A Million Drops

by Victor del Arbol

  “I don’t need a babysitter. You don’t have to come every afternoon and sit watching over me. The nurse and doctor say I’m out of danger.”

  Alcázar brought his face right up to the headboard.

  “That’s not the way I see it.” He pulled out a photo taken from the security camera and held it a foot from Gonzalo’s face. “The parking garage camera recorded everything. This is the guy who beat the crap out of you. Recognize him? Is this Floren Atxaga?”

  Gonzalo nodded.

  “I’d say that as long as this guy is on the loose, you’re not out of danger.”

  “Miranda Acebedo, his ex-wife…”

  “Relax. I gave her police surveillance.”

  Gonzalo sighed painfully. He felt air wheeze through his lungs like a broken bellows.

  “Weren’t you supposed to be retiring?”

  Alcázar’s mustache rose like a curtain, his way of smiling.

  “Officially, I’m just another civilian. I handed in my badge two weeks ago, just like I said.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “Just because I left the police doesn’t mean I don’t have bills to pay. Us old folks have the annoying habit of not wanting to die when we retire. So for the past few months I’ve been laying the groundwork, and now I’m a free agent. Your father-in-law hired me to protect you and your family.”

  “How considerate of him…”

  “Don’t fool yourself. You’re nothing but an investment as far as the old man is concerned. But your family, they’re top priority. I talked to your wife.”

  “You’ve spoken to Lola?”

  “You were in a coma. I had to act fast and that’s what I did. There are two men stationed at the door of your house, watching your family, ensuring their safety. They’re good guys.”

  Gonzalo hadn’t taken the graffiti seriously, hadn’t truly seen it as a threat. He’d thought of Atxaga like a Pekingese, the typical little shit that yaps a lot but only bites the hand that feeds it.

  He’d put Lola and the kids in danger. The mere thought of it made him gag.

  “I thought I could handle it…”

  “And clearly, you were wrong.” Alcázar brought him up to speed: Atxaga had been staked out, waiting for him in the garage, behind a column. When he saw Gonzalo approach, he came out from his hiding place and struck him in the head with a crowbar. Gonzalo lost consciousness almost immediately, but the guy kept furiously kicking and beating him. “He stabbed you three times. He was trying to kill you, there’s no doubt about it. Luckily, someone showed up and scared him off, a woman. She was the one who called the police.”

  “A woman? I didn’t remember there being anyone else in the garage.”

  “Well, you didn’t see Atxaga, either. Anyway, she left before the patrol car got there, but we don’t need her testimony. We have the video.”

  Gonzalo locked eyes with the inspector, who was scrutinizing him as though he were a lost cause.

  “The things I had with me…there were documents in my briefcase”—he tested out his lie; it sounded fairly plausible—“and my laptop, with all my clients’ personal data…”

  Alcázar tried to calm him. “The police gave everything to Lola. I don’t think anything’s missing. Atxaga wasn’t trying to rob you.”

  Was he lying? Or was what Gonzalo sensed not a lie but ill-concealed superiority, like that of a caretaker with a patient, like the nurse who helped him eat or the doctor encouraging him to start physical therapy as soon as possible? In truth, the inspector’s patronizing tone derived from a conviction that Gonzalo was naïve and probably weak, a man who knew nothing about the real world, the danger that others can inflict, a man who had suddenly taken a crash course in reality. And you think you can take on the Matryoshka? Now you see what can go wrong, how a perforated lung feels. Welcome to my world.

  “When I was lying there, right before I lost consciousness, I thought I was going to die. Really die.”

  Alcázar scratched his chin with the knuckle of his index finger. He inhaled and held his breath for a moment before releasing it slowly, with an almost inaudible purr, the result of chronic bronchitis, the result of smoking two and a half packs a day. It was just a matter of time before he died of emphysema, if he kept up at this rate. But the inspector wasn’t listening to any purring cats, even if they came from his throat.

  “It’s awful, isn’t it? The certainty that you’re going to die. It’s an idea that’s with us from the day we’re born, yet the second it goes from theoretical to being an indisputable experience, it becomes unbearable. You can’t think about anything else, fear paralyzes all other things: the love for your family, the interior monologues people supposedly have. That stuff about your life flashing by in a second? Bullshit. Your sphincter unclenches, end of story. Don’t feel bad about it. Nobody wants to die, Gonzalo.”

  The idea of death made Alcázar think of Cecilia, the agony she went through, him watching her those last few weeks as the cancer devoured her, minute by minute, and there was nothing he could do for her but be there, witnessing her panic and suffering. Alcázar stood, ready to leave.

  “But you dodged a bullet this time. You’ll never forget; it’ll be there, lying in wait, stalking you. From time to time it’ll come bite you, laugh at you, scare the crap out of you, but life makes you take sides, and you’ll side with life and get on with it.”

  Gonzalo sensed no moralizing or counsel on the inspector’s part. He was simply describing his own experience, with a complete lack of emotion.

  “Don’t let that monster get close to me or my family again.”

  “Relax. He won’t come anywhere near. And if he does, I’ll be waiting for him.”

  Alcázar made as if to leave but then stopped short and held a finger to his lips.

  “Oh. One more thing. Your kids mentioned seeing a young black man prowling around the house. A well-dressed guy, good-looking.”

  Gonzalo was sure the inspector saw his face change expression. He tried to cover, but his lies and evasions were vague; it was like someone trying to hide behind a curtain that’s too short, leaving his feet poking out.

  “I remember Lola mentioning it, but I don’t see how that ties in.”

  Alcázar cocked his head, as though exposing the absurdity.

  “No, of course not. But if he shows up again, let me know.”

  Lola arrived two hours later. Before she’d even had time to put her purse down, Gonzalo asked anxiously if the police had given her the laptop that had been in the back of his car. Lola thought about it for a moment but was almost certain there was no computer among the things the police had delivered.

  “I thought you hated those things, anyway. You’re always saying that if it weren’t for Luisa, you’d be lost in the world of computers.”

  Gonzalo improvised, a bit less carefully than he had with Alcázar.

  “I’d just started trying to learn. You’re almost sure the police didn’t find it, or you’re absolutely sure? Think, please, it’s important.”

  Lola found his excessive concern over a laptop odd.

  “I’m absolutely sure. It can’t be that big a deal; surely you made backups.”

  Had Siaka? He hoped the young man was better at this than he was. The possibility calmed him slightly, but he couldn’t stop fretting about whose hands the information Laura had collected had fallen into, and what they planned to do with it.

  Lola came to the hospital alone. The first time she visited, she’d brought Patricia, but his daughter had been so frightened that she couldn’t stop crying when she saw the mass of flesh that sounded like her father but looked nothing like him. Since then, Lola hadn’t brought her back. As for Javier, he hadn’t so much as stopped by. As usual, Lola tried to defend him.

  “You know what he’s like. He asks about you, sends his regards, but he do
esn’t want to come…Anyway, I think he’s got his head in the clouds these days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could swear he’s met a girl.”

  Gonzalo detected a note of joy in his wife’s eyes, something almost akin to envy, the rekindling of emotions long ago lost or forgotten in the pages of their history. They, too, had once been young and in love, rash and fearless; they, too, used to blow off the rest of the world to see each other for five minutes and make out, returning home with their clothes disheveled and a telltale flush to their cheeks. He reached out a bandaged hand, IVs of saline attached to his wrist, and touched Lola’s painted fingernails, her hands resting on the sheets.

  “I’m so sorry about all of this,” he murmured. His voice was still thick, his intonation not yet his own.

  Lola smiled faintly and tried to look understanding, but the truth was she simply looked exhausted.

  He was alive, and there was a gruff-looking man at the door—a guard Alcázar had posted there in case Atxaga was tempted to come back and try to finish Gonzalo off. Lola was fine, and so were the kids. That was what mattered.

  “I should have taken the graffiti thing more seriously.”

  “That doesn’t matter anymore.”

  They looked at each other in silence, so many unsaid things swimming in their eyes. Rebukes, pleas, excuses. Why was it all so hard to say?

  “I love you. You know that, right?” Lola’s eyes glimmered.

  Gonzalo swallowed. His right eye was full of blood, his left so swollen it was hard to keep open. The bloody one inspected her.

  Five minutes, tops. That was as long as he’d spent, frozen, at the half-open bedroom door that day eighteen years ago. All eyes, all shock. He could see part of the bed, tangled sheets and their feet entwined, swishing back and forth like the tentacles of a jellyfish, bunching and separating in time to the groans. Hers, his. He’d never wanted to know the man’s name. He’d seen part of his back—tanned and muscular—and one white buttock, boyish in contrast to the rest of his dark, toned, sweaty body pressing into her. Lola, buried in his arms, his body. Moaning. And the sound of it was still between them. Gonzalo wished he could wrench it all from his brain, the moaning and the sight of their feet stirring in the sheets. He wished he could erase the image he saw every time he looked at his wife. But he couldn’t.

  “We haven’t talked about what’s going to happen, now that the merger is off.”

  The door that Lola had opened hopefully now suddenly slammed shut in displeasure. She leaned back, withdrew her hand, and placed it on a shapely knee, still sensual, peeking out from beneath her pencil skirt.

  “It’s nothing that can’t be fixed. I spoke to my father, he understands the situation and is willing to wait for you to convalesce. I promised him you’d reconsider your decision, that you’d think about us, about your children and their future, about our well-being.”

  Lola’s hard expression, lips painted with subtle flesh-colored lipstick, left no room for speculation. Gonzalo brought his hand to his chest, the IV trailing behind. This slow movement was the only sign that he was still breathing.

  “I can’t do it, Lola.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  She didn’t understand what was going on inside him, didn’t realize that what had begun as tiny cracks in the wall now threatened to bring down the whole edifice, a complete and total collapse.

  “I need to hold on to the lake house, and I need my firm to remain independent. It’s important to me.”

  “Memories are worthless, Gonzalo. Aren’t you the one who used to say we take them with us when we move, that it’s like putting them in a backpack? There’s no reason to tie your memories to that house.”

  “It’s not about memories, and it’s probably not even about the house—which, you’re right, is worth nothing. But I still dream of being the man I once was, or the one I hoped I’d be. It’s not too late, not yet. We don’t need a big house with a pool, we don’t have to send the kids to such expensive schools, we can get by. Let me take care of you and the kids without your father’s help. I can do it. I want to do it.”

  Lola wasn’t even listening, had already dug her heels in. She didn’t understand what had happened to Gonzalo since his sister died, what sort of torment it had set off inside him. But she sensed that the results would be disastrous.

  “How are you planning to take care of us, Gonzalo? The same way you took care of that man who almost killed you and filled our lives with fear? Two armed men, paid for by my father, staked out at the door! That inspector prowling around like a prophet of doom!”

  Cruelty was her desperate, last-ditch effort. She refused to accept the situation without putting up a fight. She knew her father, knew what he was capable of if anything got in his way, and right now Gonzalo was the obstacle. He was refusing to give up whatever it was he had in his head—rash romanticized notions of freedom and dignity, nonsense that Esperanza, the old witch, and his crazy sister had filled his head with ever since he was a kid. And yet in his selfishness he dared to demand that she and the children give up precisely the same thing that he would not. Lola had already given up so much by marrying against her father’s wishes, against her class. The son of a Communist, an atheist, a lowlife who didn’t have two cents to rub together when she met him. And she’d suffered endless humiliation, belittled by her friends and family; she burned in shame when they argued about politics, stood in the crossfire without losing her composure, feeling alone when Gonzalo looked at her with scorn: The poor always saw poverty as a virtue, and he looked down on her as though she, his wife, were despicable and corrupt just for being rich. And she’d suffered through all of that because she loved him, and because with infinite patience and dignity she’d built a world around them, to protect them, and to keep Gonzalo from the bad influence wrought by his invented memories of a father he’d concocted.

  She thought she’d won, but now it was clear that she had not. People don’t change who they are, they simply dress up as something else. Eighteen years of guilt was a long time to repent, every day and every night suppressing the urge to tell him the truth—a truth that, had Javier not been born, would have been insignificant. She had been young, and those of her class reminded her that she still was. It had stopped being so fun to be married to the son of the Red, she had her doubts, wondered if she’d been too rash in marrying him, maybe they were right and she was wrong. So she succumbed and had an affair, which time and the realization that she truly loved Gonzalo should have rendered meaningless, anecdotal. But Javier was born, and it was as though Gonzalo could sense that the boy was not his son, and she knew that was the real reason for their constant battles, for the war that wounded them both equally. Every night she had the urge to tell him, to make him see that mistakes are things we learn from if we don’t make them again, but she kept quiet, again and again, and now there was no way to speak those words. This was why they were still together, and why she’d renounced so many things, renounced herself. But she wasn’t going to let Gonzalo’s stupid adolescent defiance drag her family down. They weren’t twenty years old anymore; they had two children to worry about, and whether he liked it or not, this was the world they lived in.

  “I’m not going to change my mind, Lola. I won’t sell the property and I’m not going to sign the merger with your father.”

  “Even if it means losing me? Even if you lose your children and everything we’ve built together?”

  Gonzalo thought of the story his mother had told him about how his father had lost his right eye trying to hold on to a stupid coat that someone wanted to steal when he was young. Sometimes we lose things that matter by defending things that others find insignificant.

  He gazed at Lola in sadness.

  I lost you eighteen years ago, said the silence in his eyes.

  His time in the hospital was like a break from reality—Gonzalo w
as in his own world. Luisa visited in the mornings and insisted on bringing him chocolates (Gonzalo didn’t even like chocolate but he used the bonbons to bribe the medical staff). She’d sit by his bed and tell him how things were going at the office since his decision not to sell the lake property or join Agustín’s firm.

  “For now, I’m keeping the wolves at bay, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold out without backup.”

  “They’re saying I’ll be discharged in a few days, but it will take time before I’m back in shape. Broken ribs take months to heal completely.”

  Luisa giggled in amusement. “When have you ever been in shape?”

  This was her way of hiding her concern. Despite the glittering new sign hanging outside, clients were barely trickling in, and she suspected it was due in large part to the recruitment campaign Agustín’s secretary had launched. More than once Luisa had come upon the woman chatting with someone in the hall who would later, coincidentally, decide to end their business relationship with Gonzalo’s firm. Luisa didn’t want to worry him too much, so she didn’t mention the letter that had arrived from the building administrator that morning, informing them that their lease was up in three months’ time and was not being renewed. Things were looking as black as the bruises on Gonzalo’s face.

  “I need you to do me a favor. I want you to get the tape from the parking garage’s security camera.”

  Luisa gave him a surprised look.

  “The police have it and are examining it thoroughly. What do you need it for? You really want to watch that guy almost kick you to death?”