And again, the wrong thing to say, she realized, the reminder of death, putrefaction, the slim limits of existence, like a mantle over her shoulders. She sagged back against the pillows, tossing the rose onto the side table where she’d found it and pressing her hands against her temples, seized with a sudden burst of pain.
“Casiopea?”
“My head is throbbing. My mother used to tell me ‘Everything will look better in the morning,’ ” she said. “Only it didn’t look any better, and I’m afraid it won’t look better tomorrow. It’s much worse…the ache. The ache in my hand and now in my head.”
“That is why I said to rest,” he told her.
“Rest, rest…It’s so annoying. You look…you look quite well. Amazing,” she said.
It was true. He did appear quite sleek and stylish. She remembered reading an ad that said most men look well in a navy double-breasted jacket. Of course he was magnificent; the wide lapels and slightly fitted waist only served to emphasize his strong shoulders and granted him a comfortable swagger. No doubt she looked half dead—which she was, very likely—and silly and panicky, unable to quench the anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Stupid, stupid dream. And she was stupid, too, for making such a fuss. She bit her lip.
“You shouldn’t look that good,” she muttered accusingly.
“I’m not feeling entirely well, either, if you must know.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” she asked.
He shrugged. She felt like pinching his arm. He couldn’t sit there, looking pensive, saying nothing. Her head was going to burst if he did.
“You have to tell me,” she said.
His back was tense, his brow furrowed, and when he spoke it was he who sounded as if he’d just woken from a strange dream. The words were stilted, which was unlike him. When he talked, he did it well. He carved each sentence with a graceful assurance. Each word was a jewel.
“It’s hard to say. Sometimes…when we are talking, it’s as if…I forget,” he mumbled.
“What do you forget?”
Such quiet. The quiet between stars. She thought she could almost hear her blood moving through her veins and her heart was loud as a drum, and when she touched the covers the rustle was like dragging a piece of furniture across the floor.
“Will you say something?” she asked again. “You’re making me nervous. As if I wasn’t nervous already.”
“I forget everything. My brother, my palace, my name,” he said hastily. “Everything.”
That wasn’t exactly the answer she was expecting, and the weight of it was tremendous, this single word, like a stone.
“That sounds awful,” she replied.
“It’s not awful. That’s the problem. There’s a second when I think it would be fine to forget myself, it would be the easiest thing in the world. But if you forget yourself once you’ll do it twice, and thrice, and soon—”
He stopped talking. His face, it was brittle. She’d come to associate him with a steadfast harshness, the strength of obsidian.
“What if my name wasn’t mine?” he asked. “What if my name was an entirely different one?”
Vaguely she recalled he’d mentioned a secret name when they were in Veracruz, but he had not been pleased when he said it.
“I don’t understand,” she replied and would have asked him to elaborate, but he gave her a look like a man who is learning a new language and can’t find the correct word in the dictionary. And with that she grew quiet.
He raised his hand, two fingers in the air, touching her forehead, then running the fingers down her hairline.
Casiopea was used to spending time with Hun-Kamé in close quarters, and he’d clasped her hand during the train ride, but she thought they’d never sat this close. And the touch on her forehead, it wasn’t more personal than the brief touch of his fingers upon her own. Yet it was different. She’d thought he’d held her hand out of sympathy, and now…
“I’d like to count stars with you. I don’t know where I even got this idea, but it’s there,” he said.
The dust speaks louder when the wind stirs it, but she heard him anyway and knew not what to say, and everything she’d said so far had been stupid, so why would a few words help at this point?
She stared at him, mystified, unable to produce a coherent sentence. She stretched out a hand, as if to touch him like he’d touched her, a hand on his brow.
Abruptly Hun-Kamé stood up, took her left hand, and kissed her knuckles, like she’d thought gentlemen might do, the kind of gesture fit for films or poems.
“I’ll let you be, Casiopea Tun,” he said.
She nodded. He was off to his own room. Casiopea kicked off the bedsheets and stared at the hand he’d kissed. She thought of one hundred things she might have replied, but of course he’d long left her.
Martín hated feeling out of place. It was the whole reason he’d had himself shipped back to Uukumil rather than follow through with his expensive education. In Baja California he was immediately out of his depth and he knew it.
Tierra Blanca, it turned out, was a vast complex, a hotel and casino by the sea built in a peculiar style, recalling the Mayan elements of Martín’s homeland but also the Art Deco movement. He felt both confused and intimidated as he walked down the hallways of this building, the scale of the project making his home in Yucatán, which he’d thought very elegant, pale in comparison. Besides, there was the basic shock of finding out that he was at a hotel. He had hardly believed his eyes when the owl dropped him off at its perimeter, the night ominous and punctuated by the buzzing of insects. When he’d gone inside and inquired about Aníbal Zavala, they told him he was expected.
Fortunately the hotel employees allowed Martín to check in to a room, comb his hair, and dust his jacket, which would have to satisfy his vanity for now. Martín took great pains to look the part of the gentleman, though he lacked in gentility.
Afterward, an employee came looking for him saying Zavala wanted to speak to him.
The office he was ushered into had very high ceilings carved with gigantic masks, more than six feet tall. The curtains were embroidered with geometrical patterns, and the desk by the window appeared to be a thick tree trunk that had not been properly turned into a desk: too many of its bumps and roots and its original organic quality were visible.
Behind the desk sat an older man, his hair gone gray, dressed in a mustard-colored suit with a dark brown bow tie. He had a tidy mustache, and all about him there was an air of order and mild manners that concealed something else.