by Tom Wolfe
No! He did know her. She was transparent, and she was honest. He could trust her. He could tell that from the very start. Nevertheless… now that he had gone and done something foolish, it was time to get absolutely serious.
He gave her something just short of a Cop Look. “That’s just between us, you and me, okay? You understand?”
He Cop-Looked at her until he got that pledge out of her. “Yes,” she said in a tiny voice, almost a whimper, “I understand.”
Now he felt guilty. The quickest way to alienate her—and lose her trust—would be to continue in this tough-guy mode. So he broke into the softest and most loving smile he could come up with. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to sound so… so… serious and everything. If there’s anyone I can trust, it’s you. I absolutely—I just know that. I’ve known that from the start, and—”
He caught himself. From the start of what exactly? Now he was going overboard in the other direction.
“Anyway, you know what I mean… So that’s the main reason I’m here. I figured I should actually see all this—and I figured it was a chance to see you. I can’t begin to tell you how much it means to me that you’re here.”
Now the loving look he gave her was completely sincere. Having her by his side was a little bit of Heaven. For the first time, the words actually formed in his mind: “I’m in love with her.”
¡Mierda!—his iPhone! He had turned off the ring and put it on vibrate and now it was hopping around in his pocket. The caller ID told him it was John Smith. So he shot a quick Dios mío look at Ghislaine and bolted out of the gallery and into the lobby and put both hands around the offending instrument and answered in an exceedingly hushed voice:
“Camacho.”
“Nestor, where are you?” said the voice of John Smith. “You sound like you’re underneath a load of sand.”
“I’m in the museum. I thought I’d actually take a look at these—what we’re talking about. I’m—”
John Smith trampled right over Nestor’s voice: “Listen, Nestor, I just heard from Igor. He’s in a bad way. He just read the article—or somebody read it to him.”
“This late?”
“Somebody called him. I doubt Igor even reads English, and probably the same goes for his friends, whoever they might be. Anyway, he’s really agitated. I thought at first he was mad at me. He probably is, but that wasn’t what he was all worked up over. He’s terrified. He thinks Korolyov’s going to come get him. He really believes that. He’s afraid they’ll ambush him, ambush, as in kill, assassinate. He thinks they’ve already got the place staked out. He hasn’t seen them, they haven’t threatened him—he’s paranoid in the extreme. I said, ‘You think he’d come get you just because you made fun of his paintings?’ He doesn’t say anything for a minute. Then he says, ‘No’—ready for this?—‘because I’m the one who painted the pictures. Why did you have to print all that about me doing those pictures with my eyes closed? You’ve done this to me! You practically drew them a map,’ and on and on. He’s half crazed, Nestor… but he’s admitted it!”
“He came right out and said he forged them? Was anybody else listening to this conversation—or is it your word against his?”
“It’s better than that,” said John Smith. “I’ve got it all on tape—and he agreed to it. I told him he ought to have a record of every step of the way.”
“But isn’t he confessing to being a forger?”
“That’s the least of his worries right now. He thinks they’re coming after him. Besides, if you ask me, he’s dying to have his great talent ‘revealed.’ ”
::::::Jesús Cristo.:::::: Something about John Smith’s enthusiasm, his joy in the hunt, his anticipation of a great journalistic coup, spooked Nestor. ::::::“dying”::::::
20
The Witness
¡Caliente! Caliente baby… Got plenty fuego in yo’ caja china… Means you needs a length a Hose put in it. ::::::Jesus! What time is it?:::::: Nestor rolled over to his iPhone and picked it up ::::::5:33 a.m.—mierda:::::: and growled as truculently as he had ever growled in his life: “Camacho.”
The woman on the line said, “Nestor?” with a big question mark… She wasn’t at all sure that this inhospitable animal voice was Nestor Camacho’s.
“Yes,” he said, in the tone of voice that conveys the message “Kindly disintegrate.”
Feebly, almost tearfully, the woman said, “I’m sorry, Nestor, but I wouldn’t call you like this unless I absolutely had to. It’s me… Magdalena.” Her voice began breaking. “You’re the… only… person who… can help me!”
::::::It’s me… Magdalena!::::::
A single memory swept in under the radar, which is to say subliminally, and suffused Nestor’s nervous system without ever becoming a thought… blip Magdalena is dumping him on the street in Hialeah and speeding off so fast in her mysteriously acquired BMW that the tires are squealing and two wheels actually lift off the ground as she turns at the intersection to get away from him. It came in under the radar, but it did a good job of finishing off love, lust, libido, even sympathy… at 5:30 a.m.
“Nestor?… Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “You have to admit this is pretty weird.”
“What is?”
“Getting a call from you. Anyway, ¿qué pasa?”
“I don’t know if I can explain all this over the telephone, Nestor. Can’t we meet—for coffee, breakfast… anything?”
“When?”
“Now!”
“Does it have to be right now? It’s five-thirty in the morning. I went to bed at two.”
“Oh, Nestor… if you never do anuh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uhther thi-ing for me! I ne-e-ee-eed you now-ow-ow.” Her words were breaking up into tears, even little words like now and thing. “I ca-a-n-n’t sleep. I haven’t slept all night. I’m so scared. Nestor! Please hel-l-lp me-ee-ee!”
As has been true throughout recorded history, rare is the strong man strong enough to shrug off a woman’s tears… To that add Nestor’s pride in his strength and—dare he even think it?—valor as a protector—the man on the mast about to plunge to his death… Hernandez about to be strangled by the giant in the crack house… the tears of a woman pleading for the Protector… He caved.
“Well… where?” he said. Both of them had roommates in apartments so small there would be no privacy. Okay; they should meet for coffee, but what was open this early? “Well, there’s always Ricky’s,” said Nestor.
Magdalena was astounded. “You don’t mean Ricky’s in Hialeah!”
::::::Oh, but I do:::::: Nestor said to himself. The simple truth was the moment he said “Ricky’s,” the ambrosial smell of the pastelitos came back to him… and made him intensely hungry… which in turn convinced him that he couldn’t possibly stay awake without Ricky’s. All he said out loud was “I don’t know any other place that opens at five-thirty a.m., and if I don’t have something to eat, you’re gonna have a zombie on your hands.”
So they settled on Ricky’s forty-five minutes from now, which would be 6:15 a.m. Nestor couldn’t hold back a profound sigh… followed by a profound groan… What was he doing?
Nestor had to park the Camaro two blocks away from Ricky’s, and walking those two blocks reignited his many Hialeah resentments. In his mind not only his parents but his neighbors—he could see Mr. Ruiz snapping his fingers as if he had forgotten something and slipping back into his house so he wouldn’t have to pass by El Traidor Nestor Camacho on the street—all of Hialeah had treated him like an embarrassment, or maybe a plain rat, after he rescued ::::::yes, I saved the man! I never even thought of arresting the man on the mast!… The only ones who gave me an even break were Cristy and Nicky at Ricky’s::::::… and with that, the free-floating lust he had always had for Cristy blipped through his loins and gave him a mild lift.
Now he was on the sidewalk of that mean little row of rickety shops he’d have to pass on the way to Ricky’s. Oh, yeah… there it all was
… the stupid Santería shop where Magdalena’s mother went to get all that voodoo rigmarole… Wouldn’t you know it! Right there in the window was a three-foot-high ceramic Saint Lazarus, in the sickly, sallow shade of yellow that brought out the sickly brown-black leprosy lesions that covered his body…. Magdalena’s mami… my own mami… Why does that woebegone leper make me think of my mami?… a woebegone soul living on the sufferance of others… She has to believe her caudillo, of course… but she must keep her son the traitor’s love… and offers him, despite his transgressions, a nice soft pallet of pity… “I forgive you, my prodigal son, I forgive you”… Disgusting was what it was!
But now he gets his first whiff of the pastelitos, meaning Ricky’s is just ahead. Ambrosia! He’s at the door… he can feel his teeth cutting through the filo dough, he can see the filo dough shedding flakes as beautiful as tiny flowers, he can taste the ground beef and minced ham his teeth are delivering onto his very tongue upon a bed of filo petals. Now he goes inside… It seems like an eternity since he stood in this doorway, but nothing has changed. There’s the big glass counter with its bulb-lit shelves of baked bread, muffins, cakes, and other sweet things. The little round tables and their old-fashioned bentwood chairs are still there—unoccupied, here at 6:15 in the morning. Okay, he’ll sit there with Magdalena when she arrives… Above all, the rich aroma of the pastelitos! That’s what Heaven will be like. Four men are at the counter waiting for their orders—construction workers, if Nestor has to guess. Two of them have on hard hats, and all four are wearing T-shirts, jeans, and work boots. Waiting… there’s no sign of Cristy or Nicky—
—at that moment a coloratura cry from somewhere behind the counter: “Nestor!”
He can’t see her yet, the counter is so high, but there’s no mistaking that voice, soaring through some high-flying register. Mygod!—the way it fills Nestor with joy! He doesn’t completely understand why at first. She stuck by him throughout all this, treating him as him and not some counter in a political game. True, true, but don’t try to fool yourself, Nestor! You want her, don’t you! So cute, so lively, so nicely put together in her small way, such a gringa among gringas with her spinning gringa hair, such a sweet, promising socket, my heavenly gringa socket, my Cristy!
“Cristy!” he sings out, “mía gringa enamorada!”
He’s aroused by the very thought! He goes straight to the counter, pushes past the four construction workers as if they’re air, sings out a happy greeting, a loud one—at the same time making sure it can be interpreted as a jocular voice: “Cristy, the one and only! You got any idea how much I miss you all the time?!”
Now he can see the very top of her gringa locks and her joking eyes—she knows how to play the game, too—“Mío querido pobrecito,” she says in a teasing voice, “you missed me? Awwww, just didn’t know how to find me, did you? I’m only here every morning from five-thirty on.”
She has stopped two steps from the counter—and her waiting construction worker customers—holding up a tray with two orders of pastelitos and coffee with her left hand and giving him a look of—if not love, something close to it. Nestor leans into the counter until his body is practically draped over it, so he can reach out near her with his right hand. She slides the tray up onto the counter without so much as a glance at the construction workers in order to take Nestor’s hand into the grasp of both of hers. She gives it a playful squeeze and releases it. She’s totally committed to him with her eyes.
“Yeah, mía gringa,” Nestor says, “the Department don’t make it easy for me to get around anymore.”
“Oh, people have told me about it.”
“I don’t doubt that, but whatta they say about it?” said Nestor.
A deep voice: “They say, ‘Whyn’tchoo stop sniffing the girl and let her bring us our damned food.’ ”
It was one of the construction workers Nestor had just pushed past… without so much as a por favor. A good five inches taller than Nestor, this tub was, and God knows how much heavier… americano construction worker from top to bottom—the hard hat, the forehead slick with sweat, the full mustache worn with the accoutrement of an eight-day growth of beard that gave a grizzly look to his sweating jowls, the white T-shirt, now sweat stained the color of broth and stretched over a long expanse of flesh that rated the term “wrestler’s gut,” a pair of fleshy but thick arms, one with a so-called half-sleeve tattoo featuring a huge eagle surrounded by crows wrapped around his biceps and triceps, a pair of gray Gorilla-brand twill working stiff’s pants, scuffed brown steel-toed boots, soles thick as a slice of roast beef—
Nestor was in such a good mood, thanks to Cristy, he would have been glad to laugh at the big lug’s crack—which did have a valid point, after all—and let it pass… except for one word: sniffing. Especially coming from the working-stiff lips of a hulk like this one, it meant sniffing Cristy in a sexual way. Nestor ransacked his brain to find a reason why even that might be okay. He tried and he tried, but it wasn’t okay. It was an insult… an insult he had to stomp to death on the spot. It was disrespectful to Cristy, too. As every cop on patrol knew, you couldn’t wait. You had to shut big mouths now.
He stepped away from the counter and gave the americano a friendly smile, one you could easily interpret as a weak smile, and said, “We’re old friends, Cristy and me, and we haven’t seen each other for a long time.” Then he broadened the smile until his upper lip curled up and bared his front teeth… and kept stretching that grin until his long canines—i.e., eyeteeth—made him look like a grinning dog on the verge of ripping open human flesh, as he added, “You got a sniffing problem with that?”
The two men locked eyes for what seemed like an eternity… Triceratops and allosaurus confronted each other on a cliff overlooking the Halusian Gulp… until the big americano looked down at his wristwatch and said, “Yeah, and I gotta be outta here and back on the site in ten minutes. You got a problem with that?”
Nestor nearly burst out laughing. “Not at all!” he said, chuckling. “Not at all!” The contest was over the moment the americano averted his eyes, supposedly to look down at his watch. The rest of it was double-talk… trying to save face.
Suddenly Cristy was looking right past Nestor in a significant way but not a happy way. “You have a visitor, Nestor.”
Nestor turned around. It was Magdalena. He never dreamed that Cristy knew about him and Magdalena. Magdalena was dressed plainly, modestly, in jeans and a mannish long-sleeved, loose-fitting light-blue shirt buttoned at the wrists and not far from all the way up in front, simply, sensibly. Her face—what was it about her face? A big pair of dark glasses covered a lot of it. Even so, she looked so… pale. “Pale” was about as far as his analytical powers could take him. Men don’t notice a girl’s makeup until it’s missing and even then have no idea what’s missing. The Magdalena he knew always turned her eye sockets into dark shadowy backdrops that brought out her flashing big brown eyes. On her cheekbones she always wore blush. Nestor was innocent of any such sophisticated knowledge. She looked pale, that was all, pale and haggard—was that the word? She wasn’t herself. Plainly, modestly, simply, and sensibly—they were not her, either. He walked right up to her and stared into—or rather, upon—a pair of impenetrable dark lenses. He saw his own dim, small reflection… and no sign of her at all.
“Well, it is you, isn’t it.” Amiably he said it, amiably but without emotion.
“Nestor,” she said, “you’re so kind to do-oo thi-is.” The do and the this nearly broke apart in sobs.
What should he do now? Console her with a hug? But God knew what teary outcome that would have. He also didn’t want to greet her with an embrace right in front of Cristy. Shake hands? To greet Magdalena with a handshake, after all the time they had lain side by side over the past four years, was too wooden to contemplate. So he just said, “Here… why don’t we sit down.”
It was the little round table farthest from the counter. They sat down on the old bentwood chairs. He felt m
ore awkward by the moment. She was as gorgeous as ever. But that didn’t convert from an observation to an emotion. All he could think up to say was “What would you like? Coffee? A pastelito?”
“Just a café cubana for me.”
She began to slide her chair back, as if to go to the counter herself, but Nestor stood up and motioned to her to stay seated. “I’ll get it,” he said. “It’s my treat.” The truth was, he longed to escape from the table. He was embarrassed. She was so beautiful! He wasn’t swept away by lust but by awe. He had forgotten. Everyone would be staring at her. He flicked a glance toward the counter… and, yes, they were… the four construction workers, Cristy, even Ricky… Ricky himself had left the kitchen area long enough to gawk. Nestor began to get ideas of his own, but he wasn’t going to dwell on any such ideas, was he? The fact that she had come back to him because she needed him now… the completely vulnerable look she gave him… these had nothing to do with lust, did they? But he could see—see!—as if it were all happening right now—he could see her the time he was lying in bed, and she was standing a couple of feet from him naked, except for a wisp of lace panties, and she gave him that teasing look she had at such moments, slowly slipping her fingers inside the elastic band—that teasing look!—and lowering them… slowly lowering them… until—
::::::But she’s already betrayed you once, you imbecile! What makes you think she’s changed? Just because she’s boo-hooing for your help? What about Ghislaine? You haven’t done anything… but you’re just outside the door. How is she supposed to feel? But she wouldn’t have to know, would she… Oh, some game that would be… there’s not enough testosterone in your body to turn you into that much of a fool. Well… why not just go with the flow for a while? Great, Nestor! There you have the very battle cry of the fool!::::::
At the counter, Nicky brought him the two cafés cubanas he ordered. He didn’t know Nicky nearly as well as Cristy, but she leaned her chin over the counter and cast her eyes at his table, then turned back to him and said, “So, that’s Magdalena?”