Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

I went out, walking quickly to the darkened lot. I got there in time to see her get into her Nissan. The offices upstairs where Flaco worked were dark. I looked for his silver Volvo, but I didn’t see it. I took a taxi and tried to follow the Nissan, but I lost it after three blocks. When I went into my apartment in the Tajamar Towers I went straight to the bathroom. There was a sharp pain gouging my insides.

“Why are you in such a bad mood?” Flaco says the next day. “Chewing your fingernail is not an answer,” he said, with laughing eyes. A few days later, very early, I saw him kissing Pancha in his silver Volvo. They came in together and he was looking at her. I swore I would break it off with him. And I waited for him. The fucker didn’t even come to my apartment that afternoon.

Then, without thinking about it, the next afternoon I went up to the second floor and presented myself in his office. He ushered me in with that friendly, affectionate manner of his. I sat in the chair facing his desk. As soon as I had him in front of me and felt him looking into my eyes with that faint, shy smile, I despaired. I imagined him looking at Pancha that way and it drove me crazy. Tears came to my eyes, I brought my hands to my face; I fell, tears streaming, from the chair onto the rough carpet that covered the floor of his office. I lay there face down and he came over, murmuring in my ear, telling me the same things, I was sure, that he said to Pancha. He tried to kiss me, to get me to turn my face to him, but I wouldn’t let him, I wouldn’t, not for anything.

Suddenly I felt his strong fingers on my spine; he pressed on it and it cracked, and he pushed on it again, higher up, and it cracked again. They were the same hands, I thought once again, that could kill me with a single, silent blow. It was still a reassuring feeling. I got up and he kissed me on the mouth. I returned the kiss, but when I felt his hand moving up my thigh I pushed him away and left his office.

He didn’t call me. I waited, though. I spent so many afternoons, and entire Saturdays and Sundays, in my apartment in case he showed up. Weeks went by.

Her eyes full of excitement, Anita told me about Leila, her friend from school, whose mother had a room full of doors and those doors were closets where she kept all her clothes. It was one of those languid Saturdays during that time of my life. Anita, if she was with me, could turn those days into something wonderful or disastrous. Because if she had a tantrum for some reason, there was nothing I could do except bring her back to my mother’s house.

Leila’s mother, she told me that day, is the Moroccan ambassador. And Leila, when her mother isn’t home, takes some little keys out from where she hides them among her gloves, and with those little keys she opens the safe. And the safe is in another closet, the shoe closet. Leila’s mother has thousands of shoes, and she keeps them in their boxes and behind the boxes is the safe. Anita helped her move the shoeboxes very carefully. Leila opened the safe and took out mountains of rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings that belonged to her mother. “It’s like a princess’s treasure,” she says smiling, her face radiant with happiness.

“Like a chest in Ali Baba’s cave,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “And Leila,” she says, “puts them on and looks at herself in the mirror.” And with her hands she draws pictures in the air of those jewels that shone on her friend’s hands, her neck, her ears. “She looks like a real live princess, Mama!” Sometimes, she let Anita wear a pearl necklace.

“Mama,” she said, filled with enthusiasm. “When are you going to show me your rings and earrings and bracelets?” I looked at her, surprised. “Because you have all those things hidden away, too. And I know where.” She ran to my room, opened the closet, and showed me the little safe built into the wall. “Come on, open it, Mama. I want to see your rings and bracelets.” I put my hands on her shoulders. I thought about the darkness of my CZ at rest. As always, minutes before Anita arrived, I had put it in there with my documents from Central.

“No,” I told her. “I don’t have jewels, Anita.”

“But Mama, what do you keep in there, then?”

“Letters,” I told her. “Documents.”

“Love letters, Mama? Letters my father wrote to you?” And Anita looked at me with rounded eyes. “Let me see them, Mama. Mama. . Let me see what my dad’s handwriting looked like.”

“Another time, Anita.”

“Mama, please!” I closed the closet door.

The night when Flaco finally came, without warning as always, I had my plan ready and decided on: I would flirt like a crazy person and then, nothing. So he’d be left high and dry, so he’d be left longing for me. He brought a bottle of Absolut vodka and a little jar of Iranian beluga caviar. He was one of those who said the Russians couldn’t even get vodka right; only guns. Hence the Absolut. We sat down, and by the second Swedish vodka we were kissing and kissing, and he was frantically pulling off my shirt and jeans and everything else. I couldn’t bear the idea that Pancha had slept with him. How was it possible, when I was so much better than her?

I was lying on the sofa, on my back. He knelt down in front of me. He placed me there, and I knew what for. And I let him do it. And I opened myself and turned my hips in search of his thirsty tongue. And he sunk his fingers in. And I touched my breasts. And he returned with an insatiable tongue. I brought my hands down. And suddenly the rhythm of my body seized hold of me, it broke away from my control and I came, I came suddenly and completely. Afterward I started to cry.

He doesn’t understand. He wants me to stop crying. Why? Why doesn’t he let me cry if I want to cry? He gets mad. He won’t leave me alone. There’s nothing to explain. I give up. I say to him: “Why do you have this power over me? You do something like that to me, and I come like an idiot. That power I’ve given you is humiliating.” He starts to laugh, and he pulls my hair away from my face.

“You’re pretty,” he tells me, after inspecting me with his playful, tender, ironic gaze. That’s it: You’re pretty. That damned son of a bitch knows that when he gives me that look, I melt.

“I know,” I tell him. “I’m going to find another man who will make me forget about you.”

He says: “You’ll wish the sex was as good with him as it is with me.”

I tell him: “I’m the one who knows how to fuck, I’ll teach him everything.” He laughs. “Also, as you know, he’ll be rich,” I tell him. “He’ll have tons of cash.” He laughs less loudly, now. I say: “There comes a time when a man’s money becomes almost the only thing that matters to a woman.” He’s not laughing anymore.

A week later Flaco Artaza had already been promoted. The positive evaluation after the “elimination”—the term they used — of the Spartan and Max got him that. Two very hard blows for Red Ax. They took him out of Central and installed him in Military Intelligence. It was what he wanted. Flaco left Central behind and he vanished from my life without even saying good-bye. Do I need to tell you how I felt?

But after about four months he called and invited me to lunch. I got into my red Nissan in the parking lot, and when I started it up, I saw. . What? But, it’s Macha! He was a few yards away from me walking with his slight limp, without his Ray Bans and escorted by six armed men. Two of them carried long guns. They stopped next to a black Chevrolet four-door with tinted windows that I’d never seen in the parking lot before.

The one in front went over to Macha and spoke to him. He was a dark, thick guy with a short moustache. I had my windows rolled up so I couldn’t hear, but I saw. What I mean is, I saw Macha put his hand behind him, to his belt under his dark leather jacket. I watched with my own eyes as he handed over his CZ. He did it without any ceremony, like a person returning the keys to a car. Then I saw how he let himself be cuffed, his hands tamely behind him, putting up no resistance. The black Chevrolet with tinted windows sped off with him in it, followed by a Peugeot fake taxi.