Chapter 14
She was carefully laying down the white sheets, folding them in half lengthwise, hemmed edges close to the line, letting the fabric sag and create a breeze-catching opening.
Inés snapped closed a couple of wooden clothespins to hold the sheet in place and kept walking down the line.
He followed behind her with the laundry basket in his arms.
The bedsheets and laundry provided a convenient cover. Little could be seen of their faces or bodies, should someone poke their head out the window, and if Perla spied them in conversation Ulises could say he’d been helping the girl with a tiresome household chore.
“I got rid of it, of course. Poured the sherry down the drain after the police and the doctor left,” Inés told him. “Not that there was much left. He spilled most of it on the floor. I think he collapsed and kicked the bottle away. Or he fell asleep and…anyway, it’s gone now.”
“Thank God. We got lucky. It was a stupid idea using poison anyway.”
She grabbed another sheet from the basket and frowned.
“It wasn’t stupid. It would have worked.
You know, if he hadn’t…it was bad timing, that’s all.
” She let out a sigh. Her lips trembled.
“I miss him terribly.” Then she paused. “Of course, it figures the old coot would kill himself,” she added, and snorted.
“He probably thought he was emulating Socrates.”
He wanted to put his arms around her, but caution reined him in, and he set a hand upon her shoulder. At his touch, she stiffened for a moment but then turned her head to look at him with something that seemed close to gratitude.
“Perla said he left you something in his letter.”
“His books and his pocket watch. But my aunt took the watch and she’s going to sell it off to recoup the rent he didn’t pay.
She’d sell the books if she could, but they’re worthless, so I can keep those, at least until another lodger moves in and they want the bookcases for their own things.
You know what she said about his dog? That I should get rid of it, that now that he’s dead it’s not our responsibility. She’s a horror, she really is.”
She hurried down the line, and her eyes were bright, but she shed no tears and he knew if he touched her again, if he attempted to rest his hand against her shoulder, this time she’d shove it away.
Inés paused, holding a clothespin in midair, and looked straight at the house. “We’ll have to find another way to kill her. How about a car accident?”
“What do you mean?”
“This region is full of ravines. You’ve seen it.
We’re in the middle of the Sierra Madre Oriental.
You take one wrong turn, a car can end up smashed to bits.
You could go with her for a drive, hit her in the back of the head with something heavy, then toss the car down a cliff.
Ball bearings! You can put ball bearings in a sock and whack her with it. ”
“Ball bearings? Where the hell do you get these ideas?”
She shrugged; the motion was almost innocent.
“It won’t work. She has Fito drive her everywhere.”
“She’s always complaining about him, and I suspect she wants to fire him and have you as her new chauffeur.”
“Even if that were to happen, I wouldn’t be able to do it. How am I going to explain that I left with my wife and she fell down a ravine while I escaped unscathed? Even an idiot like Beto would pin it on me. It’s hopeless.”
“Are you going to give up at the first tiny obstacle?”
“It’s not the first tiny obstacle, this is a colossal problem,” he said, and set the basket down.
“I’m sure the car accident could work.”
“Why don’t you slide into the car with her, then, and beat her on the back of the head and deal with the police officers when they knock at the door? Hmm?”
“Fine, then you think of something.”
Inés fished for the clothespins tucked inside a banged-up coffee can. One of her curls fell across her brow, and she brushed it aside with an irritated grunt.
“What if it’s a fall? She slips in the bathtub and bangs her head on the floor?” he proposed.
Inés dropped the clothespins, which scattered on the ground. He knelt to help her gather them and noticed she was trembling.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“That’s how my mother died. She fell,” she whispered.
“In the tub?”
“Down the stairs. I found her. I couldn’t talk for a year after that. Not a peep.”
She finished stuffing the clothespins back in the coffee can and again brushed the recalcitrant strand of hair away from her face. They looked at each other.
“It was a long time ago, but I still have nightmares about it,” she said, wiping a hand against the apron she was wearing, then stood up.
He sensed then a frailness, a delicacy, in Inés, which remained mostly hidden. In turn, he felt compelled to show her a kindness that he normally concealed under his swagger.
“What was she like?” he asked gently.
“She used to sing when she worked on the sewing machine. She’d sing and the machine would whir, and she’d let me stitch scraps of cloth together and sew buttons.”
“Is that why you know how to sew? Did she teach you?”
“A little. I was young when she died. But I suppose I got used to the idea of sewing and stitching and all that from her.”
She resumed pinning up the bedsheets and he grabbed the basket and walked behind her as she moved down the clothesline.
“What was your mother like?” she asked.
“She was sweet. She’d cook my favorite foods and sing me to sleep. She read The Arabian Nights to me and called me her prince. And when I told her we didn’t live like royalty, she said it was like in ‘Aladdin’ and one day I’d find a magic lamp and a genie would grant me three wishes.”
“You’d have to be a prince all along, because you’re pretty.”
“Pretty, eh? Pretty is for girls. I’m handsome.”
“No, you’re pretty. You’re pretty, perfumed, and pampered.”
A light breeze stirred the edges of the bedsheets, and he held his basket and looked down into her wide dark eyes. “What are you, then?”
“A bandit queen, of course.”
“No, you’re Scheherazade with her quick wit.”
She smiled at that, and there was an achingly lovely quality about her minuscule smile, as if maybe a part of her believed stories like that, tales of magic carpets and beggars who married princesses.
“Ah, yes, she tells her stories so exquisitely that the king spares her life and makes her his queen. But I’d still rather be a bandit queen than a woman who faces the threat of the executioner each morning.”
“I’m sure he sends away the executioner after she’s crowned.”
“Does he? I think there would always be an axe hidden in that palace. You can’t trust a king who murdered all his previous wives.”
“Sure. Can’t trust a criminal, never ever. You can’t trust anyone, really. That’s why it’s best to face the world alone.”
“But you weren’t alone, were you? You still had your father after your mother died,” she pointed out.
“That’s not the same. We were bound by our blood; it makes all the difference.”
“Blood isn’t enough sometimes.”
They were straying into discussions that were distractions, and he had the annoying sensation that he could easily become distracted with her around.
She swung another sheet upon the line.
—
Perla collected her tithe. Politeness at all times, admiration heaped upon her each day, and sexual pleasure when she demanded it. He complied with a mechanical efficiency.
In this place of soft rains and fog the color of lace, the days blended together. Sometimes he wondered whether it was Monday or Wednesday, whether he’d made love to his wife already or was about to be summoned to her bed.
Without Nepomuceno the house grew more quiet at suppertime, and Inés’s melancholy drenched the rooms.
Outside, the fog clung to his clothes when he went for walks, dampening them thoroughly, though no water droplets slid upon his skin.
It was warm in the streets, warm in his room, like drifting into steam, his skin tingling while he explored the cobblestoned streets.
Yet there were evenings when the temperature dropped, and the warmth gave way to a sickening chill that made him shiver like an old man.
He felt odd lately, like his reflection had ceased to match his face, like he was becoming someone else.
This town made him ill at ease. The fog turned the buildings spectral at night; the humid atmosphere stimulated the mold that grew in corners of the rooms, multiplying it.
The girl didn’t help matters much. He found her attractive and that was like an itch he couldn’t scratch. A splinter of lust that perturbed him.
He might have blamed it on the natural thrumming of the flesh, pent-up energy that required an outlet.
For months he had been as well-behaved as a monk; his circumstances had not allowed for female company.
Now that he was married, he did not lack erotic release.
Perla was an exacting woman—her desires were paramount, his were second thoughts—but she had her charms. He’d certainly been forced to kiss less attractive ladies.
Flesh was there for the taking, should he want it.
But what did he want? Inés, who was like a strong drink and clouded reason. No. That was incorrect. Money, he wanted money. Freedom, fast cars, and the allure of the metropolis. Not this sad town, nor anything from it.
The days were terribly quiet. He fanned himself with an old magazine and wondered exactly where he was headed.
—
“Do you know a man with a mustache who wears a green tie?” Inés asked him as she rudely shoved him awake.
He’d been having a nap, dreaming he was watching rumberas dancing at a tony nightclub, then suddenly found himself blinking and staring at the girl.