Giles Blunt - Breaking Lorca

But the fantasy had stayed with him and flowered into detail over the following days. Victor saw himself sitting next to Lorca in the darkened theatre, saw the two of them laughing at amusing antics onscreen, felt her fingers brush against his in the popcorn bag. Reflections from the screen cast a silvery glow on Lorca’s hair, and when Victor reached for her hand, she gave his an answering squeeze.

But three dollars. She might think he valued her cheaply. She might think he had no class. Of course, she didn’t have to know it cost only three dollars. He could buy the tickets ahead of time and maybe distract her a little as they entered.

Saturday night, eight o’clock. For once, Victor was grateful that the chef’s nephew worked Saturday nights.

He arrived at the Viera house on the dot of eight. Lorca greeted him at the door, wearing a long patterned skirt and a deep red blouse that was very flattering.

“Ignacio,” she said. “You are so good to come when I have been so awful. I’m very glad you’re here.” Her attire was so colourful, her manner so bright, that Victor’s mood changed immediately from apprehension to confidence.

Viera was in the living room, watching a baseball game. He bounced out of his chair and clicked off the TV the moment Victor came in. “Just in time for a beer, Ignacio. I was about to pour one for myself. Come in, come in, make yourself at home.”

Victor followed him into the kitchen, where Helen Viera was chopping vegetables and tossing them into a pot. “Well, well, it’s our goodwill ambassador from El Salvador,” she said. “This is an honour.”

Victor couldn’t be sure if she was making fun of him, but perhaps that edgy feeling came from the clack, clack, clack of her knife. “It smells wonderful, Helen. I hope this is good enough to go with it.” He handed her a bottle of wine. The man in the store had assured him it would be appropriate with just about anything.

“Oh, we’re humble folk here,” Helen said. “I’m sure it will be more than adequate.”

Viera took the bottle and examined the label. “ Graves . Oh, yes, this is a very good wine. We should uncork it now and let it breathe.”

Viera busied himself searching for a corkscrew. Lorca reached into the fridge and opened a beer, handing it to Victor. “He’s forgotten you. Miguel’s head can contain only one thought at a time.”

“Huh,” said Helen. “Just what you want in a lawyer.”

“It means he’s at least honest, Helen. More lawyers should be like him.”

“Lawyers aren’t paid to be honest.”

“You hear how they talk about me?” Viera said in the tone of the beleaguered man of the house. “If I can manage this without breaking the cork, it will be my biggest achievement of the day.” The corkscrew was a complicated tool with arms that lifted like wings as Viera twisted it. After much careful but noisy manoeuvring, he managed to extract the cork. “Hah! Success!” He sniffed the mouth of the bottle. “Oh, yes. We shall enjoy this.”

Helen Viera shook her head, the corners of her mouth turning white. Victor saw how Viera’s relentless cheer could grate. Was it natural to him? Or had he learned it as a counter to his wife’s attitude, to Lorca’s high-voltage outbursts? Of the responses available to a man at close quarters with such women, relentless cheer may well have been the best.

Helen shooed them out of the kitchen, and they sat in the living room in a sudden shy silence. This Viera rushed to fill with a not very interesting story about an immigration officer who had been found to be corrupt. Lorca sat staring into her drink, swirling her glass slowly as if she had lost something in it.

“I wonder where Bob is,” Viera said when the room was once again silent. “Lorca? Did you hear me?”

“I’m sorry. What did you say, Miguel?”

“Michael,” he corrected her. “I said I wonder where Bob is.”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is Bob?” Victor asked brightly, as if the prospect of meeting someone with that name were a particularly happy one. In fact, he was a little deflated to learn he was not the Vieras’ only guest.

“Bob?” Viera said. “Bob runs the support group Lorca goes to. I haven’t met him yet, but I hear only good things. Tell Ignacio about him, Lorca.”

Lorca didn’t look up.

“Lorca? Can you tell Ignacio a little about him?”

“I don’t want to right now.” Her voice, so cheerful just moments ago, was now husky with dismay, as if she were ashamed of having been happy.

“Oh, come on, little sister, cheer up.”

Victor stared at his shoes, which he had spent a long time polishing. They were second-hand-all his clothes were second-hand, sifted from the musty counters of Salvation Army outlets-and the shoes pinched his feet. He wanted to take them off, but then they would see the holes in his socks.

The doorbell rang and Lorca sprang up to answer it. The next few moments, when Victor recalled them later, were a mosaic of discordant images: Lorca flying to the door, a red blur in her rush to answer it, the door opening, and a broad, ungainly man with a profuse brown beard taking up the entire living room, booming out greetings, shrugging off an overcoat the size of a tarp. He shook first Viera’s hand, then Victor’s, squeezing his fingers in one hairy fist, gripping his bicep with the other. Comrade! the gesture seemed to say. Courage!

“Bob Wyatt!” he boomed. “Glad to know you, Ignacio!” Then, turning with an uptilt of the beard and a ferocious sniffing: “Oh, something smells fabulous! Who’s in the kitchen! Who’s in that kitchen cooking up a storm! There’s some culinary artist doing very creative things in there, and I want to meet her.” He seemed to be everywhere at once, the great smooth boulder of his back turning this way and that, like a bear’s. Now he was in the kitchen booming out compliments to Helen before he’d even been introduced. “Bob Wyatt! Lorca’s friend from TVA! Great to meet you! Boy, this is a treat for me! I’m the worst cook in the state! I spend my life in restaurants-if you can call ’em that-places run by guys named Aristotle and Cosmos. Terrible!”

Victor had never met such a loud man; not even his uncle was so loud. Confidence blasted from every inch of him-from the heroic bush of his beard to the size-thirteen cowboy boots on his feet. And that wall-shaking voice, somewhere between trombone and timpani.

“How was your trip to Washington?” Lorca asked when he was settled into a chair with a beer.

“Splendid!” he cried. “Absolutely splendid! Tick, tack, tock! Everything turned over like clockwork. I wish every meeting went that well. I could retire and go fishing!”

Victor pictured him catching a salmon in his great paw.

“What were you doing in Washington?” Viera asked.

“Groundwork. Project we’ve got coming up. You know about the certification hearings? Aid to El Salvador?”

“A little. Military aid, right?”

“Right. Every six months the administration has to satisfy Congress that El Salvador’s making progress in land reform and human rights. If they fail, that’s fifty million dollars the El Salvador military doesn’t get.”

“It’s not the President who decides?”

“Nope. It’s the Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Relations Committee.” The words rolled easily off his tongue, as if the corridors of power were his home address.

“You sound like you know your way around,” Viera said. “You go there a lot?”

“Nah. Not anymore. Used to. Used to be an organizer.”

“Organizer?” The English word was a new one to Victor.

“Labour organizer. Political side. Getting people out to vote. Believe me, it was just as glamorous as it sounds. I was working the phones night and day.”