The Good Suicides (31 page)

It was a large van, almost a minibus, with room for eight people. If they’d decided burying the dogs was the responsibility of the whole group, the most logical thing would be that they all go together, despite neither Amanda Bonet, nor Sílvia, nor Manel having a tool in their hands. Dolors Vinyals seemed to read his mind, because she added, “They all worked together. The women too. Although they were the most tired: they were still complaining the following day. They were pulling faces.”

They must have felt proud, thought Héctor: at the end of the day they’d spent their free afternoon doing something unpleasant just because they thought it right. Surely they’d returned tired but happy.

Lola had said little, but suddenly she turned to Señora Vinyals.

“Dolors—may I call you Dolors? I just realized that we have the same name.”

“Of course, dear. Lola, Dolors, Lolita—it’s not a name people have these days. There’s no twenty-year-old girls named so, at least around here.”

“It’s true,” agreed Lola, smiling. “Less and less. Before, when you said they were strange, were you just referring to them complaining more than others?”

“Oh no. Not only that. That had gone out of my head. It was because of the bikes.”

“Bicycles?” asked Lola.

Héctor let them talk without interrupting.

“The boys, our sons, woke us on Sunday morning saying the bikes had been stolen. Such a row … They were good bikes, and expensive too. They cost us a fortune and they were new. Joan and I thought we would have to buy them new ones, but when I came to say good-bye to the group, the bikes were here.”

“They’d taken them? Without permission?” Lola’s voice sounded surprised.

“Not exactly without permission. When they arrived we showed them where we lived, in case they needed anything, and told them that if they wanted to use them to go for a ride they were welcome to. Some do, but they tell us they’re taking them, of course.”

“Did they explain at all?”

“A young dark-haired man, very good-looking, told me that he and another guy had decided to go for a ride first thing Sunday morning and they didn’t want to wake us. He apologized, poor boy, and at the end of the day it didn’t really matter, although I couldn’t help telling him he’d given the boys a good fright. They could have at least left a note. But I tell you, give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. That’s how it goes, isn’t it?”

“Were the bikes in good condition?” inquired Héctor, who didn’t want the conversation to lapse into clichés and sayings.

“As always. It’s not as if my boys polish them after using them, believe me.”

She had little more to add. Héctor and Lola looked over the house in five minutes and, after thanking Señora Vinyals, they went to get the car. Before leaving, Héctor wanted to see the cork tree. Even without dogs. And more than anything he wanted to straighten out his thoughts and find a logical solution to the whole business.

For the first time in his life, César was happy to barge into Sílvia’s apartment in her absence. It wasn’t the day he usually came, but he’d come back very tired from seeing Octavi the night before and went straight to his own house. He needed to think, analyze everything.

César entered and shut the door firmly. Without knowing, he sensed Emma was there, so he headed for her bedroom with a concrete aim. He hadn’t seen her since the previous Sunday, that uncomfortable day, plagued by silences and the memory of what had happened in the early hours. César hadn’t completely lied when he told Brais he preferred to spit out remorse rather than let it take root within him, like a weed; however, he was aware that the situation had become very delicate. He wasn’t especially skillful at dealing with people, but he had to find a way of ensuring Emma’s silence.

The girl’s bedroom door was open. Sitting in front of the computer, Emma seemed absorbed in what she had up on screen—maybe a chat with some friend. He knocked on the door, suddenly nervous. She saw him reflected on the screen and turned, slowly, with a slightly annoyed expression on her face.

“Here already? It’s not Tuesday …”

César didn’t really know what that meant; the teenager’s tone rattled him. It was as if nothing had happened.

“Emma, can we talk?”

She smiled inwardly, closed the chat window and turned her chair around, legs slightly apart.

“Of course. Whatever you say.” She smiled. “After all, you’ll be like a father in a few months.”

César detested this perverse child manner. He’d come planning to treat her like a woman and found this shameless version of Lolita.

“Emma, stop playing around. This is serious.”

“Whoa, what have I done now?”

She brought her legs together and crossed her arms. “Okay, tell me—I’m busy, you know? And you should be at work at this time. Mama is going to put you on a warning if you keep leaving the warehouse so early.”

César was unable to work out if she chose her words deliberately to humiliate him, or if they simply occurred to her spontaneously. In any case, she managed to offend him, above all with the stress she’d put on words like “warning” and “warehouse.” At the same time he realized she was provoking him, challenging him to a game he didn’t want to play. Not anymore. Not that day or ever.

“I won’t bother you for long. I don’t want you to say it’s my fault you haven’t finished your homework.”

His attempt at being ironic clashed with the evident truth that she, at sixteen, was still at the age of having homework. Emma, however, was generous enough to make no comment, although her expression beat any contemptuous reply she could give him.

“I want to talk about what you said the other day. About Sara Mahler.”

César had the satisfaction, indeed, of seeing her confused. He didn’t only want to speak of that, of course, although since the day before, since the conversation with Brais in the car, something he’d said had been going around in his mind: “At least you can talk about it with Sílvia.”

Emma rose from the chair, as if she were bored of the subject, and turned to the door.

“Do you really want to talk about this Sara?” she asked, smiling, as she made as if to caress his cheek.

“Yes.” And in a move he instantly regretted, he grabbed her wrist. Not hurting her, just so the caress remained in the air. “Emma, you have to tell me what the hell you heard. Don’t lie to me. It’s very important.”

“Let go.”

He paid no attention. On the contrary, he pressed a little harder.

“Answer me, Emma!”

“ ‘Answer, Emma.’ ‘Shut up, Emma.’ You’re the same as Mama. Why not ‘
Sit
, Emma’? Do you think I’m your pet?”

César then grabbed her by both arms and pushed her against the wall.

“Fuck, answer!”

Looking away, so as not to give him what he wanted, she answered: “Sara. Loyal Sara. We can trust her. Sara is trustworthy …”

His blood turned cold as he recognized sentences he and Sílvia had used in the intimacy of the bedroom.

“You can hear everything, César. From Pol’s room you can hear everything and he doesn’t mind swapping with me for a night.” She laughed. “You can even hear your pathetic attempts at fucking.”

He pushed her backward again. Her head ricocheted off the white wall.

“You brute!”

César realized he’d hurt her. The impact had resonated through the empty apartment and, to his dismay, Emma’s eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Emma, this is more serious than you think … Please, tell me what you heard.”

“You hurt me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“And what did you mean?”

They were dangerously close once again, and the scent of Emma was an addiction he found hard to resist. Just one kiss, one more. The last, he promised himself.

Their tongues caressed, licked each other; their lips collided at the same time César’s hands fell on her breasts. She separated their lips, just for an instant, to catch her breath. To moan, because she already knew these gasps aroused him.

He quelled the moan with another more voracious, furious kiss, and they both closed their eyes. Tongues seeking one another, hands burning. They forgot what they’d been discussing, where they were, who they were. They were just breathing, kissing, touching, smelling.

Not for a moment noticing that they weren’t alone.

Sílvia had come in a few minutes before, preoccupied by the threatening phone call she’d received after lunch. The same voice, the same financial demands. And while they spoke, Sílvia couldn’t get the image of Amanda, dead in a white bed, out of her mind. As soon as the phone call ended, she felt nauseated; she went to the company bathroom and vomited up her breakfast as well as lunch, then felt too sick to stay at work. In fact, she felt so ill that for a moment, finding that scene, she thought it was a product of her fever. It wasn’t. No dream was so real. It was César and Emma, in flesh and blood. About to fuck, kissing each other as no one had kissed her in years. So involved in the act that they hadn’t even seen or heard her, until Sílvia, unable to react any other way, started laughing. And it was that bitter, unnatural laugh that made the lovers stop. They remained in an embrace but immobile, refusing to open their eyes; keeping them closed a little longer, not to have to see. It was enough to hear that laugh, that rain of rusty nails that pinned them to the wall as if they were an erotic photo, a poster in bad taste that would shortly be taken down, torn in two and thrown in the garbage.

The journey back to Barcelona was more relaxed. It was influenced by the fact that they’d stopped to have a late lunch in a highway restaurant, and that Señora Vinyals’ tale opened up a whole series of possibilities, although few certainties. When they got back into the car it was already after five, and Héctor accelerated a little. He wanted to get back to the station in time to see Fort and find out firsthand if there was any news. Curiously, the animated conversation they’d kept up over lunch died as soon as he took the wheel. Lola was looking out of the window and he watched her from the corner of his eye. She’d cut her hair, but other than that she’d changed very little in those seven years. She’d always been attractive, although her style was in such contrast to Ruth’s that it begged the question how the same man could fall in love with two such different women.

“You’re the same.” His thought had been expressed aloud without his even noticing.

“Don’t believe it,” she replied, not looking away from the window. “Just seems so.”

“How are you? Now we have more than seven minutes to talk … Tell me, how are things?”

“I suppose they could be worse. And better too. In short, I’ve no complaints. And you?”

He lit a cigarette before answering; this time he didn’t ask permission to do so.

“Let’s just say I’ve been better and been worse as well,” he finally answered.

“I heard about Ruth. I’m sorry, truly.”

The mention of that name was a spell of silence, but this time it was Lola who broke it.

“I came to Barcelona to interview her. Shortly after you separated.”

Héctor was surprised.

“I didn’t know you did those kinds of articles.”

“Welcome to the profile of the new journalist,” she said sarcastically. “Or more accurately, as it states on my card: ‘Content Provider.’ Watch out—any day you’ll stop being an inspector and become an ‘Order Provider’ or something.” There was a trace of bitterness in her voice that she didn’t bother to conceal. “Everything has changed so much. And I fear there’s worse to come. Don’t you see it?” For the first time in a while, she turned toward him. “We’ve been living in a kind of limbo, Héctor, but this limbo won’t be the waiting room for heaven—”

“Have you become religious?” he joked.

“No! I don’t think my DNA would permit it; I must be immune to spirituality. Even the incense in shops that sell candles and buddhas makes me feel sick. No, I’m talking about a real hell: poverty, extremism, fear … Perhaps getting older is making me a pessimist, but nothing has any meaning in this country anymore: not the left, only so in name; not the right that calls itself moderate; not the banks that get more benefits than businesses.” She smiled. “Not the employers who send their employees to spend a few days in the country as if they are their children, as if they really matter. Too much fun, Héctor, too many lies we all believed because they were pleasant. Because they said what we wanted to hear.”

Lola was quiet for a moment or two and then took up the initial subject again.

“Like I said, I met Ruth. She was a charming woman. Throughout the whole interview I kept wondering if she knew about us or not, and I left without coming to a conclusion.”

“She knew,” said Héctor. “I told her. When—”

“When you left me. Say it. It’s been seven years, I’m not going to start crying.”

They were approaching Barcelona. The traffic became heavier and the feeling of intimacy was evaporating.

“We couldn’t go on as we were. It was becoming too … intense. If it’s any consolation, Ruth ended up leaving me.”

“It’s no consolation.” Lola’s voice was so serious, so sad, that Héctor took his eyes off the highway to turn toward her. “You know why? Not because I’m a saint, exactly. While preparing for the interview with Ruth I heard you had separated, she had another partner, and I knew you and I could never be together again without me feeling like an obligatory substitute. A replacement forced by events.”

Héctor took his hand off the wheel and sought hers. He couldn’t help it. Lola didn’t take hers away.

“Héctor—I left Barcelona, I got over us little by little; I forced myself to stop envying Ruth, to forget you.”

He wanted to kiss her. Park the car on some corner and embrace her. Go to her hotel and undress her slowly. Caress her until those seven years apart were erased. She looked him in the eyes and understood.

It came out softly, but firmly. “No nostalgic fucks, Héctor. They’re hideously depressing. There was a time when I wouldn’t have been able to refuse. But now I can. And you know why? Because there is only one truth and I don’t want to deceive myself. You had a choice and you made it. I lost and Ruth won. The match ended there.”