“Were you expecting this?”
Gonzalo gave a baffled look. Lying is easier when the person you’re lying to is predisposed to believe it.
“Not at all.”
“Everyone came,” she said triumphantly.
This wasn’t entirely true. There were absences that it was difficult to hide. Life went on, but it left cadavers in its wake. From a distance, Gonzalo caught sight of his father-in-law.
“What’s your father doing here?”
Lola rested her manicured hand on his shoulder. She was trying to look casual, but it was clear she was nervous. Gonzalo could tell by the slight tremble of her fingers on his jacket.
“Try to make nice, okay? He came to talk to you about the merger.”
Gonzalo nodded dully. Merger was a kind way to avoid saying servitude. He was about to become a lackey, and his wife was asking him to be polite about it. It was exhausting, this endless charade in which she seemed so comfortable.
Lola crinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. Her long lashes were clumped with mascara.
“Have you been smoking?”
Gonzalo was totally unfazed, even managed to seem offended.
“I gave you my word, didn’t I? I haven’t had a cigarette in five months.”
She gave him a dubious look. Before he lost the upper hand, Gonzalo changed the subject.
“I saw the workmen out there at the wall.”
Lola tucked her hair back, exasperated.
“You should report that lunatic to the police, Gonzalo. This has been going on too long. I spoke to my father and—”
Gonzalo cut her off, annoyed. “Do you tell him every time I go to the bathroom, too?”
“Don’t be so unpleasant. All I’m saying is that this has got to stop.”
Gonzalo saw his father-in-law approaching. Lola gave him an affectionate kiss and managed to shuttle the two of them off to speak privately, by the pool.
“Marvelous party,” his father-in-law said. Even when trying to be gracious, the man’s voice was coarse and so was his countenance, always hovering on the verge of disdain. The color of his eyes had faded, but they still glinted with a mocking intelligence, and he possessed an enviable vim and vigor. The man was full of passion. Just the opposite of you, his expression said. Gonzalo could never get over how belittled he felt whenever the man was near. At almost seventy, Agustín González still hadn’t reached the critical point when some men begin to feel sorry for themselves. In many ways he was detestable and deserved his bad reputation: a tough nut to crack, a litigant with endless notches on his belt, an unscrupulous pirate who was arrogant and at times offensive and had the cavalier air of a man who’s been at the top of his game for far too long and believes himself invested with the divine right to remain there. But he was also a stand-up kind of guy, educated and very prudent. He weighed each word before speaking, taking care not to say anything he might later regret. There were many who hated him, but none—not even his enemies—were stupid enough to laugh about him behind his back.
“I’d like to have a little chat with you about our association. Stop by the office on Monday, about ten.”
Gonzalo waited for his father-in-law to add something, but he was as sparing with his words as he was with his gestures and simply emitted grunts that might have been intended to be friendly. Then he ambled off toward a group of guests.
His father-in-law’s girlfriend waved from a distance, wineglass held aloft. She was much younger than Agustín. Gonzalo had forgotten her name, if she’d ever told him, but it would take quite some time before he forgot the risqué dress hugging her every contour and revealing her frilly bra, which lifted her breasts so high they seemed to be struggling to break free of the lace. This was the kind of woman his father-in-law liked: excessively immodest yet obedient. Since becoming a widower, he’d gone through quite a collection of them. She swished her hips as though sashaying across her own pretend stage, all lights on her. Touching the corner of her mouth, she glanced with displeasure at a lipstick-stained fingertip.
Gonzalo saw Javier under the wooden pavilion that decked the far end of the garden. Isolated from the other guests, as always, his son stood out, a fish out of water. He was leaning against a pillar, taking refuge in the music on his personal stereo and staring blankly at his father. Visible beneath his Bermuda shorts was a long scar on his right leg. Though many years had passed, whenever Gonzalo caught sight of the scar he felt guilty.
The accident, if you could call it that, took place when Javier was nine years old. The two of them had been perched on top of a crag, Javier was staring down at the calm clear water below. It really wasn’t very far, but to him it must have seemed an insurmountable distance. Lola shouted from below, encouraging him to jump, and Javier faltered, wavering between fear and the urge to close his eyes and jump. “We’ll do it together. It’ll be fine, you’ll see,” Gonzalo said to his son, grabbing the boy’s hand tightly. Javier smiled up at him. If his father was there, nothing could go wrong. This was his first taste of eternity—the sensation of falling and yet feeling weightless, hearing the roar of his own voice screaming, and his father’s. The world nothing but a circle of intense blue and then the sea, parting to swallow him in its bubbles and then shoot him back up to the surface. His father had laughed, proud of him, but then suddenly his expression had morphed. The water around Javier began to turn crimson, and Javier felt a searing pain in his leg.
That was the first time Gonzalo had failed him. The limp he’d never lost on his right side reminded him of it every day.
“I guess I’m supposed to say happy birthday.” Javier’s voice was sleepy, bored, gruff. A half effort.
“It’s not obligatory, but I’d consider it a nice touch.”
His son glanced around. The look of a teenager weighing up his possibilities.
“I bet half the people here don’t give a shit about you. Though you all seem to do a good job faking it.”
How much can a father truly know about his seventeen-year-old son’s inner world? On the Internet, boys his age talked openly about themselves, their emotions, their feelings. They talked endlessly, but it was hard to form any clear conclusions about who they really were, or thought they were. Gonzalo had watched his son go through a painful transformation, seen the way Javier was burdened by his solitude, realized that he was entering increasingly introspective years, and knew he’d have to deal with them on his own.
“I guess you just can’t resist hurting my feelings whenever the opportunity arises, huh?” Gonzalo couldn’t shake the mild irritation he felt whenever his son was before him. It was as if they spoke different languages, with neither one making the slightest effort to learn the other’s.
Javier looked up and observed his father with a mix of yearning and discomfort, as though he wanted to tell him something but couldn’t. Lately he seemed older, and sadder; it was as though his first year at the university was going to put him in a no-man’s-land, a place where he was no longer a boy but did not yet fully belong among adults.
“What do you expect me to say? It’s another surprise party. The same one as every year.”
Gonzalo glowered at his son. “Do you mind telling me what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. I just want to be left alone for a minute.”
“Let’s not start, Javier. This isn’t the time.”
If only they could shout at each other, hurl insults, express all of the resentment they had stored up. But it wasn’t going to happen. That’s just the way things were.
“Fine, let’s not.”
Gonzalo remained pensive for a moment, watching Lola as she circulated among the guests. Javier was the spitting image of his mother—same eyes, same mouth—and yet there was something about his broad forehead and coarse frizzy black hair that Gonzalo found repulsive. He was trying to repress the desire to brush him o
ff, and Javier somehow intuited that.
“Sometimes I think you’re too much like your mother. You’ve got a special skill for pushing away the people who love you.”
Javier rubbed his temples, wishing he was alone.
“You don’t know Mamá. You live with us but you don’t know us.”
Gonzalo smiled sadly. Javier admired his mother as much as he hated Gonzalo, for no real reason unless it was instinct. The truth was, what he worshipped was a ghost—though wasn’t that what Gonzalo himself did, too?
Someone at the gate caught his attention. An older, burly-looking man stood gazing fixedly at him, smoking a cigarette. The smoke seemed to get stuck in his bushy mustache. He looked vaguely familiar, although Gonzalo was sure he’d never seen him before. Perhaps it was his appearance, which aside from the mustache was totally anodyne. There were sweat stains at his armpits, and his beige trousers were creased. A big belly threatened to pop the buttons off his waistband, as if he’d had to stuff it in below his belt. But the huge grayish mustache really reminded Gonzalo of someone. A question began to take shape in his muddled mind.
Still staring at Gonzalo, the stranger mopped his shaved head with a handkerchief.
Gonzalo approached. “Excuse me. Have we met?”
The man took his credentials from his pocket, flashed them, and nodded heavily.
“So what are you doing here?”
Alcázar stared at him, unruffled. “It’s about your sister, Laura.”
The name rang a bell in Gonzalo’s mind, like a mild irritation long forgotten. His sister had disappeared off the map more than ten years ago. He hadn’t seen her since.
“What did the lunatic do now?”
Alcázar tossed his cigarette down and ground it out, rotating his heel back and forth. His hooded eyes, buried beneath tangled gray brows, bored into Gonzalo.
“Killed a man and then committed suicide. And by the way, the lunatic was my partner.”
* * *
—
The powdery sand blowing in from the beach dusted the chairs and table on the balcony in a soft film, and the white walls gave off a suffocating heat.
Siaka studied the sea through the window, calm and indifferent. The woman snoozed, facedown, cheek smashed into the pillow, mouth slightly open and slobbering, sweaty burgundy-colored hair plastered to her forehead. She was solidly built and rosy-cheeked, with a nose piercing, one of those tiny diamonds that looked like a shard of glass. The white marks left by her bikini called attention to the redness of her skin, scorched by the sun. Tourists never learned; the second they hit the beach, they sprawled on their towels like lizards, as if the sun was going to run out. Siaka wriggled cautiously from under the arm over his pelvis and peeled himself from her skin, sticky as marmalade. She’d let out a horselike bray before she came and then flashed him an obscene, lascivious look. “How did you learn how to do all those things?” she’d asked. “I was born knowing.” She smiled. Siaka was convinced she hadn’t even understood, and then she’d fallen asleep like a baby with a pacifier.
He dressed silently, leaving his shoes for last, and rummaged through her purse until he found her wallet, which contained a thick wad of cash; she also had an expensive-looking watch and a cell phone. He took her passport, too—American passports brought in a lot of money—but then, after thinking about it for a moment, placed it back in her bag, along with her cell phone. No doubt Daddy could wire her money from some bank in New Jersey or wherever she was from, but losing a passport was more complicated. Dozens of women named Suzanne, Louise, and Marie came from the United States and wherever else in search of the vacation of their life, something to remember on long cold nights in Boston and Chicago. Russians, Chinese, Japanese, they weren’t bad, but he preferred the Yanks. They had a certain naïveté he found almost endearing and were satisfied with little more than their boyfriends gave them back home. Plus they were generous. No cheap hostels or quickies in the back of a rental car for them. They brought him back to their hotels, and Siaka had a thing for five-stars: the cocktail shakers laid out and waiting, the expensive embroidered sheets, the thick robes and bath salts and clean carpet. But what he liked best were the flags. The flags flying at five-star hotels were always shiny and new.
You couldn’t understand what the so-called first world really was without seeing those flags from the balcony of an oceanfront five-star hotel. When tourists asked him where he was from in their flustered, lascivious voices, he lied to them, and it made no difference. To most people, Africa was an ocher-colored stain in the middle of nowhere. Its borders were indistinguishable, its countries all the same. A place of misfortune, famine, and war. A few tearful stories, which they listened to with looks of pity, reaching their long fingers across the table of some expensive restaurant, made them feel superior, but also guilty. Siaka would change his tone, then; he liked to wow them with his knowledge of African music, to explain how to play the mbira’s metal tines, mounted on a hardwood soundboard—an instrument from Zimbabwe, like him. Or he’d tell them about Mukomberanwa, one of his country’s most distinguished sculptors. And then their pity turned to admiration, and over the course of dinner, as the empty wine bottles accumulated, their hands or feet would slip under the table and onto his crotch, the age-old urge to possess a man surfacing once more. They would ask, with tipsy, unfocused eyes, if it was true what they said about black men, that they were huge—because of course to be black you had to be endowed with great masculinity. This was what they thought, and this was what Siaka offered. He was, in fact, well endowed, and at nineteen he had real stamina. And plans for the future.
Siaka walked out of the room and put his shoes on in the hall, slipping the cash inside. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes hotel security would search him, especially if they remembered his face.
He had no trouble getting out onto the street and hailing a cab.
“Where to, sir?”
Siaka smiled in satisfaction. He liked being called sir; he might be black, and not have papers, but expensive clothes and designer sunglasses made you seem whiter. And as far as papers went, the only ones that people truly cared about were tucked into his shoe.
“Do you take U.S. dollars?” he asked, holding out a hundred. Money makes you less illegal.
* * *
—
Gonzalo Gil’s house, in a luxury development on a hilltop overlooking the sea, was almost hidden by a high stone wall. Laughter could be heard over the wall, and the sound of splashing in the pool. From the window of his taxi, Siaka watched a catering van pull up. The tall, dark elegant woman who came out to meet it must have been his wife. Siaka tried to remember her name, but all that came to him was the phrase “conceited bitch.” From what he knew, the lawyer had two kids: a son about Siaka’s age and a little girl. On a couple of occasions he’d seen them getting onto a school bus nearby.
“Hey, the meter’s running, and at this rate it’s going to make me rich.”
“If I call you in, say, half an hour, will you come pick me up? I’ll give you a good tip.”
Siaka walked the length of the wall, inhaling the scent of orchids. That and the smell of fresh-cut grass reminded him of a Fitzgerald novel and, in a way, of something far darker that had happened at his school when he was little. He stopped in front of a few workers who were getting rid of some graffiti, and smiled. This must have been a gold mine for them. Every three or four days they’d show up to remove insults aimed at Gonzalo and threats against his beautiful wife and cherubic kids. One of the men stood staring at him. Siaka waved casually and the guy went back to what he was doing. Just in case, he crossed the street and strolled by the neighboring properties. Some people sure knew how to live, that much was clear, and it had nothing to do with luck.
Siaka leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. He adjusted his sunglasses and closed his eyes, allowing the smoke to float out from among h
is white teeth.
“Happy birthday, Solicitor.”
A MILLION DROPS
E-book ISBN 978-1-59051-846-5
Breathing Through the Wound Page 55
