Chapter 35
35
Hector closes the cracked lid on his laptop, leans back in his chair with fingers interlocked behind his head, and exhales at the ceiling.
Relief.
Europe isn’t cheap, but that’s six weeks to save everything he can. It’d be worth it for just one day with Cecilie Wiig. Paris sounds good. Meeting under the Eiffel Tower. He’s sure he can fly to Paris from Mexico City.
Hector’s phone rings, interrupting his racing brain. Unknown number. He assumes it’s Cecilie calling him with a flirty postscript.
‘Paris, mi amor ,’ Hector says as he answers. ‘I’ll find out about flights from DF to Paris.’
‘Hector?’
It’s not Cecilie’s voice at the other end. His heart sinks.
‘What do you want? I said I’m done.’
‘Come get your whore wife.’
‘What? ’
‘She shat in my bed when I was fucking her and now she’s not breathing.’
‘ What? ’ Hector rises, kicking back the old wooden church chair, and stands, alert.
‘She’s not breathing. She shat and she puked and now she’s lying here like the dirty whore she is.’
‘Do something, Benny. Get her to the hospital. I’ll go straight to Urgencias , I’ll meet you there.’
Benny is silent at the other end of the phone. Weighing up his options.
‘ Do it! ’
‘No, man, come and get her, clear up her shit. I’m going out.’
Hector races down five flights of stairs from his apartment, through the arcade and out onto the street. Taxis, drinkers, revellers are crossing the town with plans and purpose, going from bar to bar on this busy Saturday night, and the traffic is thick. Hector has no idea which way to turn and looks up and down the street at the cars and mopeds beeping at him.
La Villa.
He starts running – it’ll be quicker on foot; even mopeds are getting stuck in the melee – to the Villa Infantil three streets away at the quieter end of town. Past cars snaking nose to tail. Away from the main roads onto pretty cobbled streets. Running, running, racing to get to Pilar before she stops breathing forever, although he doesn’t even know where she is or how the hell he can find her before it’s too late.
Shit.
Bang bang bang. Hector’s fist rattles on the door of the orphanage, knowing that Sister Miriam, Sister Juana and Sister Virginia will all be asleep at this time on a Saturday night.
No answer. Bang bang bang. ‘Come on ! ’
Hector’s fist is clammy and cold.
‘It’s me! Hector!’ He rattles on the thick wooden front door, flailing like a child treading water, trying not to drown. A startled Sister Miriam opens the door. Her exposed hair is as grey as the habit it’s usually hidden under. Her mole-like eyes widen with worry.
‘Where does Benny live? I have to get to Benny’s hacienda. Now! ’
‘Hector, cálmate carino . Whatever is the matter?’
‘It’s a matter of life and death. I never asked and you never told me, but please tell me you know where Benny’s hacienda is. I have to get there…’
Sister Miriam puts her small wire glasses on tiny confused eyes, magnifying them and waking them up.
‘Hacienda? Benny doesn’t live in a hacienda. Benny lives at the back here, carino . In the former Patrón’s quarters.’
Hector is gobsmacked – but relieved.
She’s here.
‘Here? Benny’s lived here all along?’
‘He lives here now, yes, but there’s no access this way. And the children are all sleeping. You’ll have to go round to Hidalgo and knock there. But what’s the urgency…?’
Before Sister Miriam finishes speaking, Hector is already running to the end of the block. He turns left out of sight and Miriam closes the front door, confused and concerned. She knows all of Hector’s faces, but she’s never seen him in such distress.
Please don’t stop breathing, please don’t stop breathing .
Left again, onto the cobbles of Calle Hidalgo, past colourful houses of bright green, yellow and blue, and a thud thud thud on the door of the former Patrón’s house .
No answer, but the door is unlocked, so Hector charges through. The Patrón, Eduardo Sánchez, gave most of his land to the church so they could open an orphanage, and he lived a humble life in the small home that backed onto it. But he had long since died, and Hector assumed the house had been bought by a private landlord. He had no idea the church owned it all, and Benny’s squalid and murky existence was going on right under the nose of the women who brought him up.
Hector scans the dark room. Cockroaches whizz out from underneath pizza boxes. Empty bottles and dirty needles litter the floor. Ashtrays teem over. This isn’t the grand and gaudy ranch Hector pictured Benny conducting his dealings from. It looks like a low-grade narco has been squatting there between deliveries. Hector bursts into the bedroom and cries out when he sees Pilar’s naked soiled body on the bed.
‘ No! ’
Through thin skin and bone, he can see that Pilar’s chest is just about rising and falling, but she’s struggling through vomit stuck in her windpipe.
‘ Pilar! ’ Hector shouts, climbing onto the bed. He straddles her and coughs as he inhales the acrid mess around her. Hector lifts Pilar’s grey chin to tip her head back and help clear her airwaves. She splutters vomit in his face and her hollow chest convulses; the blue heart tattoo pulsates ever so slightly. Hector slaps Pilar’s cheek, at first gently, repeatedly, growing stronger until she attempts to open her eyelids. ‘That’s it, deep breaths…’
Hector hears the familiar huskiness of Pilar’s voice, rattling in the depths of her cough.
She’s alive .
He finds the corner of a less sullied sheet on the floor and flicks it for cockroaches, then pulls the shit and vomit-smeared mess out from underneath Pilar, trying to wipe any off her as he does, and wraps her up like a parcel in the sheet from the floor. Hector lifts his corpse bride with ease onto his shoulders and stands.
‘Come on,’ he says to no one. ‘Let’s get out of here.’