We could say that Mireya and Demetrio’s fears were growing by slathers. He knew that he couldn’t keep working in the orchard, that his Oaxacan chapter had come to an end, that he was on the verge of fleeing with his lover to an unknown locale. Life as a couple — guilt ridden! and, bountiful! and, sinuous! and all the rest. This was the mischief happenstance makes, the unexpected arrangement destiny had handed him out of the blue: to live perennial sex to the hilt: screwing in the morning, perhaps at noon, in the evening, and in the middle of the night, and the ever-turning wheel of continual consent: oh, undulating tenderness! the never-washed-nor-aired-out filth, and of course the most plausible theory always obviated: that this was perchance the devil at work, but God in turn was elbowing his way through. He mentioned all these avatars every day to Mireya, who, for her part, declared her mettle three times: I’ll go wherever you take me, and also more than three times added that if they stayed in Oaxaca things would go very badly. Just knowing that they would be looking for her because she’d left her job. Madam knew where her room was and, what was worse, her friend Luz Irene, though Mireya was sure she wouldn’t reveal a speck of information. Hence the most dreadful conjectures: the bodyguards, the police, the supposed furious efforts of the ongoing pursuit. And at any moment — poof! Demetrio told her he would go to the bank to withdraw his money so that they could run away. If only they could leave tomorrow! Money in hand for the down payment on their love nest. A nest far away, of course. They would be left in peace if they lived in some border town, but the crowning effort would be to cross over to the other side, by any means necessary and as soon as possible, and there find a new reality. Why don’t we go to your mother’s? You told me she lives in the south of the United States. You ought to introduce me to her. Demetrio had made a mistake by mentioning that migration, he hadn’t remembered that … When he told her … Who can know!? … And in that (induced) effort to dig up a name of the town where she lived — did you gather as much? — what would he invent to answer Mireya’s insistence? That it was near Laredo, Texas: with a difficult name to pronounce in English: a salad of letters all crammed together like sardines, that starts with an f, and at the end there’s a t and an h: a teensy place located … let’s see … about fifty miles from Laredo, you can get there in the blink of an eye. Demetrio in checkmate or around the bend. Nonetheless, the two of them would go there: the only place possible?! But before that he, right now, to the bank. Not to work. Now to disengage. Now to take the step, now to quit his job, as she had done … The agronomist went out first thing in the morning to buy a suitcase he already knew must be neither too big nor too small but soft, yes, to carry — always risky — the banknotes. Mireya had wanted to go with him, but: You stay here. It’s better that way. I won’t be long. A logical fear arose: she expressed it, keeping to herself the core doubt that had been growing for the last two days: what if Demetrio took off with the money and left her in that genteel environment, like an idiot?
Of some small comfort was: I am also very frightened, maybe two or three times more than you. We don’t have much time left to get out, and he promised and swore to the ensemble flight, placing love above all else. The seal of an excessively tongue-y kiss must have meant a lot to Mireya, who, just in case, turned the picture of The Last Supper back around. Then: intrigue and lassitude for a man who could not set anything straight in his head, decisions ricocheting, running roughshod over ideas about doing what was right: Mireya had won out over Renata because she gave herself without apprehension or restraint. The agronomist did confront an obstacle at the bank: he couldn’t withdraw his money: it was a fixed-term deposit without any kind of flexibility or exception. Banking’s inherent rigidity. Then his emotional theatricality came to the rescue: that his case was extremely urgent, an instance of force majeure, et cetera, and his almost tearful pleadings, almost kneeling, his palms pressed together as if in prayer: evil demons, those bank employees — utterly? and his tortured insistence paid off after forty-odd minutes, when one of them said that they could give him his money if and only if they subtracted the accumulated interest: That’s fine, give me only what I have deposited, but give it to me now, and in cash, please! Next step: the agronomist opened his bag, which looked a bit like a briefcase because it was stiff around the edges, though with an air of something speciaclass="underline" a modern object, brown and expensive.
Counting the money in private. Making bundles of a thousand pesos each, small change, in the end, but, to focus on the scene de occultis, the stacking of one bill atop another was seen by Demetrio as a mortification, the likes of which he had never felt before, as if he were closing one long chapter and opening up another even longer and more indefinite. So it would be from the very first moment he went out into the streets carrying that strange suitcase … The risk of being assaulted … God forbid! No, why entertain such terrible thoughts? And thereafter the possibility of being robbed would bubble up throughout the trip north: on the airplane, in the bus, on the train. But, to change the subject, he would not go to Parras even to save his life: a destination he lopped off from the start, like many others … Saltillo: cut; Sacramento: cut; Monclova: cut, and, while he’s on a roll, how many more? Suddenly he espied as if out of the corner of his eye a place like Guadalajara: a luminous destination? During his hasty return to the rooming house, now with the bulging suitcase in hand — which actually excited a fleeting curiosity among certain Oaxacan passersby — he began to glimpse the dreary prospect of the voyage west. A Mexican west he did not know, vast and colorful on maps, a mystery host to an endless array of exclamation points, and even a sudden exclamation at odds with itself, a kind of dismay, because under a westerly wind the trees swayed, twisting and flattened against the facades: it was a gust, rising and falling, hair-mussing, a flight that carried neither garbage nor the infelicitous gliding of birds, and he associated the thought of flight with the airplane ride to Nochistlán, the daily one in the early morn, hence he and Mireya could not leave for the airfield that day but rather … When the agronomist reached the room where his lover was enjoying a siesta belly down: alack! he had to wake her up, for this was the ideal moment to depart. She, still half asleep, ran her fingers through her hair and said she was ready to leave at once; of course she saw out of the corner of her eye that shiny suitcase: the evidence … don’t even ask … the money — finally! for if not — why the rush? hence, compressed wealth; hope stuffed into a rectangle that perhaps in the future would open, love — eh! — transformed. And the sudden prodding: Let’s go! Demetrio exclaimed, and then added quickly: This is all I’m taking with me. I don’t want to carry anything else. Let’s go! Mireya had a bag with long shoulder straps. Two changes of clothes. She had left behind her meager belongings just as Demetrio would leave his, and herein we see moderation at two in the afternoon. Anxious yet stealthy steps. Why pay the rent or anything else, for that matter! More than ever the street meant total freedom. It would seem — fortunately — that Doña Rolanda was doing something of great importance in the kitchen — her back to the stampede? which was executed, finally! The lovers immediately caught a taxi as if thereby gaining direct access to something that approached a miracle. Destination: any old hotel on the outskirts or, better, the one closest to the airfield. In a trice they found a run-down hostel, whose only advantage was its proximity: less than a mile away, walking distance first thing in the morning … Let us say they copulated that night. Urgent frenzy that felt like juvenile mischief. Then came their dawnrising and their flight.