A flash of lightning illuminates the suite bedroom and Juan de la Cruz Saudade's face for a fraction of a second. And during that infinitesimal fraction, Saudade's face reflected in the pane of the high window is not at all the face that had been talking and having sex with Hannah Linus up until that point. It is a mask of pure hatred. An open iron door to an industrial oven of hostility. Without any of those elements of basic kindness or sociability that we associate with being human. A hatred that has elements associated with gender and socioeconomic status but that transcends them broadly, to cover everything that moves and breathes on the Earth. A hatred that rarely is seen outside of certain sculptures and ritual masks from prehistoric civilizations. Then the lightning ends. The vision only lasted that random fraction of a second. Saudade's face recomposes itself.
“All chicks like to fuck other chicks,” he says. “It's a proven fact. So you don't have to get embarrassed. And you don't need to act tough. About the whore. All women get jealous. That's another proven fact.”
Saudade listens. Hannah Linus's voice comes from the bathroom, muffled by the shower door. He thinks he can vaguely make out the words “ass” and “idiot.” Then he hears the sound of plumbing for a second and finally the regular, comforting murmur of the shower's water falling into the stall.
Saudade jumps off the bed as soon as the shower comes on. His naked, muscular movements seem to have lethal precision. He crosses the suite to the living room and picks up Hannah Linus's bag. He takes out her wallet, which by this point is familiar to him, examines the cards inside and finally chooses one. A gold card with Hannah Linus's corporate logo, which Saudade has seen her use on various occasions to open the gallery building's security devices. He heads toward the little table beside one of the living room windows and opens the curtain. He looks down for the only figure on the entire street who is not being dragged along with an umbrella by the wind. After all, the figure seems too big for a simple storm to be able to budge him from his place in the middle of the sidewalk. Aníbal Manta looks up toward the curtain of the seventh floor of the hotel that has just opened and nods in silence beneath the rain. Saudade raises his thumb toward the enormous, steadfast figure on the sidewalk and closes the curtain again.
“Tell me something,” says the voice of Hannah Linus from the shower stall. Mixed with the sound of the water. “You're married, right?”
Saudade directs his attention to the telephone on the small table. He turns it over and leaves it upside down on the varnished wood surface. Like an animal on its back. Then he opens one of the drawers of the small table and takes out a screwdriver no bigger than a toothpick. He uses it to take out the four screws that hold the body of the telephone to the base. The speed and skill with which he does it suggest previous training monitored by someone with a stopwatch. The inside filled with cords and electronic devices is now visible.
“Married, me?” says Saudade. With his face gathered in a concentrated expression. “Men like me don't get married, sweetheart. It would be a waste. I come and go, you know.” He wipes a drop of sweat from his forehead with a tattooed wrist. “I have a duty to my work.”
Saudade examines the inside of the telephone until he finds a piece of plastic attached to the base with recent soldering. The piece has a long, deep slot on one side and a plate with circuit and cords on the other. A red pilot light stares at him from the telephone's guts. Saudade runs the magnetic strip of Hannah Linus's card through the slot, several times, until the pilot light turns green. A click is heard inside the recently soldered piece.
“I think you are married,” says the voice of Hannah Linus from the shower. “I've seen how you look around you every time you come in or out of the gallery. Or the hotel. You married men have the same secretive air.” She pauses. “It's in everything you do. You're like a criminal committing a crime.”
Saudade dials a telephone number on the numeric panel of the telephone with its guts spilled out. After a couple of seconds, the magnetic card reader installed inside the body of the telephone begins to retransmit the card's information. With a shrill, irregular buzz. Saudade closes his eyes and wipes another drop of sweat from his forehead. The retransmission lasts exactly fifty-two seconds. Hannah Linus's postcoital showers last on average two and a half minutes according to what Saudade has had the chance to witness. The transmitter's buzzing is like a very sped-up version of the noise made by Teletypes and Morse code transmitters in old movies. The sound of the shower doesn't have those momentary interruptions of people who turn off the faucets to save water while they soap up. On the other side of the curtains, seven floors below, a group of kids look at Aníbal Manta admiringly and point at him with their fingers and make hyperbolic comments about his body size.
“I don't care,” says Hannah Linus from the shower. Her tone of voice is that loud voice people use when they are showering to talk to people outside of the shower. A loud voice that's not quite a shout but close. “That's fine with me. I almost always get involved with married men. More comfortable for me. I don't like to have guys following me around all the time.”
The buzzing of the transmitter ends. Saudade starts to put the screws back in place.
The sound of the shower stops. From where he is, Saudade manages to see a hand stick out from inside the shower door and feel around for a towel.
Saudade puts the magnetic card back in Hannah Linus's wallet and the wallet back in Hannah Linus's bag.
Hannah Linus comes out of the shower drying herself off with a towel. She ties the towel around her body the way women do. Which is to say above her breasts. Leaving her knees and part of her thighs in view. She finally enters the bedroom. Braiding her hair with her head leaned to one side and a distracted expression. She stares at Saudade with a slight look of disgust.
Saudade is lying on the bed. He gathers his face in a smile that Hannah Linus finds repulsive and moves aside the sheets to show her his penis, again completely erect. A giant clap of thunder makes the glass panes of the high windows and the suite's furnishings shudder. It occurs to Hannah Linus that coexistence in the same physical space with men she has just had sex with is getting harder every day. Almost like a sensation of physical repulsion. Must have to do with getting older. Although she can't remember ever having slept with anyone as moronic as this guy before.
“I'll give you two hundred euros if you get out of here right now,” says Hannah Linus when the thunderclap's vibration dies down. Still braiding her hair. With her head still leaned to one side. “Three hundred. I just want you to get out. The money's in my bag.”
Saudade doesn't seem particularly surprised. He shrugs his shoulders, the smile still on his face. About ten feet from where he is lying, and reflected in the bedroom's full-length mirror, the thirty-six-inch plasma television continues to broadcast a muted loop of adult films.