by Giles Blunt
“Come in! Come in, Ignacio! What a pleasant surprise,” he said, shutting the door behind them. “I wanted to ask you to come to dinner next week. I was afraid after Lorca’s distressing episode in the park we would never see you again.” He gestured for Victor to sit on the couch.
“I enjoyed our picnic,” Victor said. “It was a wonderful afternoon.”
“So you’ll come for dinner on Saturday?”
“I would like to, very much.”
“Good. It’s settled. Eight o’clock.”
“Eight o’clock, Saturday.” Yes, he thought. I should ask her now.
Victor sat down on the vinyl sofa, and a stack of files slid to the floor. He knelt and tried to balance the files into a loose pile against the wall.
“Leave them, Ignacio. It’s nothing. Tell me how you like my new receptionist. The old one called in sick too often.”
“It looks like you have a perfect arrangement now.”
Viera emptied a full ashtray into the wastebasket and lit himself a cigarette. He took a drag and contemplated the stream of smoke as he exhaled. “ To be honest, I am already a little regretting my decision to hire Lorca. She scares the clients, I think.” Viera stared up at the ceiling, as if debating whether he should go on.
“But she looked like she was doing very well to me.”
“Today is a good day. Three days ago it was a different story. At home, maybe nine o’clock, I go to ask her something and I can’t find her anywhere. I look in the basement, I look in the garage, even in the crawl space above the garage. Finally, you know where I found her? Under the bed. She was hiding under her bed, shaking like a leaf. Some boys had been letting off firecrackers on the street.”
“At the little school, the first thing they do is destroy your nerves. Stop you sleeping. Scream at you all the time. It makes the interrogation worse.”
“It makes life worse.”
“They frighten me also, firecrackers. It sounds like the war.”
There was a silence. Viera stubbed out his cigarette. “My sister used to call me a coward. You too must think I’m a coward for running away from that war.”
“I am no judge of cowards. Only a madman would run to that war.”
“Hah! You are a subversive, Ignacio.”
“No. Nothing like that.”
Viera sighed and swivelled to look at the hideous view of Seventh Avenue behind him. “Lorca has told me very little of what they did to her at the little school, but I am not blind. Did you notice the scars on her arms? And that tooth? You know some stinking guard punched her in the face? That’s how that tooth was broken. Can you imagine, Ignacio? Can you imagine yourself ever, under any circumstances, punching a woman in the face?”
No, he wanted to scream. But I was terrified. They would have killed me.
“I am not a violent man, but if I had before me the man who did this to my sister, I would kill him.”
“I would not blame you.” Suddenly Victor needed to be anywhere but this office.
“School. What an obscenity, to call that place a school.” Viera swivelled back to face him again. “Well, I don’t have to tell you. They must have done terrible things to you also in that place.”
Victor got up and in his nervousness managed to knock another stack of files to the floor. “I had better get back to work before I destroy your entire place. And someone has to make chocolate mousse for the rich, no?”
“Wait. Please, Ignacio. I’m trying to find ….” Viera was shuffling through papers on his desk, lifting up files, clipboard, legal pads. “Here it is.” He snatched up a creased yellow brochure and thrust it across the desk. “Have you ever heard of this place?”
Victor read the front of the brochure. You are not alone, it said. If you have been abducted, detained, physically maltreated, or tortured, the Torture Victims Association can help you.
Viera said, “I finally talked Lorca into going. She practically spit in my face the first time I suggested it. ‘A bunch of crybabies,’ she called it. But you know, even after only a few meetings, it seems to be doing her a lot of good.”
“She talks to these people?”
“They are victims, the same as her. Same as you. People who were jailed and beaten and God knows what. It does them good to talk, I believe. To know they are not alone. And Lorca has decided she likes very much the man who runs the place. Bob, I think his name is. Bob something.”
Victor was surprised by a pang of jealousy.
“I thought maybe you would like to go, Ignacio. To talk to these people. You might benefit from it too.”
“Me? I don’t think so, Michael. It’s very kind of you, but I don’t need such a place.” The chance of being recognized was too great. Someone who knew the real Perez. No, no, he could not consider it, even though it meant passing up a chance to get closer to Lorca.
“Think about it. Lorca is getting better-you noticed the change yourself.”
“Goddamnit!” Someone was shouting in the outer office.
Viera, followed by Victor, got up to see what was going on.
His client was standing in the middle of the reception area, clutching her arm. “Goddamnit!” she said again. “I don’t believe this place!”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“She hit me. Your goddamn receptionist hit me, that’s what’s wrong.”
Lorca was gone.
“Are you all right?” Viera said. “Let me see.”
The woman took her coat off and showed him her upper arm.
“There’s no bruise,” Viera said. “Please sit down for a moment and tell me what happened.”
“I will find Lorca,” Victor said.
He took the stairs down to the street. He searched through the crowds, stepped into two coffee shops and a McDonald’s, but she was not there. He stopped into a laundromat, a liquor store, even a psychic’s storefront. Not finding her, he finally gave up and went back to Viera’s office, passing the outraged client as she left the building.
Viera was staring forlornly out at the avenue.
“Did she tell you what happened, your client?”
“She says all she did, she asked to use the phone. To see if she could get off work a certain day. It took her a while to get through, and Lorca asked for the phone back. My client asked her to wait a minute and Lorca lost her temper. Her nerves are so bad, Ignacio. She has no patience at all.”
“I’m sure she’ll get better. It’s a matter of time, that’s all.”
“Delay of any kind-the slightest wait for anything-it makes her crazy. Absolutely crazy.”
“At the little school, they would make the prisoners wait. It was part of the punishment. They would sit a prisoner in that room and just make them wait and wait, knowing what was going to happen. But not when.”
“I don’t know what to do, Ignacio. I am her brother, but there is only so much I can do. Already, it is putting a strain on my marriage. My business too, if this keeps up. This has cost me a client. That woman is not coming back, you know. I don’t blame her, either.”
“It’s hard for you, I know. You are very good to your sister.”
“She hates being so dependent on me. I know she hates it-it hurts her pride, although she doesn’t say so. You’ll still come for dinner on Saturday?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you. She needs a friend, Ignacio. Not a relative, a friend. Someone she can trust, someone she can respect.”
“I would be happy to be that friend, Michael. Except your sister has no reason to respect me.”
“Oh, you are wrong. You know what she said the day we went to the park? She and Helen had a fight on the way home, they’re always fighting. Later, I went up to Lorca’s room. I wanted to tell her about this support place.” He held up the yellow brochure. “I was telling her about it and saying how it might speed her recovery. And you know what she said? She said, ‘I know you want me to be like Ignacio Perez, but I cannot. I could never be strong like he
is.’ That’s what she said.”
“I am not strong,” Victor said. It was all he could think of to say, and he repeated it. “I am not strong at all.” He felt an ashen grief that Lorca could be so deceived. It’s as if I go on and on tormenting her, he thought. As if I cannot stop.
TWENTY-ONE
A couple of days earlier, Victor had made a discovery. One of the waiters at Le Parisien had told him of a three-dollar cinema not far from the restaurant. Victor had assumed such a cheap place would be down-at-heels and depressing. He imagined holes in the movie screen, broken seats, a floor tacky with chewing gum. So he was first surprised, then disbelieving, when the theatre turned out to be a grand place with deep blue carpeting and huge screens. He had never set foot in such a beautiful theatre.
Full of excitement, he purchased a ticket for a science fiction movie, even though he would have to leave before the end to get back for his second shift. The film had a great many explosions and truly revolting wormlike aliens, and Victor enjoyed it immensely. Then came a scene where an unlucky earthling was immobilized upon a table and the aliens did something to him that made him scream and scream. If he lived in the world portrayed in the movie, Victor would be numbered among those alien worms, not among human beings. Clearly, he couldn’t take Lorca to a movie like this. Perhaps a romantic story or a comedy, she might enjoy one of those.
He had wanted to ask her at Viera’s office. Before his discovery of the three-dollar theatre he had not thought he could afford such an extravagance. His pay as a kitchen helper was barely above minimum wage, and the cost of taking a woman to the movies was staggering: after Coke and popcorn you were looking at twenty dollars or more.
But the fantasy had stayed with him and flowered into detail over the following days. Victor saw himself sitting next to Lorca in the darkened theatre, saw the two of them laughing at amusing antics onscreen, felt her fingers brush against his in the popcorn bag. Reflections from the screen cast a silvery glow on Lorca’s hair, and when Victor reached for her hand, she gave his an answering squeeze.
But three dollars. She might think he valued her cheaply. She might think he had no class. Of course, she didn’t have to know it cost only three dollars. He could buy the tickets ahead of time and maybe distract her a little as they entered.
Saturday night, eight o’clock. For once, Victor was grateful that the chef’s nephew worked Saturday nights.
He arrived at the Viera house on the dot of eight. Lorca greeted him at the door, wearing a long patterned skirt and a deep red blouse that was very flattering.
“Ignacio,” she said. “You are so good to come when I have been so awful. I’m very glad you’re here.” Her attire was so colourful, her manner so bright, that Victor’s mood changed immediately from apprehension to confidence.
Viera was in the living room, watching a baseball game. He bounced out of his chair and clicked off the TV the moment Victor came in. “Just in time for a beer, Ignacio. I was about to pour one for myself. Come in, come in, make yourself at home.”
Victor followed him into the kitchen, where Helen Viera was chopping vegetables and tossing them into a pot. “Well, well, it’s our goodwill ambassador from El Salvador,” she said. “This is an honour.”
Victor couldn’t be sure if she was making fun of him, but perhaps that edgy feeling came from the clack, clack, clack of her knife. “It smells wonderful, Helen. I hope this is good enough to go with it.” He handed her a bottle of wine. The man in the store had assured him it would be appropriate with just about anything.
“Oh, we’re humble folk here,” Helen said. “I’m sure it will be more than adequate.”
Viera took the bottle and examined the label. “Graves. Oh, yes, this is a very good wine. We should uncork it now and let it breathe.”
Viera busied himself searching for a corkscrew. Lorca reached into the fridge and opened a beer, handing it to Victor. “He’s forgotten you. Miguel’s head can contain only one thought at a time.”
“Huh,” said Helen. “Just what you want in a lawyer.”
“It means he’s at least honest, Helen. More lawyers should be like him.”
“Lawyers aren’t paid to be honest.”
“You hear how they talk about me?” Viera said in the tone of the beleaguered man of the house. “If I can manage this without breaking the cork, it will be my biggest achievement of the day.” The corkscrew was a complicated tool with arms that lifted like wings as Viera twisted it. After much careful but noisy manoeuvring, he managed to extract the cork. “Hah! Success!” He sniffed the mouth of the bottle. “Oh, yes. We shall enjoy this.”
Helen Viera shook her head, the corners of her mouth turning white. Victor saw how Viera’s relentless cheer could grate. Was it natural to him? Or had he learned it as a counter to his wife’s attitude, to Lorca’s high-voltage outbursts? Of the responses available to a man at close quarters with such women, relentless cheer may well have been the best.
Helen shooed them out of the kitchen, and they sat in the living room in a sudden shy silence. This Viera rushed to fill with a not very interesting story about an immigration officer who had been found to be corrupt. Lorca sat staring into her drink, swirling her glass slowly as if she had lost something in it.
“I wonder where Bob is,” Viera said when the room was once again silent. “Lorca? Did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry. What did you say, Miguel?”
“Michael,” he corrected her. “I said I wonder where Bob is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Who is Bob?” Victor asked brightly, as if the prospect of meeting someone with that name were a particularly happy one. In fact, he was a little deflated to learn he was not the Vieras’ only guest.
“Bob?” Viera said. “Bob runs the support group Lorca goes to. I haven’t met him yet, but I hear only good things. Tell Ignacio about him, Lorca.”
Lorca didn’t look up.
“Lorca? Can you tell Ignacio a little about him?”
“I don’t want to right now.” Her voice, so cheerful just moments ago, was now husky with dismay, as if she were ashamed of having been happy.
“Oh, come on, little sister, cheer up.”
Victor stared at his shoes, which he had spent a long time polishing. They were second-hand-all his clothes were second-hand, sifted from the musty counters of Salvation Army outlets-and the shoes pinched his feet. He wanted to take them off, but then they would see the holes in his socks.
The doorbell rang and Lorca sprang up to answer it. The next few moments, when Victor recalled them later, were a mosaic of discordant images: Lorca flying to the door, a red blur in her rush to answer it, the door opening, and a broad, ungainly man with a profuse brown beard taking up the entire living room, booming out greetings, shrugging off an overcoat the size of a tarp. He shook first Viera’s hand, then Victor’s, squeezing his fingers in one hairy fist, gripping his bicep with the other. Comrade! the gesture seemed to say. Courage!
“Bob Wyatt!” he boomed. “Glad to know you, Ignacio!” Then, turning with an uptilt of the beard and a ferocious sniffing: “Oh, something smells fabulous! Who’s in the kitchen! Who’s in that kitchen cooking up a storm! There’s some culinary artist doing very creative things in there, and I want to meet her.” He seemed to be everywhere at once, the great smooth boulder of his back turning this way and that, like a bear’s. Now he was in the kitchen booming out compliments to Helen before he’d even been introduced. “Bob Wyatt! Lorca’s friend from TVA! Great to meet you! Boy, this is a treat for me! I’m the worst cook in the state! I spend my life in restaurants-if you can call ’em that-places run by guys named Aristotle and Cosmos. Terrible!”
Victor had never met such a loud man; not even his uncle was so loud. Confidence blasted from every inch of him-from the heroic bush of his beard to the size-thirteen cowboy boots on his feet. And that wall-shaking voice, somewhere between trombone and timpani.
“How was your trip to Washington?” Lorc
a asked when he was settled into a chair with a beer.
“Splendid!” he cried. “Absolutely splendid! Tick, tack, tock! Everything turned over like clockwork. I wish every meeting went that well. I could retire and go fishing!”
Victor pictured him catching a salmon in his great paw.
“What were you doing in Washington?” Viera asked.
“Groundwork. Project we’ve got coming up. You know about the certification hearings? Aid to El Salvador?”
“A little. Military aid, right?”
“Right. Every six months the administration has to satisfy Congress that El Salvador’s making progress in land reform and human rights. If they fail, that’s fifty million dollars the El Salvador military doesn’t get.”
“It’s not the President who decides?”
“Nope. It’s the Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Relations Committee.” The words rolled easily off his tongue, as if the corridors of power were his home address.
“You sound like you know your way around,” Viera said. “You go there a lot?”
“Nah. Not anymore. Used to. Used to be an organizer.”
“Organizer?” The English word was a new one to Victor.
“Labour organizer. Political side. Getting people out to vote. Believe me, it was just as glamorous as it sounds. I was working the phones night and day.”
Behind him, two sliding doors parted and Helen Viera appeared. “Dinner’s ready,” she said. “What are you all talking about? Everyone looks so serious.”
“Just politics,” her husband said. “Nothing you have to worry about.”
Helen’s face hardened at this brush-off, and Victor felt a sudden sympathy for her. She was the outsider in the family, not Lorca. “Don’t let it get cold,” she said, and retreated to the kitchen.
Viera rose. “Gentlemen, we have our orders.”
They seated themselves around the dining room table while Lorca and Helen brought in the food. There was baked ham, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and some other vegetables Victor didn’t recognize.
“Tremendous!” Bob shouted. “Absolutely tremendous, Helen!”
