David Unger - The Mastermind

As soon as she opens the door, Maryam falls into his arms, sobbing against his shoulders.

“What’s wrong, my love?”

“I told Samir I’m leaving him. He was awful, simply awful. He called me a whore. He knows all about us. Samir won’t give me a divorce.”

Guillermo strokes her thick hair, trying to calm her down. “I didn’t realize you were going to tell him about us straight out. I thought you would first ask him to move out.”

“There was this romantic Arabic music playing. . It just came out of me. If you had been there, you would understand.” She begins rubbing the small of his back, and his buttocks, to calm herself down. Touching his body helps anchor her to their reality. Guillermo really does exist. “Please hold me,” she cries.

He wraps his arms around her, then moves back and kisses her lips, which still have the peppermint taste of the toothpaste she dabbed in her mouth before coming up. He feels a stirring in his groin, but his mind is elsewhere, plotting and calculating. He pulls away from Maryam and says: “There’s nothing more I want to do than make love to you, but I think it’s better if we talk.”

Maryam stares at him, her eyes burning wet. “I need a drink. Something strong.”

Guillermo obliges and goes into his kitchen to get a bottle of tequila. He opens a cabinet and grabs a Don Julio Reposado, and fills two shot glasses to the top. He walks over to where Maryam is sitting on the small sofa he bought a week earlier. He sits beside her, looks her in the eyes, and clinks. “To us. To the road that has brought us together. To the long road that will take us away from this mess.”

As they sit closely, Maryam tells him about her exchange with Samir, the full story, all the details, all the insults. The whole time Guillermo’s shaking his head. He’s disgusted by Samir’s comments. At the same time he’s trying to figure out their next move. He’s a lawyer, after all: he should come up with a plan, a strategy, as he does for his clients. But his mind draws a blank. Twenty years of legal experience have not prepared him for the affairs of the human heart.

“Oh, Guillermo,” Maryam sighs, clasping him again, “what are we going to do?”

“I don’t think it’s wise for you to stay with him. Especially if you are trying to get a separation and a divorce. Samir sounds angry and vindictive.”

“I’m afraid he is.”

“Can you go live with your father until we straighten out this situation?”

Maryam takes a long sip of her drink and winces. “No, I don’t want to get him involved in that way. It would put him in an awkward situation within the Lebanese community, and, well, it would strengthen Samir by supporting his argument that my father somehow brought you and me together. And frankly, I don’t even know if my father would take me in. You know, in many ways he is just like Samir — tough and very moral — and I don’t think he will be very happy when he finds out about us.”

“I think you’re probably right. It’s one thing to enjoy working with your lawyer, another to have him carry on an affair with your own daughter right under your nose.”

“I hate the power that men have over women.”

Guillermo would like to defend his gender, but really doesn’t know what to say. He is no exemplary specimen of the judiciousness of the masculine sex. His attitude, he realizes, has always been as paternalistic and sexist as those of both Ibrahim and Samir. “And what if we rent the Plazuela España apartment again?”

Maryam shakes her head. “That will be too expensive and will give Samir ammunition to use against me. No, I will simply move into the guest room in our apartment. There are two twin beds there. Samir is many ugly things, but he will respect my privacy. My unwillingness to move out will strengthen my position at home by showing everyone that I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I don’t think that makes any sense. The simplest thing would be to move out and begin living separate lives—”

“If I separate from him, Samir will make my life hell. I will be ostracized by the whole Lebanese community. Everyone will believe him because he is a man, an elder. Even if he says nothing about us, he will be seen as a victim of his scheming and lying young wife. And I will be no better than a harlot.”

“I want to live with you, Maryam, you know that. But I am willing to wait. I am very disciplined. I can wait a long time.”

Maryam smiles at this. The one thing she most loves about Guillermo is that he knows how to wait: he can hold back his orgasm for hours, urge her forward, let her use him for her pleasure, over and over, top, bottom, from the back. Yes, he can wait for a long time. For anything. She is sure of that. Whether it is making love or waiting for her to be free.

They start kissing on the couch and then roll down to the brown shag rug on the parquet floor. There is ferocity to their lovemaking: strong, violent, a kind of expiating rhythm to it. And when he finishes inside her, they lay together, intertwined.

“I wish I had met you twenty-five years ago,” he says, “before I met Rosa Esther.”

“I would have been barely fourteen! I wouldn’t have been interested in an old man like you,” she replies, and plants a big kiss on his cheek.

And afterward, after more cries and tears, as they both lie half covered by scattered items of clothing on the floor, Guillermo says: “We don’t know what’s going to happen next, my love. I want to be with you. We should be celebrating because we are closer than ever to being together. But this is Guatemala and anything can go wrong. We need to plan, consider all the possible outcomes, in case we are forced to separate. Samir’s unpredictable. You may not have noticed, but I suspect there are people out there monitoring our movements. I felt it the first time we met at the Centro Vasco. There was this blue Hyundai in the lot—”

Maryam kisses his cheek again. “I know you’re always looking over your shoulder.”

Guillermo nods. “For good reason. We need to be even more strategic now because we’re in a position of weakness. If something happens, we need to set up a place for us to meet secretly.”

“I’m tired of letting my mind rule my heart, Guillermo.”

He shushes her. “I’m not talking about that.”

“So should we simply say goodbye and plan to meet in Paris next Christmas?”

“Very funny. We don’t have to separate immediately.”

“Not with what’s going on with Samir?” Maryam looks at her tequila but doesn’t reach for it.

“Look, your father hasn’t wanted to worry you, but he’s been getting more threatening phone calls because of his work exposing Banurbano, although it may have something to do with the way he is managing the textile factory. I don’t know.”

Maryam’s eyes well up again. “Why did he ever accept that appointment? My father is so stubborn.”

“He is, but I’m his lawyer and the president wouldn’t dare touch him. I’m pretty sure of that. But, of course, there are spies.”

“So what’s our master plan?”

Guillermo gets up off the floor and goes over to the table. He pours more tequila into his glass and brings back to Maryam what is left of hers. “I suggest a less romantic place than Paris to meet. A town closer to home. Maybe in El Salvador. There’s this ugly little seaside town, La Libertad, about forty-five minutes from the capital. There’s really nothing there, an ugly church on the main square. If anything should happen, we can plan to meet there, in front of the church, on the first of May. No phone calls, no text or e-mail messages between us, because our movements will be monitored. Should anything come between us, let’s meet there starting next year and every May 1 after that.”