“Amparo is too much of a woman for Tomás or for anyone. It’s not just that she’s drop-dead gorgeous, but if she’s arranged to meet someone at seven o’clock, then, rather than arrive even a minute late, she’ll leave whoever she happens to be with in mid-fuck. She has character, style, independence. As well as nice tits and a nice ass. It’s really hard to cope with that at home on a daily basis, having to fight off marauders — because that’s what it’s like these days,” says Justino, who is known to be something of a marauder himself and, doubtless, one of those men Amparo has, on some occasion, left high and dry in mid-fuck.
Bernal again:
“She’s certainly an important factor, but less so than you seem to think. He knows how to have fun too, how to live it up. Amparo played only a small role in the collapse of Tomás’s businesses, all right, there were the facial peels, the nails, the spa treatments, Revlon, Dior, Loewe, Miuccia Prada, and all the rest, but that’s normal for any bourgeois bit of pussy. The wife of any small-time property developer, car dealer or owner of a chain of gas stations or an apartment block will be sure to have acquired that designer stuff over the last few years. Or are there wives who don’t go to those shops, wear those clothes or indulge in aromatherapy massages and hydromassage baths? He was the real problem, what with his extravagant tastes, his desire to impress, the money he lavished on social or should that be municipal events (not forgetting the usual bribes paid to the local councilor); and then there were the wines from Burgundy, the seafood, the champagne, and so on, not to mention the Russian girls, and the cocaine,”—ah, so the secret’s out, I always suspected that he took cocaine from the way he kept rubbing his nose, I shoot a quick glance at Francisco, who remains impassive—“because the bastard certainly hasn’t stinted himself.”
Justino:
“He’s screwed the best prostitutes in the region. Not the ones in the clubs, who charge fifty or a hundred or two hundred euros. No. He only used to go there on work outings with his employees or to impress small-time suppliers. He’s always gone for the kind of woman who appears to be working for herself, but is, in fact, just one tentacle of a mafia octopus, the kind of woman you find at the Marina Esmeralda lying on the deck of some yacht, which might belong to a friend, male or female, who has lent it to her, crew included, to enjoy a few days of rest. Rest from what, though? From business deals, catwalks, boutiques, photo sessions or some other sort of session. At least that’s what she’ll tell you when she gets you in her sights. The kind who always has bottles of Moët chilling in the fridge, a forty-inch flat-screen TV and a jacuzzi in a 2000-square foot apartment with a sea view or a clifftop villa in Xábia or Moraira, owned by mafia from Eastern Europe or possibly Western Europe (you’d have to check whose name is on the deeds, and even then you’d never know for sure who’s hiding behind the ostensible owners). Pedrós has often bought himself a few weeks in one of those villas, telling Amparo and us that he’s away traveling, phoning home on his cell phone to complain about the rain in Vigo (it hasn’t stopped all week) or how cold it is in Pamplona (enough to freeze your balls off), and that he’s staying another few days so as to sort out the distributor’s accounts (they’re a complete mess, I’ll tell you about it later), when, in fact, he was opening and closing a pair of silky legs. He’s taken those women out to supper at Quique Dacosta’s, at the Hotel Ferrero, at the Girasol when they had that Swiss or German chef working there, or to spend the night in the Westin Hotel. He’s been seen in those places on more than one occasion and word has spread, after all, it’s a very small world here, and everyone knows everyone else. And he’s learned a lot from you, Francisco, I think. By now, he probably knows more about wine than you do.”
Francisco leaps on this statement like a Bengal tiger:
“Don’t I know it. He loves showing off to me: Olivier Leflaive’s Corton-Charlemagne with the amuse-gueules; a Chateau Cos d’Estournel with the plat de résistance; and a Coutet Sauternes with the dessert or the foie gras: mere nouveau-riche posturing.”
Justino interrupts:
“Don’t forget the cognacs: Martell, Delamain, Camus, because his other vice — apart from prostitutes — is cigars and cognac, even more so than wines. He loves sitting around after a meal, one hand on his belly, his legs stretched out under the table and his lips pursed, blowing out a great cloud of cigar smoke. He uses wine to give him a veneer of class, but cognacs are his true love. I would say that he’s spoiled Amparo rotten because it suited him to. Husbands who cheat always take great care to make sure their wife lacks for nothing. If you do get caught out at some point, you can always save yourself by saying: but I’m crazy about you, don’t be silly. Don’t I bow to your every whim and treat you like a queen? Besides, anyone can make a mistake.”
Francisco can resist no longer. Falling into the trap of discussing what wines and cognacs Pedrós drinks has hit him where it hurts — in his wine expert’s liver. He can detect direct competition; all that talk about Corton-Charlemagne and Delamain; and hearing someone say that Pedrós knows more about wine than he does is tantamount to challenging the emperor for his crown. And so he adds:
“It’s one thing to say Amparo is still gorgeous, even at her age, and that she’s intelligent and has good taste, but basically he, well, he’s just a fucking plumber. He may have fitted the bathrooms of his Russian clients with gold taps, but he’s still a plumber. That’s how he started out. He knows nothing about cognac or wine. He knows names and labels, but that’s a very different matter. He’s quick on the uptake and notices what the genuinely rich people he mixes with are drinking. He’s the sort who keeps a little notebook and goes into the restaurant toilet to note down the labels of the wines being served with the meal, or which were the most expensive ones on the menu, along with the brand names of the clothes and shoes his fellow diners are wearing, he even notes down words he doesn’t know, but which he notices are considered to be chic. He was on at me for months to teach him about denominaciones, wine merchants, good years and bad years. He bled me dry, like a vampire. Not that I’m criticizing him, mind. At least he did his homework. He’s a conscientious fellow. Hard study can turn even an ignoramus into a sage,” Francisco declares, closing his speech with an unexpected defense of the plumber Pedrós. Like Christ with Lazarus. The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth back. The Lord is God-like in his generosity.”
Justino yawns and stretches voluptuously, undulating his body like an odalisque in a harem, then he scratches his crotch and sighs:
“It’s such a good feeling when you do rein yourself in and stay faithful to your wife. I’m faithful most of the time, and only occasionally do I allow myself to succumb to temptation, but how delicious those occasions are, no?”
Bernal continues:
“They’re each as bad as the other, it’s been pretty much tit for tat between Tomás and Amparo. She’s done her fair share of over-spending too and hasn’t gone without certain other things either: trips abroad, shopping sprees, days spent who knows where (best not ask); solo visits to Paris, exhibitions, although, having said that, their marriage does seem pretty indestructible. Or it has been as long as the money kept flowing in. We’ll see what happens now. But I think that, at least for the moment, their bond will remain strong as long as they still share financial responsibility. What really binds a couple together are the business deals they have in common or the loans taken out in joint names and that have to be repaid. If you sign up for a twenty-year mortgage, you’re pretty much guaranteeing your marriage for the same period of time. That’s true love. Not mere words that the wind can carry away. The banks don’t keep words in their safes; you can’t buy anything with words or use them as a guarantee.”