The House of Wolfe (17 page)

Who's Espanto? Jessie asks.

Luz shrugs and says, The head chief, maybe? She tells Jessie that Rubio then came up to the room to fill a water bottle and when he saw Aldo out cold and with that big swollen cheek he looked angry. Gallo told him it was the Apache's doing, not theirs, and was probably just a mild concussion. Rubio didn't say anything, just filled the bottle and left.

The next time he came up, Luz says, he had you with him.

José stirs on his cot, keeping his back to the room.

He hasn't said a word from the time we were taken, Luz says. Hasn't eaten, hasn't had to pee. Nobody's hit him, though, thank God.

Cabrito starts arguing about a play Gallo has made in their card game and Gallo laughs and says it was perfectly legitimate and if he doesn't think so he should learn the rules.

Jessie puts the bowl aside and says, Excuse me, addressing Gallo, and asks him if she may use the toilet. Gallo flicks a hand for her to go ahead.

She goes in the bathroom and shuts the door, which has no lock. It's a small room with a remnant odor of Cabrito's visit, and it's colder in here than in the larger room. There's a small sink under a frame absent its mirror. A toilet, a couple of rolls of paper towels. And a high window framing a dark gray sky. The window's at least a foot and a half wide, by her estimate, and maybe a little higher. The sill a half foot above her head, the top of the frame two feet from the ceiling. A swing-in sash with four square panes, two of them missing their glass, hence the greater coldness of the room.

She can fit through there! A man couldn't, or even most women, but
she
can. She knows she can! Take some doing, because she'd have to go out feetfirst and how on earth can she do that?
Somehow,
that's how. Just a matter of body torsions and contractions, some arm strength. . . .

Easy, girl, she thinks. Might be sealed shut.

On tiptoes, she reaches up to the sash lock and it turns easily in her fingers and she opens the window to the right like the back cover of a book. She'll need a ledge or something on the outside wall below the window to set her feet on, so she can then maybe sidle her way over to the end of the house and. . . . Quit dreaming, for Christ's sake, she thinks, and take a look.

She pulls herself up on the sill like she's doing a chin-up, assisted by the rough texture of the concrete block wall that gives good purchase to her socked toes. The effort infuriates every sore muscle in her body, but she's able to work her elbows up over the sill and poke her head out. The rain dampens her hair and face as she looks out on a long muddy alleyway of gated concrete walls and lined with trash and garbage containers of all sizes. It's intersected by several cross alleys and extends on her right to a dead end where an old car is propped on concrete blocks. To the left, the alley runs to a distant street, and close by, a boy and girl, both around six or seven, are sopping wet and playing in the mud. Sure to catch hell from Momma.

Beneath the window, the wall's a sheer drop of some twenty feet and offers no footholds at all. High enough to break an ankle or leg and maybe her butt bone. But just off to the right along the base of the wall is one of those big heavy-duty plastic trash bins around four feet high with a flip-top lid and a push handle and pair of little wheels. Crammed to overflowing with crumpled rain-sopped cardboard boxes, it's a beat-up thing standing somewhat tilted on a badly canted wheel, its lid hanging on one hinge. All of that cardboard could cushion her fall sufficiently. Maybe.

And so what? The thing's too far off to the side.

The two kids have come over and are looking up at her, wiping rain from their eyes. They return her smile. She gestures for them to reposition the trash container under the window. The boy seems not to comprehend, but when the girl goes to the container and tries to move it he catches on. He goes over and takes hold of the handle with both hands and tilts the container back on its misaligned wheels and the girl helps him to steer it. Jessie cuts a look at the bathroom door, fearful that Cabrito or Gallo might at any minute come in to see what's taking her so long. She directs the kids with her hand until the container's directly beneath the window, then grins and gives them the OK sign, and the kids grin back and ape her gesture.

She waves good-bye to them, then lowers herself to the floor and reaches up and closes the sash. She massages her throbbing arms, thinking that the thing to do is wait a little bit, then ask to use the toilet again. Less suspicious. A gringa with intestinal strife. She'll have more time that way than if she tries it now.

She's excited and afraid. What if it's just a layer of flattened cardboard boxes over a lot of broken bottles or sharp tin cans or God knows what? Even if there's only cardboard, it might be so saturated she'll plunge through it like tissue and break her legs. Think you hurt now, girl. Broken leg or two,
that
would be some pain.

She flushes the toilet, dries her face and mops her hair with paper towels, and exits the bathroom, affecting a look of some relief.

Cabrito grins at her and says, Everything come out all right?

She looks away and he laughs.

Aldo's breathing sounds somewhat better, though still raspy. José is now on his back, asleep or appearing to be.

She assures Luz and Susi that she feels much better and just needs a bit more rest. Then lies back and closes her eyes and wonders if she's going to try it.

And asks herself, What would Catalina do?

18 — GALÁN AND MELITÓN

White of hair and beard, his girth thick with folds, Melitón Santana—El Ingeniero to his associates—sits on a cushioned bench along the wall of a large steamy cubicle in a public bathhouse and watches a naked young couple engaging in sex a few feet from him. On the tiled floor, the man and woman have been lingually ministering to each other by turns and at times simultaneously, and now both of them kneel on small plastic cushions, the woman on all fours, and the man mounts her from behind in what is commonly called the dog fashion. The man only infrequently looks at Melitón, and when he does his gaze remains distant, but the woman at times meets Melitón's eyes and smiles. They are all three pouring sweat. Melitón has never exchanged a word with them, nor has the couple ever spoken to each other in his presence. Three months ago he happened on them in this cubicle by accident and they tacitly permitted him to observe them. Since then, they have met here for the same activity every Monday morning at quarter to eight, the couple always here first, awaiting his arrival before they commence.

Melitón has loosened the towel from around his waist and is fondling his semihard cock as he observes their exhibition. For almost a year now, a partial erection is the best he is able to muster. At first a sporadic condition, it had after a time become chronic, and so he went to see a doctor. The prescribed medication enabled full tumescence, but the erection would persist beyond his need of it, and the necessity of awaiting its abatement was an annoyance and sometimes made him late for appointments. Furthermore, his nagging perception of the effect as a synthetic rather than a natural achievement soon diminished his pleasure in it. So he quit the pills, even though the only way he can now attain even semihardness and, with effort, a meager ejaculation, is by means of his own manipulations in response to visual stimulus. This couple is the most effective arousal he's yet found, not only because of their performance, but because their enjoyment of his presence makes him more participant than mere voyeur. Some weeks ago, however, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer of advanced stage, and extensive medical consultations have persuaded him that—in his case, and notwithstanding his age—surgical excision, rather than chemotherapy or radiation, offers the best long-range survival odds. Unfortunately, it will entail the certain side effect of impotence and, quite probably, incontinence as well. Melitón had surprised himself by his choice of the surgery. He hadn't known how badly he wants to continue living for as long as he can, at whatever cost, even that of a lifeless dick and daily diapers. The operation will take place in three days.

He is fully familiar with the couple's rhythms, and as they begin the culminating phase of their lovemaking, he alters his own touch and tempo, and like a well-rehearsed team they all climax at the same time. The couple then lies spooned on the floor with their eyes closed, the man snuggled to the woman from behind, while Melitón gets up and goes to the locker room, showers, and gets dressed. It is customary that he leave the locker room before they enter it, but this being the last time for him, he has an impulse to return to the cubicle door and say good-bye and express his great appreciation for the enjoyment they've given him in his final days of frail virility. But no. They have granted that enjoyment under an unspoken but understood code, and even now it would be wrong to violate it. Besides, they might view his gratitude as pathetically sentimental.

The clerk at the lobby desk sees Melitón coming out of the locker room and makes a brief phone call, and a minute later a black Chrysler sedan pulls up at the curb. The driver, burly and well dressed, gets out and comes around to open the rear passenger door as the clerk escorts Melitón to the car, holding an umbrella over him against the light rain.

As they move out into traffic, the driver says, “La Golondrina, jefe?”

Yes, Gómez, Melitón says. After we pick up Miss Salas.

Miss Salas is one of a large number of lovely and highly discreet women he retains as occasional escorts.

Very well, chief, Gómez says. An exquisite young lady, if I may say so.

Gómez knows that his boss tends to melancholia after a bathhouse visit, and he always tries to distract him from the mood with small talk and jokes.

She is, isn't she? Melitón says.

A mountain rose, chief, to brighten this miserable weather. They say it'll be like this all day.

Well, Melitón says, what cannot be remedied must be endured.

Gómez chuckles at the old saying. You're right about that, chief, he says. It's a sad truth. Say, have you heard the one about the German blonde and the piñata?

Galán maneuvers the Mercedes through the gray morning drizzle, the wipers clearing the windshield in soft sweeps. The radio report is of terrorist bombings in public places of the Middle East, women and children among the murdered.

Cowardly raghead cocksuckers, Galán thinks. Men make war on men, not on women, not on children. He'd heard somewhere that a dog or a woman is the most insulting thing you can call a raghead, so
daughter of a bitch
was just about right for these marketplace bombers.

A Beethoven cello sonata begins to play. Galán raises the volume and says aloud, Cleanse me, maestro. Work your magic.

In the verdant upscale neighborhood of Colonia Roma, he finds a parking space two blocks from La Golondrina, then walks there under his umbrella, muttering curses at the water beading on his oxblood Florsheims. It is a fashionable district of colonial-era architecture, many of its old mansions converted into offices, art emporiums, trendy shops, upscale apartment houses. With its faux nineteenth-century decor, La Golondrina fits in well. Melitón spotted the café in passing a few years ago and has ever since been a daily patron. He has said it reminds him somewhat of a café in his boyhood neighborhood before it was lost to the bulldozers. The Golondrina staff believes Melitón to be a retired executive of a heavy machinery manufacturing firm, and his favorite table—in the far front corner and next to a sidewalk window—is on daily morning reserve for him.

Galán pauses under the front door awning to shake the raindrops from his umbrella and furl it, then enters. As always, Melitón is already there, and as usual accompanied by a striking young woman, a dalliance from the night before. He has told Galán that he enjoys an early morning coffee with the ladies before sending them on their way, but Galán suspects he also enjoys exhibiting them to him and everyone else in the place. To show the onlooking world that the grizzled lion can still gratify the sleek lionesses.

Melitón smiles at his approach and stands to embrace him, then steps back to admire Galán's fine suit. What an elegant picture you are, he says. The very embodiment of your epithet.

I can only dream of ever achieving such elegance as your own, Mr. Engineer, Galán says. By way of Melitón's recommendation, Galán now gets his suits from the same local branch of a distinguished London clothier.

Melitón laughs and says to the young woman, This gentleman is a supreme diplomat as well as a model of fashion.

She's a beauty with lustrous brown hair and bright black eyes, skin the color of creamed coffee. Melitón introduces her as Miss Elena Salas Delarosa. She offers her hand and smiles warmly when Galán kisses the back of it and says, “Encantado, señorita.”

Melitón takes a phone from his coat, keys it, and says into it, We're ready. He asks Galán to please be seated and says he will be right back, then escorts the woman across the room. Galán's eyes are not the only ones that trail after her in admiration. Through the room's front window he sees the black Chrysler arrive at the curb, and then Gómez comes around to open the back door and shield the woman with an umbrella as she gets in. She blows a kiss at Melitón. He raises a hand in farewell.

On his return to the table, Melitón smiles impishly and says, Let me tell you, son,
that
one was nearly the death of me last night. These young ones today! They don't understand that I'm
old!
I need a little rest between sessions in the course of an evening.

Galán says, Listen to you. Millions of men half your age would kill to have your woman troubles.

Melitón grins and shrugs with his palms upturned.

Without consulting the menu, they give the waiter their orders and he thanks them and retreats.

“Pues?” Melitón says.