Stop being silly, she whispered and continued with her preparations. She still needed to feed the cat in Leonora’s apartment, and she didn’t want to be late.
Cristóbalito had liked her hair. Tumbling down her back, so long it almost reached her waist in those days. When she lay naked in bed with him it could cover her breasts, as though she were Lady Godiva. Who’d want to see her naked now, though? Her skin was dry and her thighs—
No, she wasn’t going to be upset today. Today was a good day. Today was a day when things would happen, even if nothing ever happened to Maite. She was merely a weathervane, tossed from one point to another by indifferent winds, but now something was happening to her, and it wasn’t only the lunch with Emilio Lomelí, it was Leonora’s mysterious disappearance, Rubén asking her for assistance, it was the whole of it.
She was part of a story.
She must hurry. Maite decided not to feed the cat. She’d be late if she did. She was already late as it was. She’d worry about the cat later. It’s not as if she’d be gone for hours and hours.
She dashed out of her apartment and down the stairs. It would have been easier if she could take a cab, but she needed to watch her expenses and so it was public transit and a bit of a walk.
Emilio Lomelí lived in Polanco. She’d seldom been in that part of town. It was a neighborhood that had been for a number of years now the favorite destination for upper-crust Jewish families, American and British diplomats, and a growing contingent of affluent Mexicans who wanted to enjoy the delicatessens, European-style bakeries, and coffee shops not far from Chapultepec Park. This was the kind of place where you could order corned beef and red wine to be delivered to your home, or stop at Frascati’s for paella. Women attended fashion-show luncheons and charity benefits.
Everything was new in this area: there was no sign of moldy colonial palaces and old tezontle. Everything was beautiful. It was a pageant of prosperity, so far removed from the neighborhood where Maite had grown up that she might as well be a tourist on another planet.
Emilio Lomelí’s house was painted white, looking deceptively simple from the outside. Emilio opened the door and showed her in, and Maite swept her gaze up and down. The ceilings were extremely tall, and the walls were paneled in dark, rich oak. The space was very open, as though the architect had forgotten the meaning of the word wall, the dining room flowing into the living room. Acrylic bubble chairs, a long, beautiful red velvet couch, a table big enough for eight, green glass vases filled with flowers…it all seemed plucked out of a catalogue. Maite’s atelier, which she’d thought quite adorable, now became shabby in comparison.
Emilio was like a jewel in a beautiful setting. He almost sparkled against the expensive furniture, his hair artfully slicked back, looking a bit like David Janssen in The Fugitive. Only Emilio was much more handsome.
To keep from gawking at him, she set herself to admiring the photographs on the walls. These were all very large black-and-white images, close-ups really, of body parts, in silver frames. A woman’s eye, lips, a manicured nail. She couldn’t know if this was one woman or different women. The style of the photos anonymized them.
“Are these your photos?” she asked.
“Yes, it was a whole series. I exhibited it a few years ago,” he said, moving his arm and pointing from one end of the house to another. “I have my own darkroom upstairs.”
She glanced at the stairs. She wondered if he’d decorated the second floor with those same pictures, a multitude of eyes, ears, and lips. She wondered what his room looked like, whether the photos in there were bolder. Pictures of nipples and tongues and vulvas above the bed. Leonora’s nipples could be rendered in shades of gray. Her eye might be staring at Maite from that photo on the wall, the pupil completely dilated.
It was an odd thought, but it was the word darkroom that conjured it, which suggested secrets and the cover of the night. It meant nothing, and yet her mind leaped at it and was filled with the strangest, most fantastical thoughts when she heard certain words.
“The lunch is cold cuts and cheeses, I’m afraid. I have a cook come in a couple of days a week, but on weekends I keep it simple,” he said, carelessly gesturing toward a side table that was prepped with several plates.
“Oh, anything is fine, really,” she said and meant it. She was too nervous, wouldn’t be able to get down a single bite with him looking at her.
“Can I fix you a martini?” Emilio asked.
“Oh…” Maite said. She wasn’t the type of person who had a three-martini lunch. She’d never taken to drinking, and it wouldn’t have done at her office to come in plastered. Besides, as with the food, she wondered if the taste wouldn’t sit with her.
Emilio must have noticed her panicked expression. He smiled. “Would you prefer mineral water?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks. I was starting to feel like a terrible host,” he said, opening a bottle of Perrier and filling a glass for her.
Emilio had a smoothness about himself…the way he spoke and handed her the glass, like she’d seen men do in the movies and never experienced in real life. And his eyes! Amber-colored, like two jewels, matching his light brown hair with its few strands of gold glinting in the sunlight.
“Thanks for coming over, by the way. You said something about Leonora’s camera in your message? Did you find it?”
“It’s a little bit more complicated than that,” she said, holding the glass with two hands and peering down at it. “Leonora has gone missing, and I think it’s because of that camera.”
“What do you mean?”
“She hasn’t come home. I have reason to believe she had some pictures which would have been…compromising. Pictures of the Hawks.”
She looked up at him, trying to gauge his response. He didn’t appear surprised. “Did she talk to you about that?” he asked.
Rubén had told her not to mention him, so she nodded.
“What else did she say?”
“She only said that. Nothing more. I don’t know what it means. I’m worried, and I was thinking maybe you might be able to explain what’s happening.”
Emilio sighed and sat down on the velvet couch while Maite carefully sat on one of the bubble chairs, leaning forward, grasping her glass tight as she took a sip. She wondered if he liked her dress. Maybe it was too short. Maybe she looked like an idiot. She discreetly tugged at the hem with her free hand, attempting to pull it down a little and cover her knees.
“It’s hard to explain. Last week Leonora told me she was thinking of visiting a journalist friend of mine who lives in Cuernavaca. She doesn’t have a car, so she needed a ride. But I was busy and couldn’t take her, and in the end she didn’t truly seem interested in going, so I thought that was the end of that.”