Sweet Money (9 page)

 

That night, impeccably groomed and dressed to the nines, Miranda arrives at the house and waits patiently until the door opens and Fernando leaves. Duchess says goodbye to him from the doorway, where she continues to stand as she watches him disappear around the corner. That’s when Mole crosses the street and rings the doorbell.

 

 

They’re both thinking that some things, no matter how you look at them or twist and turn them around, simply can’t be fixed.

 

 

While Duchess is in the kitchen preparing him a bite to eat, Miranda notices she’s wearing her high heels. She was waiting for him. She knew. Duchess always knows. This is the woman he wants, hers the body he desires, she his partner, his perfect fit, with whom two becomes one. His memory brings back everything now hidden under that tight dress, which is a bit bold, provocative and modest all at once. Miranda knows that when that dress comes off, the other Duchess appears. Wise, receptive, generous, a duchess who’s not disgusted by anything and can do it for what seems like an eternity, capable of carrying him to the highest peaks of arousal only to lower him gently, again and again, as many times as she wants, leading him from the valleys to the mountains with sure hands through the steep curves, boldly bordering the cliffs until finally she releases him and lets him come
inside her – open, satisfied, languid, happy, adored. He can imagine nothing better than coming in her arms. Miranda has been with many women in his life, but not one gives of herself so fully in bed. She offers up her entire being because she is one of those rare women who derives her own pleasure from the other’s pleasure, her happiness from that of her companion.

 

 

Silence settles over the kitchen, one of those marital silences that hovers in the air like the poisonous vapours from a swamp. It’s an uncomfortable, painful silence that conjures up all past frustrations, allowing all the disappointments and sorrows to appear one by one, while amnesia makes all the once-shared joy vanish. Duchess is looking at him as if from behind a glass wall or from a thousand miles away, and all she feels is fear. Fear of her own feelings, fear of having regrets, fear of what she’s going to say and, more than anything, fear of continuing to feel fear. She feels as if she still doesn’t have the words she wants to say to this man she loves so much. She feels all dried up, dry and tired. Her voice is pleading.

 

 

Her words evoke the possibility that he’ll be gunned down one day by the police, an echo of his own conviction about his fate, the one he usually manages to shunt away. He also understands what Duchess didn’t say, but the message, a stern warning, was right there, behind her words. If what she said were to happen, she would let the city bury him, she’d never mention him to their son and, when his flesh rotted away, his bones would be thrown into a common grave, without a flower or a tear, without anything. That, for Mole, would be worse than death itself. The life he has led has kept him away from his son for long stretches at a time, and that’s what has always troubled him most about his profession as a bank robber. If, in addition to this, he were forever erased from Fernandito’s memory, even he would never forgive himself.

13

Maisabé is rushing around; she wants to leave before Leonardo arrives. The ringing of the telephone makes her nervous, she picks it up, says hello several times, but nobody’s on the other end. There are more and more of these dead calls every day. Her husband says it’s the communists, who have come back. She walks across the living room and looks out the window to see how people are dressed, if it’s hot or cold outside. She looks in at the door to Aníbal’s bedroom: he’s sitting at his desk looking at a picture book. He’s so little and always so serious, so absorbed in whatever he’s doing, so quiet, so indifferent. The child seems not to even notice her presence, but when she walks away down the hallway, he noiselessly gets up and watches her as she enters her bedroom. He takes four steps and stops in the precise spot where the mirror of the coat rack reflects off the one on the closet door, in which Maisabé is looking at herself. She takes out a red paper bag and empties it on the bed. Out falls a pink lace bra and panties. She stops and stares at them, a strange smile on her face. She drops the shower towel she has wrapped around her, puts on the underwear and looks at herself in the mirror, making a pout that wants very much to be sensual. The boy returns to his room.
Maisabé finishes getting dressed. From the back of a drawer she pulls out a small blue perfume bottle and a blood-red lipstick and puts them both in her purse. She puts on a jacket and calls to Aníbal. They leave the building. Sitting at a table at the bar on the corner, Leonardo Giribaldi watches them cross the street and turn the corner toward the stop where they’ll catch the bus to the parish church. He doesn’t want to see them or for them to see him. He pays for his coffee, walks out, crosses the street and enters the building.

 

Ten minutes later Maisabé and Aníbal enter the patio of the parish church. Father Roberto, who prefers to be called just plain Roberto, is conversing with some other mothers. As usual when she sees him, Maisabé feels a shiver up and down her spine and a hot blush on her cheeks. He notices it and gives her a scintillating look. Aníbal lets go of her hand and walks toward the catechism classroom, as if he were on his way to the gallows. Graciela is hogging Roberto’s attention, jabbering on and on like a blonde parrot. Maisabé walks toward them but Leonor stops her on the way. She wants to invite Aníbal to her son’s birthday party. She hands her an invitation decorated with little teddy bears and colourful balloons. Roberto is wearing jeans and a white shirt. The jeans are bell-bottoms, already out of fashion, but they look fantastic on him. Maisabé imagines him naked and herself in her new underwear, in front of him, under him, on top of him. As if he’d heard her summons, he starts to walk toward her. Her knees are shaking. Roberto touches her arm gently, Maisabé’s skin absorbs the warmth from his hand as desert sands do from the sun. She blinks slowly – in fact, she
wants to close her eyes so as to better hear the music of his words. When she opens them, she sees only his mouth. A thin line of saliva, which she longs to lick, gleams between his lips. Roberto is looking deeply into her eyes. Graciela approaches. She brazenly takes his hand and tells him that there’s something she must show him.
What an idiot I was!
When Roberto asked who would help him organize the bazaar, Maisabé was daydreaming, just like now, and that fake blonde beat her to it. Now that bitch has the perfect excuse to see him five times a week. In addition, with all that rushing around, she forgot to put on her perfume and lipstick. Now it’s too late, now there’s no point.

She sits down alone on one of the benches on the patio and keeps her eyes glued on the closed door of the sacristy. She’s daydreaming. A short while later the door opens and the two of them emerge. Her hair is mussed, just a little, almost nothing. The buckle on Roberto’s belt has slid a little to the right. She wonders if they were making out in there, and immediately the scene plays itself out in her imagination. The two of them on the oak desk, surrounded by sorrowful images of saints, passionately groping each other, kissing with serpentine tongues, hands burrowing under clothing, moaning and, suddenly, surprise surprise, she sees herself in the same scene, approaching them, squeezing in between those two bodies that press against hers… She opens her eyes and realizes that her new panties are moist. From the other side of the patio, Roberto is looking at her. She feels her face flushing, she looks down and pretends to be looking for something in her bag, but the only thing she finds in there is her lipstick.

The children come out of the classroom and run around the patio, chirping like little birds. Aníbal is the only one who doesn’t join in. He walks up to her and stares, as if he knew. The other mothers stand around and listen attentively to the priest, who talks to them with a big smile and calm, deliberate gestures. Maisabé gives a sad wave and moves toward the door. Roberto excuses himself and intercepts her. He looks at Aníbal, tenderly caressing his head. Maisabé stares at those voluptuous fingers lingering on the child’s hair. With one quick move, Aníbal repels his touch.

 

 

The child looks at them with total indifference and walks away.

 

 

Roberto’s eyes are shining as if he’d been reading her thoughts this whole time. Or could she be imagining it?

 

 

Roberto touches her hand and smiles. She quickly nods and walks to the door. She feels like she’s levitating, just as she did the first time she met him.

 

Aníbal looks out the window of the bus. He watches the people walking down the street. He counts, he looks around, he plays.

 

 

Sitting next to him, Maisabé stares dreamily at the floor, happy and guilt-ridden for what she is feeling. The bus starts filling up. She watches the dance of the passengers’ feet as they squeeze more and more tightly into the aisle, their bodies pressing and rubbing against each other to the rhythm of the swaying, the braking, the potholes. She feels exhausted. She puts her hand in the pocket where she carries her rosary and turns it around with her fingers as she does when she prays, but she isn’t praying, she just uses it to quiet the trembling in her hand or, at least, to simulate prayer. What she wants to do is think about Roberto.

 

 

She snaps to. Aníbal has never called her Mama, or Maisabé, as everyone else calls her, not even María Isabel, as she was baptized. He calls her plain María. He’s got something with names; he doesn’t call Giri “Papa” or “Leo”, either. He calls him Giri, like his fellow officers do, or Sir, like the soldiers under his command, when he had some. If adults ask him his name, he doesn’t answer, he pretends he’s deaf or he looks at her, so she’ll answer for him. She has, however, been told that when children at school or church ask him his name, he says Juan. Once she asked him why, and he refused to answer. He always does what he’s asked, he never talks back, or complains, he obeys as if his life depended on it. At two, when he
was asked for a kiss, he’d say, “All done”; at four he began to dress himself; at six he was already deciding what he would wear every day. He wants to do everything by himself and seems vexed when someone offers to help. He does well in school, not the best student but not the worst, staying right in the middle of the curve where he is protected on both ends from the mediocrity of his teachers. He gets along well with his classmates, and he’s fairly popular, which strikes the teachers as odd, because he never smiles or laughs with adults, whom he keeps under strict surveillance. Many of them feel intimidated by his eyes that seem to burrow into them and rummage through all their secrets.