Chapter 12
He missed Mexico City. He’d been extremely nervous there, terrified that the sons of the widow Aguirre were going to swoop by his guesthouse—he shouldn’t have stayed there, but the rent had been affordable—and beat him bloody.
But he’d gained nothing in this forsaken town, and lost his liberty.
How stupid he had been! There was money to be made in Mexico City.
So many Americans and Europeans had flocked there at the beginning of the war, bringing their bank accounts with them.
The former king of Romania was living in Mexico City; that wealthy Bulgarian, Avramov, had a house with more than fifty rooms; the countess of Prévoisin flashed jewels at all the nightclubs of note.
It was useless; he was never going to navigate that crowd. Nevertheless, there would have been more opportunities in the city than in dusty Puerco Ahogado.
What he wouldn’t give to have drinks and listen to music at El Patio, or get cozy at the more intimate Casanova. He pictured big bands and Havana floor shows, the clinking of ice cubes, and swaying hips at the Sans Souci. Instead, he was trapped inside this house.
Inés was handing the guests canapés. It was another one of Perla’s dry, boring reunions with the same witless people.
He watched Inés balancing the tray with expert ease, dressed in a horrid skirt and a blouse that seemed designed to make her look like a frump, except it didn’t.
Perversely, the sensible shoes and ugly blouse made you wonder at other possibilities.
What that girl might look like in a ball gown, maybe.
Or, judging by the young policeman’s nervous twitch of his lips, what she looked like in her underwear and a pair of silk stockings.
She had great legs. That was the first thing he’d noticed, and that abundance of black hair. She’d be ravishing under the mellow lights of a nightclub even if she was half mad.
Murder. She had guts to talk about it so breezily.
He watched her as she moved around the room. Poison, she’d said, quite naturally to boot. Not that he hadn’t brought it up, because of course he had, but he’d meant it as a morbid joke.
Maybe. Maybe it had been half in jest and half serious, because he was going to go insane in this place.
“It’s completely unpatriotic for the workers to threaten to strike in Orizaba,” Dr. Carrel was saying.
“They can’t work if there’s no corn, no food,” Professor Nepomuceno replied.
“The government sets aside enough basic staples for the workers.”
Nepomuceno laughed. “You believe those fairy tales? We know what happens to the corn and the beans and the lard. They end up on the black market. And the politicians have their hands in this. Ask the governor of Durango where the corn goes.”
“The price of sugar is really outrageous,” Sarita Novo said. “And they sell you minute quantities, and if you can find more it’s a robbery. One kilo for thirty centavos!”
“Factory workers don’t need sugar,” the doctor proclaimed.
Just then the older police officer, who had been half asleep in a corner, opened his eyes and suggested that they play dominoes. Dr. Carrel was enthused by the idea, and Cándido agreed to join the game.
“We need a fourth,” Dr. Carrel said. “It’s ten pesos per game.”
“Come on, Bartolo, pull a chair,” the older policeman urged his younger colleague.
“Not tonight, sir,” Bartolo replied.
The young cop likely wanted to spend the rest of the evening staring at Inés with round, eager eyes and an open mouth. The dunce.
Ulises realized he’d been doing the same, staring at the girl. The discovery made him so uncomfortable he stood up quick.
“I’ll play,” he said, for the sake of getting her out of his line of sight.
“With what money?” Perla asked, so loudly that everyone laughed.
Ulises stood in the middle of the room, his cheeks burning with mortification. Perla didn’t seem the least contrite about the round of mockery she’d initiated and looked at Ulises with a cool indifference that made his face burn even more.
“It’s a game with friends.”
“It seems your wife’s wallet isn’t feeling friendly today,” Cándido replied, and there was another round of laughter.
“If you’ll excuse me, I forgot my cigarette case,” Ulises said with as much dignity as he could muster, and exited the room.
He walked quickly to the front of the house, lit a cigarette, and stood by the iron gate, smoking and stewing in his anger as he contemplated the grotesque parody that his life had become.
He was a sap. Yeah, that was right. A sap and a loser and dear God he was fucked.
Roundly and completely fucked. No Havana floor shows for him, no nothing.
He thought about stepping out into the street with nothing in his pockets but his cigarettes and a box of matches and to hell with it.
But as soon as the idea formed in his mind, he immediately discarded it.
There were men who could live like tramps, hitching rides in trucks and stumbling out into unknown ports, begging for their supper. But he’d never been that type.
He wasn’t the violent criminal type either, the kind to hold up a bank or a jeweler, or even to press a knife against the ribs of an unsuspecting man in an alley.
The truth of the matter was that Ulises had been raised in a specific kind of environment and grown up with a certain sensibility that wouldn’t allow him to partake in several profitable and unsavory operations.
He had neither the constitution nor the bulk to serve as muscle for a mobster and lacked the temperament to pimp women out.
Gangs were out of the question; he wouldn’t survive a day in one.
As for marketable skills, aside from an interest in photography, he had none.
He looked at the street and smoked. Soon enough she was standing at his elbow. In her sensible shoes she didn’t make much noise, unlike Perla, whose high heels were audible against the tired parquet floors. But that stealthiness announced her anyway.
“It’s too risky,” he muttered, without turning his head, without looking at her and her cloud of black hair and her dark, gleaming eyes.
“I didn’t say anything,” Inés replied.
“You’re thinking it. Hell, I’m thinking it.”
“And?”
He was quiet.
“Goddamn wuss,” she said.
“Really, what a mouth. How’d you learn to talk like that?”
“The other kids teased me at school. It’s hard being born out of wedlock in a town like this. They were rotten to me until I started cussing them back. I kicked a couple of boys in the groin for good measure.”
“That’s a bit severe,” he said, though he smiled at the thought of her dispensing a few blows.
“Boys think they can do whatever they want with certain girls. Girls that aren’t worth much. If you don’t put them in their place quickly, they get ideas. I didn’t need that kind of trouble,” she said, and she wrapped her hands around the iron gate.
“That cop. He’s got ideas about you. Why don’t you go off with him? It would save you the trouble of living here.”
Who knew? Maybe she’d even fall for the wretch. He wasn’t much to look at, but he seemed harmless.
She laughed without merriment, a low, rasping laugh. “I know how that would go. Maybe he’d take me for his mistress for a couple of years and pay my bills until he grew tired of me. That’s just a different cage.” She paused and looked at him. “I think you know about cages.”
“Maybe,” he whispered.
He held the cigarette still in midair, remembering moments he’d tried hard to scrub from his memories.
A hundred tiny humiliations, like paper cuts lacerating the soul.
It was a damn grim world, and he wasn’t going anywhere in it but down.
Right now he was young, but give it a few years and a touch of middle age would begin to mar his features, and then what?
More of the same? Tiny scores made smaller as his value diminished?
“Hypothetically, what kind of poison would you use?” he asked. Simply for the sake of asking it, because the question was stinging his throat. It was like having a damn fish bone lodged in there. He was going to choke if he didn’t ask.
“Hypothetically? The seeds of the haba de San Ignacio are toxic. If you crushed them…or a mixture of several herbs…yes, mix several things up, say in a bottle of sherry, then the person who drank it would die quick, with no fuss.”
As soon as she said it, he felt his resistance melting.
Ahead of him, in the hot, humid street, there was nothing.
Maybe he would be able to thumb a ride back to Mexico City, back to a grimy guesthouse filled with lowlifes like him, to spend his days simmering in resentment. Or he could take a chance.
He looked at her. He knew, in that moment, that separately they would have never dared to commit a murder and would have probably spent their miserable lives filled with grudges and spite. But together, homicide became not only plausible but preordained.
“When should we do it?”
“Tonight. I have the necessary ingredients.”
“You knew I’d say yes.”
“I hoped you would.”
He dropped his cigarette and squashed it with a hard stomp of his shoe.
—
Later that evening he drew his wife’s bath. This had been Inés’s task until recently. Now he was the one who’d become a handmaiden. No matter, it gave them the opportunity they needed.
Perla went into the tub, and he hurried downstairs to the kitchen. Inés had the tray with the sherry ready. He grabbed it with careful fingers.
“Make sure she drinks a glass.”
“She always drinks two glasses, if not three. She gets roaring drunk in that bathtub,” Ulises said.
Indeed, he was certain his wife had already started drinking. He knew she kept a couple of bottles of tequila in the armoire.
Inés’s hand rested on his wrist for a moment, and they stared at each other. He was so nervous he feared he’d trip on the stairs, but he maneuvered into the bathroom without issues and set the tray down by the tub. Then he poured Perla a glass and handed it to her.