“That was before Sócrates wound up dead. She can’t come back. She’s in real danger now.”
“She can’t hide forever,” Maite said. She took a few steps out of the narrow kitchen and into the living room, then turned to look at him and stepped back into the kitchen. “What about Jackie? Can’t she do something?”
“What’s Jackie going to do?” Rubén muttered tiredly, rubbing his jaw.
“I don’t know! You said she’d help. What about Emilio?” Maite snapped her fingers. “That’s right, we’ll phone Emilio.”
She grabbed the phone, but Rubén immediately took it from her hands and hung up. She stared at him, mouth open.
“You can’t tell anyone she called.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you get it? It’s not safe. You can’t trust anyone.”
“Why should I trust you then? I don’t even know you. Step away from the door. I’m going to see Emilio.”
“Calm down.”
“You step away! It’s my house!”
“I’m telling you to calm down. Someone is going to start banging on the door asking what the hell is going on if you keep this up.”
“I don’t care!”
She stomped toward her atelier, and when she walked in she cranked the volume up and let the needle fall upon a record, the music like a clap of thunder, so loud, making the whole room tremble. “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” began playing.
“For God’s sake, Maite, don’t be doing this,” he said and turned the volume down with a swift flick of the wrist. “You want to make it worse? Don’t you see we’re in a mess?”
But all she could see right then and there was the dead man again. Slumped over, with the horrible burn marks on his legs, and his neck bent and his eyes—for a quick second she had seen those eyes, glassy and open, staring back at her.
She felt so lost, so utterly alone, and wanted to clutch something. She turned to him and grabbed onto his jacket with both hands. But she was also furious, the anger boiling up because none of this was her fault, it was all that girl’s fault, that girl she didn’t even know, and it was Rubén’s fault too. He had allowed her to get involved in this reckless quest.
Maite lunged up and bit him hard, on the mouth. He stepped back, startled, pressed a hand against his lips and stared at her, drawing back. His fingers were stained with blood.
He grabbed her face between his hands and bit her back. For a moment they both froze, stunned by what was happening, and there was this pause, like the crackling of a record.
“You should fuck me before I change my mind,” she said.
She meant it, too. She had fantasized about a similar encounter but never dared, she had even pictured herself with this man in a fit of boredom. And there she was now and there he was, and for all of Maite’s deficiencies, he seemed willing and interested in her.
The music was a low hum as she undid his belt buckle and he pulled up her skirt, pressing her down against the cheap red-and-white carpet. Wary, perhaps, that she might bite him again, he did not attempt to kiss her. It was not as if she felt in the mood to be kissed. Kisses were for the pages of Secret Romance, they were for sweethearts, and this wasn’t an episode that belonged in any of her magazines.
They were both angry at the world, that was why this was happening. It was a kiss of scorpions, both heavy with poison. Both weary too. The tension and excitement of the past few days was the kindle they required.
Still half-dressed, Rubén thrust into her. She wondered, for a brief, flickering second, how she might compare to the beautiful Leonora, and she drew him closer to her, pressing her face against his neck so he wouldn’t look at her.
It had been so long since she’d had a lover, she feared she’d forgotten how human bodies worked, but they found a rhythm, something between sorrow and delight.
She felt his tongue, wet and warm, sliding against her neck. She thought about Emilio, handsome, cultured, interesting Emilio, and let herself play-pretend for a minute, imagining it was him with her. Then she thought it was one of the men of her comic books, that perhaps both of them were taking turns having their way with her. Rubén grunted something, lifted his head, and she looked at him and the fantasy was broken.
She came a few minutes after that; it caught her by surprise. It was a brief, low tremor, like a butterfly brushing its wings against her skin, not a precipice of pleasure, but at least he’d had the decency of waiting for her. Some men didn’t care.
He thrusted once, twice, then lay still above her for a couple of minutes before rolling aside. Music was still playing, but it was a different song and faster tempo. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again he was staring at the ceiling. She felt nervous, wondering what he was thinking, whether he felt guilty.
“I’m jumping in the shower,” she said, lifting the needle from the record player as she headed into the bathroom.
She didn’t take long, vigorously scrubbing her stomach and legs, washing off the sweat and semen, removing any makeup. She stopped in front of the mirror to contemplate her face, free of any adornment, flushed with the warmth of the hot shower, and, in the aftermath of lovemaking, somewhat pretty. When for a split second, the face was angled in the mirror, it even seemed almost beautiful.
Perhaps it was merely her imagination, merely the need to be desirable, but it was a nice illusion.
When she walked back into her bedroom in her ratty pink robe, she saw that Rubén had settled on the bed. He leaned on his elbow and looked up at her as she toweled her hair, then ran a hand across the objects arranged on her vanity, her little treasures—like jewels snatched from a shipwreck. She caressed the statue of San Judas Tadeo and the bottle of perfume. She thought about faceless men wielding sacrificial knives and maidens bound upon stone altars.
“You all right?”
“Hmmm?” she replied.
“You look worried.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course. But I’d like to not think about it before I take a nap. Fuck, I’m tired.”
“I can’t stop thinking about things, ever. Sometimes I look at a word in a dictionary and I wonder, how did that word come to have this meaning? How did hot mean hot or cold mean cold, and why some words sound the same but mean different things. Then I also think about how things might be and how they aren’t.”
He looked at her curiously, as if she were singing in an unknown language.
“You’re not like that,” she said. “You don’t overthink.”