Matador, Mi Amor

by William Maltese

  “Enough!” Joaquín announced finally. Although he would have liked to see more, he figured Fanuco had gotten more than his money’s worth.

  Adriano obeyed the announced ending of the exhibition. He stepped back. A gate was opened, and a man offered himself as a momentary distraction for the heifer. The animal charged the new target, shooting through the open gate which was closed behind it.

  The applause was deafening.

  Adriano gave a modest bow and turned the cape over to Joaquín who passed it on to Fanuco with a comment that was lost in the cacophony.

  Stopping for handshakes and slaps on his back, Adriano worked his way back up to the seat he had vacated next to Alyssa.

  “You were truly fantastic” she said exuberantly, feeling giddy and more than a little light-headed. She expected him to sit down, surprised when he didn’t.

  “I’m afraid I have to leave now,” he said, nodding this way and that as the applause and congratulations continued.

  Alyssa was sure she misheard. She couldn’t imagine why he would want to remove himself so quickly from such a moment of personal triumph.

  “I’m sure Joaquín can arrange transportation back to your place for you, if you’d prefer to stay on,” he continued.

  “You’re actually leaving?” she asked.

  “It was a mistake for me to succumb to Fanuco’s goading,” he said. “If I stay now, it won’t end at just this. Fanuco, you know, was expecting me to make an ass of myself.”

  Alyssa had actually forgotten all about Fanuco. She made it a point to search him out now. The matador was in the arena, looking duly upstaged and obviously resenting it.

  “I’ll leave with you, of course,” she said, “but shouldn’t we tell Joaquín we’re going?”

  “He’ll understand without being told,” Adriano assured. “So, let’s exit as gracefully as possible before Fanuco carries this charade even farther.”

  The crowd gave a collective groan as it realized Adriano was maneuvering for Alyssa and his exit. When he gave them the parting wave that verified his departure, it was greeted by yet another collective groan even louder than the one which preceded it.

  Joaquín quickly diverted most everyone’s attention by motioning for the release of yet another heifer into the bullring.

  Heads turned, and Adriano took hold of Alyssa’s hand and led her out of the arena and back onto the tree-lined pathway that finally had them at the car.

  “You really didn’t have to leave with me, you know?” he said pausing before opening the car door for her. “Joaquín would have been more than happy to have seen you home.”

  “That’s okay. I think I’ve had more than enough excitement for one day, anyway.” Her body was still filled with spreading warmth that warned she may have had way too much exposure, during the course of the day, to the hot Spanish sun.

  Once they were on the road, speeding through bleak countryside beyond the small oasis of greenery that contained the Hidalgo Hacienda, Alyssa waited for Adriano to break the silence.

  “I really shouldn’t have done that to Fanuco, you know?” he said finally.

  “Done what?” She found it ironic that he might actually imagine Fanuco de Galena hadn’t gotten just what he deserved.

  “Taken away even a bit of his glory.”

  “The way I see it, there was very little you could have done to avoid it. Anyone there can verify he left you very little choice.”

  Without saying anything, Adriano gave the impression he wasn’t sure he could agree.

  “Well, do you see any way you could have gotten out of doing what you did?” she pressed.

  He didn’t immediately answer. By the time he got around to saying something at all, he’d given every impression the subject was closed.

  “I knew he would pull that stunt,” he said.

  “You knew?” No doubt, that revelation was surprising.

  “I told you before: Fanuco and I grew up together. I can read him like a book.”

  “You knew?” she repeated.

  “Not only did I know, but I practiced for the occasion. I sneaked out at nights all the while I was staying with Joaquín. I practiced and got in shape just so I could go out there, today, and make him look foolish.”

  “Well, then,” Alyssa said after a long pause of her own, “I’d say you did nothing more than beat Fanuco at his own game. He was out to make you look ridiculous; turnabout is fair play.”

  “What he was out to do was show the world that the rumors about me weren’t true, and that I wasn’t nearly as good as I had once been billed. That he, by comparison was better and always had been. I deprived him of that moment, letting my ego convince me it was more important for me to look good than it was for him to look better than I did. When it shouldn’t have been important to me at all, don’t you see? Bullfighting isn’t my life like it is Fanuco’s.”

  “What is your life?”

  He shrugged.

  “You did look mighty good out there, Adriano,” she said. “I don’t even know that much about bullfighting, and I could tell.”

  “I should have gone out there and simply put up on decent show, you know? No one really expected any kind of razzle-dazzle. They knew I was out of practice. They would have appreciated my just putting out the effort—for charity and all. But, oh, no, I had to come off looking like someone who stepped into a bullring cold and outmaneuvered a matador who had never dreamed he had to be anything but passable at a local fiesta. I’ve made people wonder…I’ve made Fanuco wonder…how good I can be with a little practice. When unbeknownst to them, I’d already practiced on the sly.”

  “Fanuco still shouldn’t have insisted.” Alyssa was quite convinced that Fanuco was entirely to blame, and she refused to be dissuaded.

  Adriano pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped it. He turned in the seat toward her, reached for her, and kissed her.

  Alyssa knew it was going to happen before he did it, and she did nothing whatsoever to stop it. She wanted it to happen. She wanted to experience the feel of his lips, and the gentle probing of his tongue.

  He broke the kiss finally and ran his tongue back and forth over his lips that held a smile “That was actually quite marvelous,” he said and held her even closer.

  “I agree with you, there,” she admitted. At the same time, she wondered if the way she felt was based more upon the excitement she’d experienced during his time in the bullring than on anything else.

  Oh, she had allowed him to kiss her before, and she had kissed him in return, but this time was different. It was almost as if her whole body was somehow set on fire and burning up all of her energy.

  He kissed her again, and his mouth lingered. The pressure of his lips forced hers gently apart. He ran the fingers of his right hand upward through her hair. His mouth left hers, found her neck and kissed that.

  Alyssa felt the resulting rush of heat all of the way to her toes. She put her right hand on the nape of his neck and allowed her fingers to progress into his black hair.

  “I think I love you,” he whispered against her throat, his lips warm and sensuous as they moved against her flesh.

  And Alyssa wanted him to love her. It suddenly made no difference whatsoever—at least at that moment—that Fanuco de Galena had warned her that Adriano might not want anything from her except the hacienda his father had left her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Quite suddenly, Alyssa realized her sheets were wet with her perspiration. She threw back whatever was covering her and came to a sitting position, feeling a little dizzy with the movement. She felt her forehead with her hand, wondering if she had a temperature. She was hot, all right, but that could have had several explanations.

  She glanced at the clock on the bedside table and realized it had been less than an hour since Adriano had kissed her a final good night and gone to his own room. She wondered what it would be like to go to bed each night and have him beneath the covers with her, his warm, hard fle
sh pressed against her.

  In a sudden shift of thought, she wondered if he had kissed her, loved her, said he loved her, not because of any real need inside of him for her as a person, but only because she had something he wanted—the ranch his father, for some inexplicable reason, had left to her instead of to him. Was the only reason he was involved with her because he could no longer have Ladonna Hidalgo? He had insisted there had never been any love relationship between Ladonna and him, and that he had cultivated that engagement and those wedding plans only because he had intuitively sensed his father was against them. Yet, did any of that hold water? Why would Lalo Montego have disapproved of something so obviously beneficial to all sides? Certainly, he couldn’t have looked upon the merging of his bloodline with that of an old friend as something distasteful. Certainly, he shouldn’t have objected to the joining by marriage of two of the largest estates in the region.

  If Lalo and Joaquín had been feuding, why was Alyssa’s mother the only one who seemed to know anything about it? Surely, Fanuco would have had no reason to have kept that from Alyssa.

  She was tremendously thirsty. She reached for the pitcher and glass beside her bed and was startled to find that she had already all but emptied the former during the course of less than an hour. She drank what water was left but found it not nearly enough.

  She got out of bed, put on her slippers and her robe, and went downstairs.

  In the kitchen, she found some milk, feeling very much like a child clandestinely raiding the refrigerator. She had never done such things, even when young, and, even now, felt guilty in doing so.

  She took the milk into the den which was a fairly large room filled with overstuffed chairs and lots of books on lots of shelves. She sat down in one of the wing-back chairs and let her mind begin running back over much the same things which had kept her sleepless within her room at the top of the stairs.

  Did Adriano love her? Did she love him? Was all of this just a dream? Why had Lalo Montego left the ranch to her? Why had…?

  The phone rang beside her. Automatically, she reached for it and lifted its receiver from its hook.

  “Yes,” she spoke into the mouthpiece, only then wondering who could possibly be calling at that time of the night on the landline.

  “Alyssa?”

  “Joaquín?” She thought she recognized the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Is Adriano there, my dear? I keep getting his answering service on his cell phone.”

  “He’s upstairs asleep. I’m downstairs only because I got thirsty.”

  “Maybe you had better wake him, Alyssa,” Joaquín said. “I’m afraid this is rather important. It’s Fanuco, my dear. I’m afraid, after the two of you left here, this afternoon, he did something very foolish and got badly hurt in result.”

  While she could imagine some damage done by the heifers, she couldn’t imagine anything so bad that.…

  “He insisted we bring in one of the bulls, Alyssa. He bought and paid for it, and, then, had it turned loose in the ring. I’m afraid it all ended up very badly.”

  “My God!” She felt ill to her stomach. She had known Adriano had been afraid Fanuco would do something crazy, but she had never dreamed it would have gone this far.

  “Fanuco is asking for Adriano. Despite everything, the two are almost family.”

  “I’ll wake him, at once, of course.”

  “Just tell him to come here. The doctor says Fanuco can’t be moved.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Alyssa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you feeling all right, my dear?”

  “Me? Yes. Why?”

  “You just sound kind of funny. It’s probably the connection.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it’s that.”

  She replaced the telephone. Having completely forgotten her milk, she left the glass on the table, her legs feeling as if they were made of lead.

  She took the stairs slowly and headed down the hallway at the top. She stopped by Adriano’s door, leaning against it.

  My God, she was tired!

  She heard nothing whatsoever from behind the door. So, she knocked. Getting no response, she knocked again. Silence.

  She wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the knob and twisted. The door came open a crack.

  “Adriano?” She pushed the door a bit more and stuck her head inside. “Adriano?”

  She could see his empty bed bathed in moonlight which entered the room through the window. She pushed the door completely open.

  The bed hadn’t been slept in. Its bedspread had been turned down, but the sheets beneath weren’t even wrinkled. She thought Adriano might be in the adjoining bathroom, but its door was wide open, and its lights out.

  She stepped back into the hallway and stood stock still and listened. There was nothing to hear except the sounds of the night—and her decidedly erratic breathing.

  So, where was he?

  She went back down to the den and called Joaquín.

  “I really don’t know where Adriano is, Joaquín,” she confessed. “He’s not in his room.”

  “He seems to have taken to strolling about at night,” Joaquín said. “I noticed it while he was staying here.”

  Alyssa didn’t mention how Adriano’s nightly walks at the Hidalgo Hacienda were probably to practice bullfighting techniques on the sly. It was highly doubtful that was what Adriano was up to now.

  “Just have him get over here as soon as he can, when he does get back, won’t you, Alyssa? I don’t like to be an alarmist, but the doctor does say there could be serious complications.”

  When she hung up, she waited, listening for any sounds that might tell her that Adriano had returned.

  She waited until she got cold. Then, she told herself she would be far wiser to go upstairs and wait in the comfort of her own bed. She got up, but her legs simply refused to support her. She sat down again.

  What was happening to her?

  Mara woke her in the morning, frankly appalled to find her mistress apparently had slept in a downstairs chair most of the night. Mara’s additional venting of displeasure, amid much tongue clucking and foretelling of pneumonia likely on its way, was interrupted by a knock on the front door.

  “She’s asleep,” Alyssa heard Mara say to whomever was at the door.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wake her, then,” a man’s voice said. “This is important.”

  “Ramón?” Alyssa asked, having made it far enough out of her chair to get a good view of her foreman in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Señorita,” Ramón said apologetically, “but last night, there were three more bulls shot. And this was left pinned on one of the carcasses.”

  He held out his right hand, and Alyssa took the envelope. She opened it, wondering why her fingers didn’t seem able to operate in quite the way her brain commanded them.

  “‘Go back where you belong,’” she read aloud from the note which was written in a childish scrawl, “‘or, it won’t be only your bulls which end up dead.’”

  Mara gave an audible gasp.

  “Who could possibly be doing this?” Alyssa asked, admittedly upset. Actually, she felt physically ill to her stomach.

  “Do what?” Adriano asked.

  He’d come up on the porch and was standing in the doorway which had been left open when Ramón stepped into the house.

  “You!” Alyssa accused. “You did this, didn’t you?”

  “Did what?” Adriano asked.

  “Out killing my bulls, again, were you?” she said, hearing her voice get hysterical in the process. “Afraid to kill them face to face in the bullring, are you? Afraid you’ll get gored like poor Fanuco, but not above going out and blowing them away with a rifle, are you?”

  “What’s this all about?” Adriano asked.

  Ramón eyed Adriano suspiciously. Mara looked merely concerned for Alyssa.

  “Just get out of here!” Alyssa commanded. “
Go back to the Hidalgo Hacienda and see what’s happened to that poor man you showed up in the bullring to salve your masculine ego.”

  “Fanuco?”

  “He really wanted to show you up,” she continued. Her voice was reaching an ever higher crescendo with each passing word. She wondered what she was saying. It didn’t really seem to be her talking at all. “After we left yesterday, he fought a real bull that laid open his guts. When Joaquín called to tell you, you were out killing three more of my bulls with a gun.”

  “Fanuco gored?” Adriano asked, as if he really hadn’t yet made heads or tails of anything Alyssa was saying.

  “He’s probably already dead!” she screamed.

  Adriano did a quick about-face and headed for one of the cars parked outside.

  “You coward!” Alyssa shouted after him. “You coward…coward…coward!”

  Then, she collapsed into a heap on the floor, and would have probably badly banged her head if Ramón hadn’t moved so quickly to cushion her fall.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alyssa had lost all sense of time and place. She thought for sure she had to be dreaming; there was simply no way she could logically fit her mother into any valid reality. Yet, there was something startlingly real about the woman standing at the curtains and looking out over the courtyard beyond the balcony.

  “Mother?”

  Karen Dunlap Montego Lewis Svaltzson gave a start and turned toward her daughter on the bed. Despite what the doctors had said about Alyssa merely being the latest victim of a “bug” many turistas caught while in Spain, Karen had been positive her daughter was never going to regain consciousness. And Karen was decidedly worried about this horrible mix-up involving Ty which only a conscious Alyssa could clear up. Karen had visited the jail twice in Trujillo, and these barbarians had beaten the poor man senseless.

  “Alyssa?” Karen asked, wondering if she wasn’t simply imagining, via wishful thinking, that her daughter’s eyes were finally open and Alyssa was attempting to sit up. She left the window and hurried over. “Oh, my darling, is it really you, back among the living?”