’t come back, if the governments didn’t swing as they do, who knows?”
“But it’s inevitable,” Lillian said. “It’s like betting against nature, Kaddish. You take odds every fall, betting the leaves will stay on the trees. There’s no deal you touch that doesn’t sour. A thousand nose jobs and each would fall.”
“Mine hasn’t,” Kaddish said, looking around. “It’s Perón who so
ured me. He should have come back from Spain like Evita, in a nice glass-topped coffin and doing no harm.”
“Why do you always put on the same show? Enough of the old problems,” Lillian said. “You want to remember Perón? Then take a lesson from him.”
Kaddish stood up and went over to Lillian. “What lesson from him?” he said in a whisper. “What lesson from that man?”
“Never to give up,” Lillian said, whispering back, no distance between them. “They stole his wife and hid her grave. They stole his country, and banished him from it. And he didn’t give up,” Lillian said. “Do you understand me? There’s no sea you need to cross, no country to conquer. Only one thing: Get the boy. You want to stay vengeful? Then one-up Juan Perón. Outdo your made-up nemesis. Not just the body, Kaddish. Go bring your son back alive.”
“And what does it matter if I try when I have a wife who forever bails me out? Here we are at the top and it’s all your doing. As always, I promise and you come through.”
“And still it’s not enough. An insult to be left stranded in this room. You want to see me do something, Kaddish? I’m going to find that woman as if at a friend’s. I’m going to kiss her on both cheeks and then we’ll talk about our children.”
Lillian started toward the tapestry, going back the way they came.
“Don’t,” Kaddish said. “Their rules in here, Lillian. Their signals.”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder, but left her body set toward the hall. “No one will help us without dignity.”
“There is dignity in staying put—more, even. These are the people of the measured pause. They’ll stop mid-sentence for a drag of a cigarette and look out the window for half an hour, forgetting to exhale. But they are watching, Lillian. There’s only to be unruffled and uninterested.”
“You think I don’t know? I deal with them for real, not during dream business. You’re all big talk and contracts sealed with the dead.”
“With you, with tension, it always turns into blame.”
“It’s not your fault, Kaddish.”
“Then trust me. And wait.”
“The whole idea of this room is to make us feel small.” Lillian put her arms across her chest and hugged herself.
“Sit down,” Kaddish said. He felt a rage building toward Lillian, for no reason toward Lillian except who else could he be mad at, who else was there in this giant room to focus on? He knew what this rage was. It was helplessness and here was Lillian, still holding on to the notion that they were in a position to expect anything.
“I’m going to find his wife.”
“The wife is not our contact. He is our contact, he is the favor. Now wait as if you weren’t. Suffer over your son while waiting without a care in the world.”
As if in defiance of Lillian, Kaddish lit a cigarette, shook out the match, and—no ashtray—placed it on the corner of the table. A few puffs of smoke, the gray cloud between them, Kaddish stepped around the long bench to the windows. He bent and pulled two brass latches from their grooves in the floor, reached up and pulled two down from the ceiling. Kaddish pressed brass door handles down, popped open French doors, and stepped out onto the balcony. He leaned over the edge and smoked, taking in the night.
All these years married to his inappropriateness and bad judgment, to an unearned confidence and boundaries ignored, and here Lillian thought maybe she’d been enlightened. Kaddish had managed to explain himself. A first.
The breeze blew through the doors. It blew over her husband and brought with it smoke, and Lillian saw Kaddish as her hosts would, cigarette in hand and elbows to the railing—a man enjoying the evening. It was a guest receiving his hosts, his ass stuck out to greet them. Kaddish could, she thought, set their most important meeting off on the wrong foot. But if you lived your life wronged, if you already felt the world was upside down, discourtesy might seem like your only chance at respect. And you may be right. Lillian was starting to understand, too little too late.
Also, honestly, Lillian didn’t want to go storming through the house after that woman. She sat where Kaddish had and crossed her eyes, trying to get a look at the tininess of her nose.
Still no one came.
It was too much for Lillian to fake ease while waiting for this man who would or wouldn’t deliver Pato, who would rescue their son if his mood was right, who might see that he stayed missing solely because of Kaddish’s attitude, or just as easily join Kaddish for a cigarette and a breath of fresh air, and that the sole reason he’d offer any support at all.
It was too much for a son’s life to rest on whim.
Lillian’s pulse beat hard and the room, in sharp focus, turned brighter. She was feeling a bit faint. If someone didn’t show up right then with a glass of lemonade or tea. If Lillian didn’t get some ice to chew on, they would find her on the floor. Kaddish would surely approve of a position so relaxed.
Lillian would help herself to a glass of water. She was dying of thirst and in any other strange home she’d do just that—she’d happily drop dead in sight of the sink before opening cabinets in search of a glass and turning the tap. Today she would trust him. She would join Kaddish in his ease.
They’d entered through the only door. It was a dining room with no kitchen in sight. On the short wall behind the chair she’d sat in, Lillian spotted the cuts in the thick molding that ran waist-high around the room, the delineation of a hidden door from where the servants might pass. Lillian pushed it inward and the door pushed back on double hinges. Maybe Lillian would do this at home, add to her heavy front door a dense coil of springs.
Another push and Lillian held the door open. Light from the dining room cut a swath across copper pots suspended from the ceiling. Lillian let the door close against her arm, her hand in the kitchen, fumbling for a switch. Fingers spread, she reached in farther, feeling her way along the wall. Nothing. She pulled out her arm and searched the dining room side. If the door was so well hidden, maybe the light switch was hidden too.
How does Kaddish do it? Lillian thought. How to be entitled. A glass of water, a simple thing, and even about this she made a timid display.
Lillian pushed through into the darkness and let the door swing closed behind her. She tried the same wall again. She waved her hand in the air to check for a chain. You would not, she thought, put a switch behind a swinging door but she passed to the far side. There she was in the pitch blackness. A fit place for her, she thought, blind and searching an unfamiliar wall in an unfamiliar room, looking for and not finding what must, what had to, be there.
Lillian was relieved when the door cracked open, happy that Kaddish had come looking. She felt more kindly toward him, and said, “Rich people have no lights.”
“By and large, we have whatever we want,” was the response, and then as blind as she was from the darkness she was blinded by the glare. That calm, calm voice wasn’t Kaddish’s at all.
Prior to embarrassment, prior to introductions, Lillian was still looking for the switch. She wanted to know where it was. When her eyes fell on the general, a strapping man in a fine suit of clothes, he smiled and tilted his head back, signaling with his chin.
Across a vast kitchen—full of steel and butcher block, with a giant island for cutting and rolling in its center, and an oven with a dozen burners that was long enough to roast a man—there stood a wisp of a woman with a doily on her head and wearing a maid’s uniform. The woman stood with her hand on the switch, right where Lillian would have reached if positions were flipped, right where it belonged but all the way down there, on the other side, by the maid’s quarters and a butler’s pantry that led into the next hall.
“There isn’t one on this end,” the general said. “No switch. I should hope in a properly run house I shouldn’t have to be digging about for spoons.”
“I just wanted some water.”
“We can probably do better than that,” he said.
Lillian tried not to, but she couldn’t resist. “Excuse my poking aro
und,” she said. The general ignored the comment and led her back to the dining room on his arm. The maid was already there with a glass of water, a sprig of mint floating. She presented it on a tray. Lillian was so thirsty she couldn’t help but drink it down right then, eyes wide and staring up into the general’s. The maid, as if expecting this thirst, remained. She extended the tray.
Lillian felt safe for the first time since Pato’s disappearance. These people could help. A man who never needs to turn on a light can see to great things.
The general motioned toward the table, and Lillian was surprised to find candles set out. Kaddish was already seated, a drink in his hand. There was a bowl of fruit, a plate of cheese, these things had somehow beat her back though she’d blocked the kitchen door.
Kaddish slid over on the bench and Lillian sat next to him. The bench was too low and the table hit her in the middle of the chest. The general’s wife sat at the head of the table with her chair angled away from them. She held a glass of white wine.
Though Lillian had handled their file, though they’d sat at her desk bouncing that borrowed baby on a knee, all earnest and kind, it was as if they’d never met. Full introductions were made. The wife said to call her Teresa. The general, it seemed, felt his title was enough.
“Something stronger than water?” he said. He placed a hand on the wine bottle, and Lillian nodded.
Lillian looked back toward the kitchen and out came the maid with a tray of oysters. Another servant, wearing a vest, was right on the maid’s heels with another tray. The butler came last with a third.
“Had we been expecting you for dinner,” Teresa said, “the table would have been set.”
“Yes,” the general said, his own apology. “You get a glimpse into our quirks. It’s a most informal version of ridiculously formal. If there’s something else you want, a sandwich or a salad? I’m sure we could rustle up an omelet and toast.”
The trays were unloaded. Deep dishes of oysters on beds of crushed ice. Half were on the half shell and the other half closed. As the servant in the vest put out a stack of small plates, the lemons and the sauces, Teresa signaled to him most subtly with a look. Lillian caught it as the servant understood, displaying a silent shock and picking Kaddish’s cigarette butt and match off the corner of the table. He tucked them into the pocket of his vest.
The Ministry of Special Cases Page 19
