And here came Arturo, walking briskly, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, matches prominent in his hand, obviously looking for a place where it wouldn’t be irreverent to smoke. After he’d passed the Jag in front of me, everybody else now behind him, he signaled me to open my window, so I did. As he walked by, he tossed something onto my lap, and I buttoned the window closed again.
It was a small white envelope, containing two objects: a slender rectangular card of the sort hotels use as keys, and a note scrawled on a torn-off piece of lined paper, which read Inter-Nación 2217 7 P.M.
Inter-Nación was the hotel by the airport, outside San Cristobal; 7 P.M. must mean tonight, since Lola would be flying to New York tomorrow.
I looked in the rearview mirror, and there was Arturo, strolling amid the parked cars, trailing cigarette smoke. Ahead, the crowd had started shifting from foot to foot. I caught a glimpse of my casket being lowered, bearing somebody else’s scam to his final resting place. The man with the red bandanna climbed up into the seat of his backhoe.
A few minutes later, as the mourners straggled back to their cars, at least one chauffeur, as he leaped out to open the rear door for his passengers, was grinning from ear to ear.
18
There was no one there. It’s true I was three minutes early, but there was still no one there. Room 2217 of the Hotel Inter-Nación was dim and cool and completely empty.
I’d told Maria and Carlos about the message from Arturo and asked if I could borrow a vehicle to keep the appointment. I hoped, of course, the vehicle would be the Buick.
Carlos, sounding almost avuncular, told me there was no problem, he’d loan me a vehicle, but it turned out the vehicle he had in mind was anything but a nice air-conditioned Buick. It was a scooter, an Italian Vespa, a motorized kitchen chair with a shield stuck on the front. The word vespa in Italian means wasp, and that’s exactly what the thing sounded like, nasty and nasal and snarling.
So, having driven Carlos and Maria home to Rancio, I’d changed from chauffeur back to peon, accepted the Vespa with many expressions of gratitude, and rode my mobile kitchen chair among the trucks back down to San Cristobal, through town, and out to the Inter-Nación.
Room 2217 sounds as though it should be on the twenty-second floor, but in fact the Inter-Nación is only three stories high, a squat building across the road from the airport. They’d stuck an extra 2 in front of the room numbers to make the place sound more impressive. So I went diagonally across the lobby without attracting attention from the staff, ignored the elevator, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The card key produced a small green light above the doorknob, the door opened, and I entered an empty room.
She hadn’t been here. The closet was empty, the bed untouched. I went to look out the window, but this room didn’t face the road and the airport, it faced the jungle. As I stood gazing out at the greens, I heard clicking sounds from the door and turned with a smile of welcome. But then I heard voices. She was with somebody else.
It had to be the bellboy. She’d have all her luggage with her for tomorrow morning’s flight. And the bellboy shouldn’t see a man in the widow’s room, especially a man who just might be identifiable later on as her dead husband. As the door to the hall opened, I made a dash for the bathroom, sliding in just as the two Spanish-speaking voices entered. Yes, Lola and a young male. She was directing the placement of the luggage, and he was explaining the wonders of the room.
And his voice was coming this way. Quickly I stepped into the tub, behind the half-drawn shower curtain. If he were to come all the way to the tub to demonstrate the faucets, I didn’t know what I’d do.
But then the lights came on in the bathroom and I saw the mirror. The wall facing the door was all mirror, and in it I could see the doorway, where the bellboy stood, a short young guy in a red uniform jacket, hand on the light switch. Beyond him, back in the main room, was Lola.
If I could see them, they could see me. Except that the bellboy was calling Lola’s attention to other things and wasn’t looking toward the mirror. Lola was; I saw her eyes widen with surprise, then amusement. She said something, drawing the bellboy away, and as he left the doorway she came forward to switch off the light.
It took her another couple of minutes to get rid of him. At last I heard the outer door snick shut, and as soon as it did I stepped out of the tub and into the other room, where Lola in her traveling clothes sat on the bed among her suitcases, laughing. Looking at me, she said, “Speedy Gonzales, I presume.”
God, she was beautiful. I never want to be away from her, not for a second. “Oh, no,” I said, walking toward her. “Not speedy. This is going to be very, very slow.”
Early in the morning, before I snuck out of the Inter-Nación to climb back aboard my Vespa, we had a conversation that we’d had before and was the basis of our life together.
“I’ll be here,” I said.
And she said, “Of course you will, you’re the net.”
“And you’re the net,” I said.
“You know I am.”
We smiled at each other. I said, “We’re out there alone, nobody to be sure of in the whole world except you and me. I’m your net and you’re my net. The only net we’ve got.”
“The only net we need, Barry,” she said.
19
Time dragged after my funeral and Lola’s departure. All at once, I had nothing to do. I trailed after Carlos to his truck place a few times, but I sure didn’t fit in there, and Carlos wasn’t what you’d call encouraging. At the house was Maria, self-sufficient, at work in her studio or reading or swimming, obviously feeling no need to find ways to keep her house guest amused. I could watch television or swim, but mostly what I did was wait.
And, of course, watch Maria. And finally to wonder, What was her view of me? We were alone together in the house most of the time. She seemed amused by me, and friendly, but I couldn’t tell whether or not that amusement was linked to any level of sexual interest. Was there an offer in her half-mocking smile? I was certainly not going to take her up on any offer, if it indeed was there, but was it?
Of course I wouldn’t respond. If I didn’t have Lola to restrain me, and I did, the memory of Carlos delivering that Sunday morning beating would keep me in check all by itself. Still, without a word being said, without even a glance that was no more than ambiguous, I found myself feeling somehow less of a man for not having taken Maria up on... on what?
Watching her swim, sometimes, the powerful legs scissoring, the form-fitting black bathing suit, the long sleek body, the concentration in those eyes, I found myself drifting into unexpected shoals of thought. Was this somehow time out? If I were no longer Barry Lee, but not yet Felicio Tobón de Lozano, did neither Barry’s vows nor Felicio’s filial duty come into play? Keeping one eye out for Carlos, could Ernesto Lopez take a little taste of the sweetness this household offered?
I began to avoid the pool, if Maria was in it. I was beginning to avoid my own lecherous brain.
Saturday, the eighth day of my afterlife, the three of us were having lunch out by the pool when Maria said to me, “Arturo phoned; he’s coming up today. I think he’s heard from Lola.”
“Oh, good!” I said, and felt myself smile all over. Just to hear Lola’s name helped. And it kept those other impulses at bay as well.
Finished with me, Maria turned to Carlos. “I’m going to Miami on Monday.”