He knelt in the back row and prayed for courage. If courage came, he would tell the priest about Labredo, about the boy. He would confess what he had done to Lorca Viera, and how he had intended to kill her, and how she had slipped at the crucial moment. If the courage came, he would tell everything, and maybe the priest would forgive him.
The courage didn’t come. Victor went back to work with a leaden heart.
All through the dinner shift, the waiters called him ridiculous names. Then suddenly there was a panic when a party of eight all ordered Caesar salads at once. Nick, the lugubrious owner, had cheered up considerably and came into the kitchen to help. Later, there was shouting across the stoves as Fidel the chef threatened to kill a waiter who cancelled an order for filet mignon he had already prepared.
Fidel’s Spanish curses echoing among the pots and pans were like an audio replay of the little school, and loathing swelled in Victor’s chest at the sound. English was the language of sanctuary, of rebirth, of anonymity. In English, no one knew who and what he really was.
By ten o’clock, the orders stopped coming. By eleven, the place was empty. Victor put plastic wrap over the mousse and threw out the whipped cream. He washed his chopping block and the half-dozen knives he had used. Nick told him morosely that he could go home.
Fiftieth Street was quiet at this hour. The air smelt fresh after the kitchen smells of frying meat and hot oil. Maybe tonight there would be no nightmares. Victor stood at the top of the restaurant stairs, struggling with the zipper of his jacket. It was a cheaply made thing of fake leather he had found in a Salvation Army store, and the zipper always stuck.
“Just leaving, I see!” Mike Viera was grinning up at him from the sidewalk. “I was just passing through the neighbourhood, Ignacio. I’m so glad I caught you!”
EIGHTEEN
Viera stood with hands in pockets like a boy who is uncomfortable with his adult errand. “I thought I’d missed you.”
“But you could have telephoned. I gave you the number the other day.”
“A sudden inspiration. I was working late. Yes, very late. And then I was heading toward the bridge and I saw your restaurant and I thought, why not stop and say hello?” For a lawyer, Victor thought, Viera was a poor liar. “Tell me, Ignacio,” he went on, “are you working on Sunday or are you free?”
“I’m free. The chef has a nephew who does my job on weekends.”
“Ah, good. I was wondering, you see, if you would be so kind as to accompany my wife and myself on a picnic in Central Park. We go to the park often on Sundays-it’s almost as good as going to the country. My sister Lorca will be there too. She is enjoying one of her happier periods, it seems.”
Far beneath his feet, deep in the white-hot caverns of the earth, Victor sensed a colossal grinding of gears. It was not over. “Your sister,” he said, and coughed to cover the catch in his voice. “She is expecting me to come?”
“She knows I am asking you,” Viera said, forgetting his tale of sudden inspiration.
“I don’t know …. After the other day ….”
“Don’t worry. She is in a much better mood, I promise you. Almost cheerful! You don’t have to talk about the little school, you can talk about anything you like. It is just a picnic. Just good food and good company. We have every reason to expect a pleasant afternoon.”
Victor looked up Fiftieth Street toward the traffic of Lexington Avenue. A taxi was blaring its horn at a bus stalled in the intersection. An ambulance went by, lights flashing. “All right,” he said finally. “Should I bring anything? Some food? Something to drink?”
Viera beamed. “You will be our guest. Your presence alone will honour us.”
Sunday broke fair-a crisp, clear day with fleets of white clouds chasing each other over the trees, a sharp wind gusting out of the north. Victor was glad of his windbreaker.
“Have more potato salad,” Helen Viera urged him.
“Oh, no, thank you. It was wonderful, but I assure you I am quite stuffed.”
“Nonsense.” She dropped a large dollop onto his paper plate. “We’ll just have to lug it home anyway.”
“You’re very kind. I seem to be eating everything in sight.”
They were sitting on a blanket spread out on the bank of a small pond. Behind them, the newly seeded Great Lawn was an oval of pale emerald. A hill across the pond was guarded by a miniature castle topped with a fairytale turret. A spot for lovers, Victor thought.
“Another ham roll?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t.”
“Men. You always say no when you mean yes.”
“Don’t force him to eat, Helen.” Lorca was sitting under a tree, peeling bark from a stick. She didn’t look at them when she spoke. She bent over the stick, shoulders hunched, her hair falling over her face.
“I’m hardly forcing him,” Helen said.
“Believe me,” Victor put in, “I don’t have to be forced. This is the best meal I’ve had since I came to New York.”
“See? He likes it.” Mrs. Viera, who looked a tired thirty, spoke in the hyper-dramatic tones of a twelve-year-old.
Lorca stood up, brushing twigs from her jeans. She walked down to the edge of the water. Victor was still afraid that she would recognize him-some catch in his voice, perhaps even his smell-and suddenly know with certainty what he had done to her. She had barely glanced at him for the past hour, but he was still afraid.
“Finishing off the food, I see.” Mike Viera was coming toward them from the washrooms.
“I gave him the last of the potato salad,” his wife said, snapping a Tupperware lid shut. “Lorca didn’t like it.”
Viera was wearing jeans and a green striped polo shirt, and looked ten years younger than he did in his lawyer suit. He snatched up a Frisbee and yelled to his sister, “Lorca! Catch!”
She turned from the pond just in time for the Frisbee to catch her in the chest. Victor expected an angry outburst, but she just retrieved it from the mud and tossed it back without a word. The Frisbee cruised toward her brother in a perfect arc. Viera threw it back. “We used to play for hours when we were kids,” he said to Victor. “Flying saucers, she used to call it. Never wanted to stop.” The Frisbee sailed over a low-hanging branch into his hand. “Let’s move away from the water. Come on, Ignacio.”
Victor had not played at anything since he was a boy. The game of catch seemed foolish. And he had a faint sense of rudeness that Helen Viera was not invited to join in. She sat alone on the plaid blanket, reading a novel by Danielle Steel.
He was completely uncoordinated at first. He threw the plastic disc too hard; it soared over Lorca’s head and she had to run after it. Then, in a single motion, she swung around and sent it curving toward her brother. Viera was businesslike, dispatching the toy toward Victor’s grasp with the neatness of a fact.
As the game progressed, Victor became more skilful. It even became easy. If only speech were this easy, he thought. If only trust and friendship could be so natural.
“This was a good idea,” he called to Viera. “To bring this thing along.”
“For a picnic, a Frisbee is essential. You didn’t know this?”
Viera whipped it straight and level, chest-high to Victor. Then Victor launched it into a graceful tilting flight to Lorca. She had only to take one step, a short leap, to pluck it out of the air. In that swift, clean motion she looked perfect, Victor thought. Undamaged.
“You two continue,” Viera said. “I am fat and middle-aged and require my rest.”
“Lazy!” Lorca yelled after him. “Lazy old man!” She stamped her foot in a comical way. Then she spoke to Victor for the first time that day. “You’ve had enough too, I suppose. You want to join the little old man? The senior citizen?”