“So,” I said, “what did you find out?”
“The usual, it’s a whorehouse, open all hours, they advertise in the newspapers, superchicks, European, Latin American and Asian, they say, amongst other things. I warn you there’ll be hardly a soul in there. In the phone book it’s listed under the name of Calzada Fernández, Monica. So the man will be the one to leave, if he hasn’t already.”
“He must be about ready to, they’ve finished and he’s getting dressed. A couple of punters with pretensions to being literary types have just left, they probably fancy themselves as real Renaissance men,” I said. “We’ll have to skedaddle in a minute, but I’m going in there as soon as he comes out.”
“What, have you gone mad? You’re going to follow in the footsteps of that hick? What is it with you and that woman?”
I again tugged him by the sleeve and dragged him further off, beneath the trees, where we would be invisible to anyone coming out. A lazy neighbourhood dog barked and immediately fell silent. Only then did I answer Ruibérriz.
“It’s not at all what you’re thinking, but I have to get a look at her breasts tonight, that’s all that matters. And if she is a whore then all the better, I’ll pay her, I’ll have a good look at them, we might talk for a bit, and then I’ll leave.”
“You might talk for a bit and then leave? You can’t be serious. She’s nothing very special it’s true, but she’s worth more than just a look. What’s with her breasts?”
“Nothing, I’ll tell you tomorrow because there may well be nothing to tell anyway. If you want to follow the guy in the car when he leaves, fine, although I don’t think you need bother. If not, thanks for the research and now please go, I’ll be all right on my own. Is there nothing you can’t find out?”
Ruibérriz looked at me impatiently despite that final bit of flattery. But he usually puts up with me, he’s a friend. Until the day he ceases to be.
“I don’t give a damn about the guy, or her for that matter. If you’re OK, then stay, you can tell me about it tomorrow. But be careful, you’re not used to these places.”
Ruibérriz left and this time I did hear his car in the distance while the door of the house opened (maybe the woman again said “Come back and see us again sometime”, I couldn’t hear from where I was). I saw that the coarse man was outside the house now, I heard the noisy gate. He walked wearily in the opposite direction — his night of pretence and effort over — I could approach now behind him while he disappeared off amongst the black foliage in search of his car. I felt intensely impatient, and yet I waited a few moments longer, smoking another cigarette before pushing open the gate. There was still a light on in the bedroom where the encounter had taken place, the same lamp, the blind still lowered, but with the slats open, they didn’t air the rooms immediately.
I rang the bell, it was an old-fashioned bell, not chimes. I waited. I waited and a large woman opened the door to me, I’d seen her on the third floor, she was like one of our aunts when we were little, Dorta’s aunts or my aunts, fresh from the 1960s even down to her platinum blonde, flying-saucer hairstyle or her make-up, courtesy of eyebrow pencil, powder and even tweezers.
“Good evening,” she said interrogatively.
“I’d like to see Estela.”
“She’s having a shower,” she said quite naturally, and added guilelessly, displaying an excellent memory: “You haven’t been here before.”
“No, a friend of mine told me about her. I’m just passing through Madrid and a friend of mine spoke well of her.”
“Ah,” she said, drawing out the vowel, she had a Galician accent, “I’ll see what we can do. You’ll have to wait a moment, though. Come in.”
A small room in near darkness with two sofas facing each other, you walked straight in there from the hallway, all you had to do was to keep walking. The walls were almost empty, not a book or a painting, just a blown-up photo stuck on a thick piece of board, like they used to have in airports and travel agencies. It was a photograph of white skyscrapers, the title left no room for doubt, Caracas, I’ve never been to Caracas. I immediately thought, perhaps Estela is Venezuelan, but Venezuelan women don’t have soft breasts, at least they don’t have that reputation. Perhaps Estela didn’t either, perhaps she wasn’t the dead woman and it was all just a mirage born of alcohol and the summer and the night, a lot of beer with a dash of lemon juice and too much heat, if only it was, I thought, stories already absorbed by time should not subsequently change, if in their day, they’ve been filed away without explanation: the lack of any explanation ends up becoming the story itself, if the story has already been absorbed by time. I sat down, Aunt Mónica left me alone, “I’ll go and see how long she’ll be,” she said. I awaited her return, I knew that she would return before the person I wanted to see, the lady was her aide-decamp. And yet that isn’t what happened, the lady didn’t come back for ages, she didn’t come back at all, I felt like looking for the bathroom where the prostitute was having a shower and simply going in and seeing her without waiting any longer, but I’d only frighten her, and after I’d smoked two cigarettes, she was the one who came down the stairs with her hair uncombed and wet, wearing a bathrobe but still in her street shoes, open-toed, her nails painted, the buckles loose as the only sign that her feet were also at home, off duty. Her bathrobe was not yellow, but sky blue.
“Are you in much of a hurry?” she asked point-blank.
“Yes.” I didn’t mind what she understood by that, after a while, she would understand everything, and she would be the one obliged to give me an explanation. She looked at me with absolutely no curiosity, without really looking, not like Gómez Alday did, but like someone who, given her situation, expects no surprises. She was an imperfectly pretty woman, or, rather, she was pretty despite her imperfections, at least in the summer.
“Do you want me to get dressed or am I all right like this?” she said, immediately calling me ‘tú’, perhaps she felt she had the right to when she knew I was in a hurry. To get dressed in order to get undressed, I thought, just in case I wanted to see the second part.
“You’re fine as you are.”
She said nothing more, she gestured with her head towards one of the doors on the ground floor and walked towards it like a clerk going to look for a file, she opened the door. I stood up and followed her at once, she must have noticed my evident impatience, it didn’t seem to frighten her, rather it made her feel superior to me, she was condescending in her manner, a big mistake if it really was her and she had to answer for a night that was now old and perhaps forgotten. We went in, it was the same room, still unaired, in which she had just been grappling with the coarse man, there was an acidic smell, but it was much more bearable than one might have supposed. A fan turned on the ceiling, through my slat I hadn’t been able to see it. There was the cowboy hat, thrown on the floor, perhaps for use by clients with complexes or with a head like an inverted egg, the hat was for hire too. There had been a cowboy element in Dorta’s last night too, he had spoken to me of some peculiar crocodile-skin cowboy boots.
She sat on the bed that was neither a mattress nor a bed, one of those low Japanese affairs that I can’t remember the name of, I believe they’re fashionable.
“Did she tell you how much it is?” she asked. The question was lacklustre, mechanical.
“No, but it doesn’t matter, we can discuss that later. There’ll be no problem.”
“With the lady,” said Estela. “You discuss it with the lady.” And she added: “Right, what do you want? Apart from it being quick.”