And Felipa calls them every week.
Well, it’s hard, but she’s already taken her in hand.
The poor thing can’t cope with more—
“Felipa!”
Laia sees her emerging from the bathroom almost bent in two, rubbing her hands on her apron and wearing her eternally frightened face.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Anything new?”
“No, no.”
“Calls?”
“No, no.”
“Oh, girl, please wipe that look of horror from your face. Good heavens! It’s not the Gestapo questioning you!”
The maid doesn’t know what to say.
She doesn’t know what the Gestapo is, of course.
“My God.” Laia Masdeu Porta sighs. “You’re such a sad person, eh?”
Felipa doesn’t move; she holds the same expression.
“I am going to my studio to relax. I’d like a salad for lunch, but careful with the vinegar. And scrub your hands well. You just had them in the toilet!”
Laia goes to her room. First, she changes into something more comfortable. She opens the dressing room and checks out her clothes. Half the things in it aren’t good anymore. It’s impossible to wear them anywhere. Even less with the staff watching her. Mariano, Alberto, and Andrés’s wives are really something... and the “new ones” are much worse. Ignacio’s is a twenty-two-year-old kid. Although she’s already thirtyfive, Francisco’s wife also looks like a supermodel.
She’ll clean things out this afternoon.
Everything in the trash.
She doesn’t want to see Felipa, like that other time, a year ago, when she caught her rummaging through the cast-offs for a sweater, a blouse, a skirt...
This cheapskate behavior makes her shudder.
She undresses, looks at herself in the mirror again, the one in the dressing room, from the front, the side; she tucks in her belly, lifts her breasts, strokes her behind with both hands. Everything’s solid. José María doesn’t touch her anymore, but that’s because her husband’s impotent and stupid. The young man at the gym, the one at the door, didn’t take his eyes off her. He was checking her out. She can still make anybody scream in bed. She just has to decide to do so. She’s going through the best period of her life. The age of wisdom.
Too bad sex is so exhausting, so sweaty...
She puts on clean clothes. House clothes, but classy, because you never know when someone might call or come over. Dignity is in the details. Her mother used to say: “Hold your head high, even when you step in shit.”
She leaves the room and goes to the studio that serves as her oasis. She hears Felipa singing softly to herself. Laia hates it when she does that. She’s asked her not to do that, but if she starts to argue about it she’ll end up with a migraine and that’s not what she needs right now: a wretched headache because of that idiot. So, for once, she lets it go. She closes the studio door and opens a window. Turó Parc immediately restores her peace of mind. This is her world. The rest can go to hell. That green patch and the surrounding buildings. That is her Barcelona, exclusive, unique, her own.
The world works, in spite of all the damned Felipas.
Laia Masdeu Porta lets herself drop into her favorite armchair and, just before picking up a fashion magazine, closes her eyes for a few seconds and relaxes.
José María Morales Moreno is fifty-five years old and a son of a bitch. He combs back his increasingly thinning hair, which is shiny and somewhat out of control around the back of the neck, where there are black cowlicks that make it seem just a touch trendy. Tanned complexion, the eyes of a lynx, straight lips, an incipient double chin that will soon vanish with surgery, a big body, the body of an entrepreneur, a powerful body. After he was mugged by some Moroccans, in the very center of Barcelona, and they took his gold Rolex and two rings — one, to his relief, his wedding ring — he never wears anything ostentatious. It’s not necessary, either. His mere presence sets off the staff’s neurons wherever he goes, from a restaurant to the hairdresser’s where they take care of his image. That and the armored car do the rest.
The world has gone crazy.
And sometimes, like this afternoon, especially so.
“Damnit, fuck! What are you talking about?”
Felipa stops in the middle of the stairs at the upper part of the duplex. Her boss’s voice comes through the half-open door like a gale-force wind. She hesitates and rubs her hands. They are sweaty from fear, from what she’s daring to do, from everything. She thought this was the best moment and now, suddenly, she hesitates.
She’s about to go back down the stairs.
But a hint of anger stops her. It’s taken her so long to make up her mind...
The voice is loud and clear again: “Then give him half a million, goddamnit! With everything we’ve got on the line, we’re going to get caught up with details now? I know he’s not fit to be seen and he’s a pig, but what do you expect? Calm down, we’ll get rid of him in less than a year, I’m telling you! Now we have no choice but to put up with it. Just make him sign the receipt, okay? And careful on the phone, damnit. Everything’s taped now. Idiot judges and their fucking mothers!”
Felipa is on the other side of the door, trembling, wondering for the second time whether to come back later or wait. The problem is that if he leaves the office and goes downstairs, it’ll be difficult to get him alone. It’s not that there’s much interaction between the people in the house, but if Master Pelayo, Miss Vanesa, or Mrs. Laia show up in the middle of her request...
Through the door’s small opening she sees him, red with anger, furious, incensed. The force of his power is clear from here.
If her need didn’t outweigh her fear...
“And that other one wants a hundred thousand?” José María Morales Moreno’s voice intensifies. “Fuck him! Why is it that in this fucking country nobody lets you lay a brick without asking for something? Tell him fifty, Eloy, and make it work! We’re not going to just throw money away like that! At this rate, we won’t even have ten million!”
This isn’t the first time she overhears him on the phone. Last time it was with Gemma. Gemma has been to dinner with them a couple of times. She’s very good looking, younger than Mrs. Laia. José María’s sweet nothings left no doubt about what was going on between them.
But that’s none of her business.
Perhaps that’s part of the game among the rich.
Besides, Gemma is not the only one.
Her boss’s trousers are a well of surprises, a stream of secrets. His audacity is astonishing. The week before, she’d found a pink card with a woman’s peculiar name, perhaps French. The card described the many things she could do with a man in bed. A month before that, she had found a receipt from a no less conspicuous club.
Felipa isn’t clever, but neither was she born yesterday.
Sometimes she thinks about the four of them and doesn’t understand a thing.
“Look, you know what? A couple of our guys will break their legs for four euros, okay? Then it’ll be fine to can half the staff, to throw all of them out on the fucking street!”
The phone conversation ends.
Felipa counts to ten and rubs her hands on the apron again. She takes a breath and slows down her heartbeat. Now. Now or never.
Then she knocks on the office door.
“What do you want?” roars the voice of the owner of the house.
“Excuse me, sir...” She puts her head through the opening.
“Oh, it’s you. What is it?”
“Sir...”
“Come in, come in. I don’t have all day.”
She has to jump right into the issue, heart on her sleeve.