“Yes,” Creel said. He led the way through the hundreds of parked cars to where he had left his Pontiac. “Don’t dwell on it. He brought it on himself.”
They drove in silence back to El Prado hotel. Cade could think only of the broken body that hung so limply in the arms of the bull ring servants as they ran with it across the sand.
“I’ll have to return in a few days,” he said as Creel pulled up outside the hotel. “I’ll call you, Adolfo.”
The two men shook hands. Cade forced a smile before climbing the steps to the hotel.
He went immediately to the Travel Agency office and booked a New York flight, leaving at 11.00 hours the following morning.
He took the elevator to his room, unlocked the door and as he opened it, he thought it was still early. The long evening ahead of him depressed him.
He shut the door, then stood motionless.
Juana was standing there with her back to the window. She was wearing a simple white dress, no jewellery and the sunlight made a hazy glow around her beauty.
“There is no one and there never can be anyone like you,” she said. “I have returned because I love you and will always love you.” She moved forward, holding out her hands to him. “Do you want me? If you do, then take me.”
The following morning, Cade called down from his room to the Travel Agency office and cancelled his flight to New York.
Juana, naked and on the bed, her long black tresses draped across her body, listened, smiling and reached for his hand.
They had made love and talked, made love and talked during the night.
“It was only when I lost you that I realised how much you mean to me,” she had said, her head on his chest, her fingers stroking the back of his hand. “It was because you were in hospital and I was alone that this bad thing that is in me made me go away with Pedro. If you had been with me, it would never have happened.”
Cade had thought of the agony she had caused him and the debts she had incurred, but he didn’t care. He knew that however badly she behaved, she was the only thing in his life. For better or for worse, he thought bitterly. It was a crushing sentence, and it depressed him.
“Don’t let’s go over past history, Juana,” he said. “We begin again. You are my wife. You want me back. All right so we begin again and we don’t talk about the past. In a couple of weeks, you and I will return to New York. We will find a small apartment somewhere. You can look after it while I work.”
She traced her finger nail down the hollow of his chest.
“New York? I don’t think I would care to live in New York.” She turned her face and kissed him. “Couldn’t you work here? We could keep the house. I have it still. You liked the house, didn’t you?”
“I am under contract. I have to work in New York.”
She lifted her head and looked at him puzzled.
“Contract? What does that mean?”
“I work for a newspaper now.”
“Is that good?”
“Not really, but it suits me.”
“They pay very well?”
“No, they pay very badly.”
“So? Then why do you work for them?”
“This is something you wouldn’t understand. I have a year and a half before the contract finishes.”
She put her hands on her full breasts and lifted them as she stared thoughtfully up at the ceiling.
“What do they pay, cariño?”
“Three hundred a week.” He thought without hope: money and the body. Adolfo knows her as I am learning to know her. “Money is very important to you, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that. It is nice to have money, but it is not really important.” She turned her head and smiled at him. “I am thrifty. Didn’t I keep the house beautifully and wasn’t my cooking beautiful?”
“Yes.”
“And you think we can manage on three hundred a week?”
“Of course. Thousands of people manage on less.”
She patted his hand.
“Then let us go to New York.”
That was during the night. After he had cancelled the flight to New York, he called his Mexican lawyers. He told them he wasn’t going through with the divorce. That was something he had also discussed with Juana during the night.
“But you mustn’t divorce me!” she had said, gripping his arm fiercely. “Without you I should be lost! No other man has ever wanted to marry me. You understand? It is because you are my husband that I have returned to you.”
He took her face in his hands.
“It is because you are my wife, I can forgive you,” he said.
When he had finished talking to the Mexican lawyers, she swung off the bed and threw her arms around him.
“I am so happy! Let us go back to the house. Why stay here? Let us begin to save our money. The house is paid for to the end of the month. Let us go back and I will cook for you.”
So they went back. The first thing Cade noticed was the new scarlet Thunderbird in the garage.
She dismissed it with a wave of her beautiful hand.
“I like the one you gave me better. Pedro gave this one to me. He had to. He admitted he was responsible for the fire.”
Cade moved his shoulders as if shifting a heavy weight. He walked into the house and opening the french windows, walked out into the patio with its little fountain and its flowers.
“I will get you a drink, cariño. A Tequila?”
Cade sat down in one of the lounging chairs.
“No, nothing, thank you. I don’t drink now.”
“But why?”
“It happens to be bad for me.”
She looked at him puzzled, then shrugging her shoulders, she said, “I will unpack your bag.”
She left him, sitting in the sunshine. The Thunderbird in the garage sickened him. The atmosphere of the house depressed him. He was sure Juana and Diaz had made love in the big, cool bedroom upstairs.
It can’t work, he said to himself. It might last a month, perhaps not even so long. Money and the body. She can’t help herself as I can’t help myself being in love with her.
But at least, he thought, during the uncertain time they would be together he would possess her, have her with him, be able to see her beauty and prepare himself for the inevitable break. But this he must be sure of, he warned himself, when the break did come, he must wash her forever out of his mind. No more drinking. He had been through too much ever to let her do that to him again.
So for ten days, they lived together, making desperate, fierce love, going out to a modest restaurant when they felt like it, going to a movie, taking long drives. It was a period of peace for Cade, but never once did he let her out of his sight. Even when she went to the market, he was with her. He was so much her shadow that he began to worry her.
One evening, when they were in the garden, she said, “Are you happy, cariño?”
He glanced up from the crossword puzzle he was trying to solve.
“Why do you ask?”
“You have changed so much. You are so quiet, so serious. You aren’t interested in things any longer.”
“Things? What things?”
“Many things. Aren’t you going to work again?”
“Yes. I was going to talk to you about that. I must return to New York next week. You will come with me of course.”
“Yes.” She looked questioningly at him. “Where will we live in New York?”
“We’ll stay at an hotel, and then we will look for an apartment.”
“There will be no garden?”
“No.”
She crossed her long legs. She was wearing only a bikini and Cade thought he had never seen a more lovely woman.
“Perhaps it would be better for me to join you when you have found the apartment. It would save money. We have this house for another two weeks.” She looked at him, smiling. “You see? I am really very thrifty.”