Chapter 6
Piglet was in charge of creating the website for Seagull Press and coding a program that would automatically sell ebooks to ghost accounts.
According to him, there was a super-complex purchasing pattern, so it was impossible to trace any fraud.
The dinners continued to be a success, and it felt like things were calming down again: Cecília had disappeared, and guests respected the rules and left satisfied, invariably requesting to be added to a new waiting list.
Sometimes it gnawed at me, knowing that Vladimir was behind it all without ever having to show his face.
But in the end, I decided that Umberto was right.
The best thing was to forget about it and not say anything to my friends.
We were happier than ever, weren’t we? I was making more money than anyone my age, Hugo felt like the world’s greatest chef, Cora and Piglet were in love, and even Miguel had bounced back after his breakup with Rachel and was celebrating his mom’s unexpected recovery.
What difference did it make if Vladimir loomed over Umberto, if he was pulling all the strings? Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
I remember exactly what I was doing when I first saw Arthur.
I’d laughed until I cried and was wiping my eyes with a napkin while Cora continued to clown around.
He was handsome, clean-shaven, and lean, but now that I think about it, I think what caught my eye was how downtrodden he looked.
He shuffled desolately between the tables, handing out flyers with trembling hands and puffy eyes.
Our joy was almost offensive in the face of all that pain.
As he approached us, I noticed the heaviness he carried in his hunched shoulders.
“Sorry to disturb your evening,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “My name is Arthur. My fiancée, Ruth, has been missing since last Tuesday. She went out for a walk on the beach and never came back. If you’ve seen—”
He broke off, about to cry. He handed me the flyer with the photo of the missing woman and moved on to the next table, looking hopeless.
When I looked down at the photo, I dropped my beer glass, which shattered on the table. I tried to come up with an excuse, but I knew I could never forget that face.
It was the woman we’d served at our dinner last night.