by Carmen Amato
The two men embraced. Hugo pulled away from Fernando and looked at Lorena. She didn’t dare say a word.
Silvio opened the door and Hugo left. Fernando started to sit back down behind his desk as Madeira Suiza jumped up again.
“President Betancourt, you can’t just let him--,” Madeira Suiza started.
“Ignacio, César,” Fernando interrupted. “Thank you. That will be all.”
Silvio opened the door. “This way.”
Madeira Suiza walked out, his face a mask. Fonseca, Bernal Paz, and Fernando exchanged a nod of mutual satisfaction before the two older men left.
Lorena stood to leave as well. Something here had happened that she didn’t understand. She needed to get in touch with Hugo, find out exactly what all this meant.
“Lorena, please stay,” Fernando said.
Silvio closed the door, leaving Lorena and Fernando alone.
“Well,” Lorena said. “This was all very sudden, wasn’t it?”
“It leaves me with an important position to fill,” Fernando said. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his forehead.
Lorena regarded him with loathing. Just like always, it was Fernando first, before anything that was important to her.
“I would like you to consider taking over as Minister of Public Security,” Fernando said. “For the remainder of my presidency.”
“Me?” Lorena flounced into a chair in front of the presidential desk. “Fernando, seriously. You know that a sitting minister cannot also be a political candidate. The law is very specific.”
“I’m asking you to put your country first, Lorena,” Fernando said.
Lorena leaned forward to argue and her eye fell on some papers on her husband’s desk. The handwriting was familiar. Max’s handwriting. Max’s handwriting on pages from a planner. Lorena read the words Hugo lunch, Hotel Arias.
Chapter 50
Luz and the girls decorated the house with lacy papel picado streamers for Maria’s fiftieth birthday. Father Santiago came, and Carmelita and the Rosales family, and several of Maria’s friends whose lives also revolved around their children and the church.
Tío was working a few hours each week in an upholstery shop and brought his new employer to the party. Esteban Jimenez Cruz was compact and barrel-shaped, with dark brown eyes and straight black hair hanging over his collar. He was her age, Luz guessed, with the padded look of a man who had a few too many tortillas at every meal.
Luz and Lupe put out the food: tamales, cuaresmeños jarochos, bayos refritos con salsa, ensalada de nopalitos, fried fillets of tilapia fish, arroz rojo, and tortillas. Everyone helped themselves and sat wherever they could find a chair. Beer and Cocas were passed around for toasts to Maria.
Luz sat on the sofa next to Lupe with a plate of food and a bottle of beer, and unwrapped her tamale. The spicy pork and chiles formed a tangy red counterpoint to the white slab of masa corn paste nestled inside the folded and steamed corn husks. Without the meat and spices the masa would be filling but tasteless.
The party had pleased Maria immensely but she was flushed again, her face an unhealthy red as she drank copious amounts of Coca. Luz watched her mother with concern. Something had to be done about Maria’s intermittent breathlessness and increasingly ruddy look. Maybe Maria had developed high blood pressure, like Señor Vega. There was a blood pressure machine next to the pharmacist’s desk in the big grocery store. Luz resolved to take her mother there to check.
There was a birthday pastel and pastries. Lupe got up to help Sophia wash her hands. Esteban Jimenez Cruz appeared with his dessert plate.
“Do you mind, señorita?” he asked and sat.
“Not at all,” Luz said.
“Your cooking is excellent,” Esteban said. He leaned forward and forked up the cake on his plate. “I’ve never had such good tamales.”
“How kind of you to say,” Luz murmured. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. He wolfed down his cake in three large bites, like he wasn’t sure there would be food tomorrow.
“This is excellent, too,” Esteban said around his last mouthful.
“I didn’t make it,” Luz said. “I bought it at the pasteleria.” People were standing around, still helping themselves to dessert and coffee and Cocas. She couldn’t start cleaning up yet.
“Armando tells me you were a muchacha in Mexico City,” Esteban said, trying to get her attention. He put his plate on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But you had an accident there.”
“Armando?”
“Yes, Armando.” Esteban gestured at Tío.
“Oh. Yes.” Luz had almost forgotten that Tío had a real name. For once Tío had showered and shaved and looked marginally presentable. Martina was sitting on his knee.
“I live with my family.” Esteban paused. “The house is a good size.”
“Yes,” Luz said, because he seemed to expect her to say something. Single people always lived with their parents. Unless they were wealthy and lived in a nice apartment in Mexico City.
“My mother says our kitchen is large enough for another cook,” he said.
Madre de Dios, Luz thought. She searched desperately for another topic as she unconsciously wrapped her left arm over her ribs and hugged the scar. “Do you enjoy your work?”
“It is a fine living,” Esteban said.
Luz listened with a pasted-on smile as he talked about the shop he owned with his brother. They had three employees and reupholstered old pieces as well as making custom pieces for a decoradora. They had their own delivery van. The shop was going to branch out and start making curtains. As he talked she knew there was no artistry to what he did, although there might have been. For him it was all about stretching the fabric and stapling it into place. That and using the least amount of the customer’s fabric so that there would be leftovers to sell. Or use himself.
Luz had a mental image of what the inside of his house looked like: a hodgepodge of mismatched upholstered pieces, the inevitable shrine to the Virgin, and a mother who would insist on telling Luz how to make caldo de mariscos for his hangovers.
“Are you interested in the presidential elections?” she asked abruptly, cutting off Esteban’s description of the sewing machine they’d bought for their expansion into drapery.
“The elections?” Esteban smiled uncertainly. He wore a dark blue shirt and brown pants. He didn’t have help who came in twice a week to care for white shirts and khaki pants.
“Yes, the presidential elections,” Luz said.
“I am in the union,” Esteban said proudly, as if that was all he needed to say.
And it was. Being a member of a union almost certainly meant that Esteban automatically voted for PRI candidates. He took a pack of Boots cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and offered it to her. Luz shook her head. He lit one for himself and put the pack away.
“What about Lorena Lopez de Betancourt?” Luz asked.
“Lorena?” Esteban held the cigarette in his right and tapped the ash into his cupped left hand as if it was an ashtray. “President Betancourt’s wife, no?”
“That’s right. Did you read her interview in HOLA!?” There was a long pause while Luz looked brightly at Esteban and started to feel mean.
“She is the president’s wife?” he asked. Again.
“Yes,” said Luz.
“You think she would like to be president?” Esteban took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette.
Every day I cry for the pain of the people. “Yes.”
“Did she ask her husband?”
“I think he knows she wants to be president,” Luz said.
“If she is president, who will make his dinner?” Esteban said, as if he had resolved an important issue. He finished his cigarette by putting it out against his thumbnail. The butt and his handful of ash went onto his dessert plate.
He smelled of onions and cigarettes and hair gel.
“Excuse me,” Luz said abruptly. She got to her feet too qui
ckly and the pain in her side flared. She swayed a little. Suddenly Juan Pablo was there. She shook him off and went upstairs.
'
“Mama,” Luz said. “I think you should have your blood pressure checked.”
“I’m fine,” Maria said from behind the ironing board.
“We’ll walk to the big grocery store and have it checked at the pharmacy.” Luz poured iodine into the water in the sink and added stalks of cilantro and some tomatoes. “After the shirts get picked up.”
“You worry about nothing,” Maria said. “I’m just tired today, that’s all. The party kept me up too late last night.”
After helping Luz clean up the detritus of Maria’s birthday dinner, Lupe had gone to the Friday craft afternoon at Santa Clara. Juan Pablo and the girls were still at school.
“Tomorrow then,” Luz insisted. She let the cilantro soak for a few minutes then shook it dry, wiped the tomatoes, and carried everything to the chopping board on the table to make salsa fresca.
“That Esteban was nice,” Maria said.
Luz diced a tomato. “I guess.”
“A good eater.” Maria ran the iron over a shirt placket, her face ruddier than ever. “He ate four tamales and three cuaresmeños.”
Luz bent her head over the chopping board and minced the cilantro stalks into damp green dots. Her mother had counted how many tamales and stuffed chiles the man had eaten. Like gluttony was an important quality. A more important quality than, say, intelligence.
“He would be a good provider for you, Luz de Maria.”
“Mama, you can’t be serious.” Luz scraped the cilantro into a bowl and tried not to laugh.
Maria panted as she hung the shirt on a hanger, shrouded it in plastic, and stapled the coupon to the shroud. “Why not?”
“Mama, please.” Luz minced another stalk with swift strokes of the knife. “Talking to him was like watching paint dry.”
“He’s a good son. He goes to church.”
“He’s thick and round,” Luz groaned. “His hair is too long. He has the table manners of a goat. He doesn’t read and he hasn’t any opinion of his own and he doesn’t care about my opinions, either. He’s so dull it would kill me.” She narrowly missed slicing off her finger and knew she was far too worked up.
Luz dropped the knife and clamped her arm around her ribs. It was like comparing molé and masa. Molé was sharp, tangy, and complicated. For special occasions. The sauce was hard to make, requiring many ingredients and hours of cooking and grinding and stewing and mixing. But the end result was a unique and wonderful experience, full of the flavor of fruit and cocoa and pasilla chiles.
Masa was just the opposite, bland and simple and requiring only masa harina flour and water. Masa dough was everywhere. Thin it for tamales, thicken it to make tortillas or fried tlacoyos or gorditas. It was plain and unremarkable. On every street corner and in every kitchen.
“There’s someone else, isn’t there,” Maria said.
Luz bit her lip. She’d told no one about Eddo, not even Carmelita.
“So?” Maria rested the iron on its heel.
“He’s an attorney, Mama.” Luz resumed chopping as her face reddened with guilt. “He’s very smart. Travels a lot. Loves fútbol. Very athletic. Like Juan Pablo.” She swallowed. “His family makes talavera and owns a lot of land.”
“Criollo?”
“He went to college in the United States and then studied law at UNAM.” Luz tried to ignore her mother’s tone. “I went to his office once. It was very nice.”
“This is why you keep going to the abarrotes store?” Maria demanded. “For messages from a criollo man? Where is he?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Almost 30 and you still don’t know your place.” The scorn in Maria’s breathy voice was unmistakable. “Estupida. You don’t know where he is because he lied to you.”
Luz said nothing.
“That sort of man just uses women like you.” Maria shook her finger at Luz. “You keep with your own kind.”
“He was just nice . . . and I thought he might leave a message. That’s all.”
“That’s foolishness,” Maria scolded. “Think about Esteban. His mother and I think you two would be a good match. You could get married in June. After Lupe has the baby.”
“I’m not going to marry Esteban,” Luz sniffed. “Or anybody else. I’ve got a great big scar across my ribs and no man is ever going to see it.”
“In 17 years of marriage your father never saw my ribs,” Maria admonished and picked up the iron again.
Luz grinned in spite of herself.
There was a noise by the stove. Luz looked up just in time to see Maria turn the color of an eggplant and slump awkwardly in the tight space between the table and the ironing board. The iron fell out of her hand, clanging onto the tile floor with the crack of metal on cheap saltillo. The board tumbled, slamming into the rack of shirts. The plastic shrouds swayed around Luz’s head as she screamed. Then the rack pitched forward, snapping apart as it hit the table and sending the plastic-covered shirts slithering over the floor next to Maria’s body.
'
Four days after saying Maria’s funeral Mass, Father Santiago was murdered by a gang that broke into the church to steal the collection from the Sunday masses. His body was discovered Monday morning by the old man who tended the cemetery. A young priest named Father Patricio moved into the rectory and Luz hated him for not being Father Santiago.
Chapter 51
“You don’t have to do a thing,” Hugo said. “Just tell Fernando you’re thinking about the job.”
“And that the campaign can’t be turned off like a switch,” Lorena said.
“Make sure Silvio doesn’t sneak around behind you and pull the radio advertising or close down the websites.”
The phone connection was clear and Hugo heard Lorena catch her breath. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“He’s Fernando’s man.”
“I hate him.”
For the first time since he’d known her she ready to give up and he was damned if she would. “Just give me some time to figure this out, Lorena,” he said. “Just keep stalling Fernando. Don’t give him an answer.”
“But he knows there’s no money,” she hissed. “And Max is gone. There’s nobody to run the campaign.”
It had been nearly two weeks since Hugo had resigned. Luis hadn’t lasted long in prison; he’d been found stabbed to death in his cell. Meanwhile, Max’s trail was still cold.
Hugo had sent a cryptic note to Gomez Mazzo about Site 2 “shipments” being confiscated but had not received a posting in reply. Even so, Hugo was optimistic that all he had to do was reconnect with Gomez Mazzo and make sure the operation at Site 1 was still running. A network like that, making that kind of money, didn’t just evaporate overnight. Gomez Mazzo might still be bringing in the cash but he’d know it belonged to Hugo. They’d set up another fake bank, like before when Luis’s man had messed things up in Anahuac and Gomez Mazzo had fixed it. Only this one would be fake enough to stay under the Central Bank’s radar. Bernal Paz must have been shitting his pants that night over drinks at the Hotel Arias. The thought made Hugo smile grimly to himself.
“I can fix this, Lorena,” he replied. “Right after I get back from Canada. Graciela will have a physical at some hospital in Vancouver, they’ll tell us she’s fine and we can all act relieved.”
“You’re leaving me here all alone?” Lorena shrilled. “With Fernando pushing and pushing me every day?”
“After Canada we’re going back to Monterrey.” Hugo felt her anger vibrate over the cell phone connection. Somewhere a microwave tower was emitting sparks.
“What about me?”
“I’ve got a business to run, Lorena,” Hugo said. “We’ll keep the campaign going from there.”
“With what money?” Lorena raged. “I need the money now.”
Hugo got off the sofa and went to the bar in the corner of the study, phone clamped
between his shoulder and ear so he could pour himself a drink. “I’m working on it,” he insisted. He’d use his own business to filter the money, he decided, siphon off what he could from the books and use several of the smaller subsidiaries the same way that Arias had used the Hermanos Hospitality shell company. He’d have to work out the arrangements and find some new accountants but it could be done.
“Am I important to you or not?” Lorena demanded.
“I promised to make you president,” Hugo said, the drink halfway to his mouth. “And I have a plan. You just sit tight for a couple of weeks.”
Los Pinos was still within his grasp.
Chapter 52
“I should quit school, Luz,” Juan Pablo said.
Luz handed him a cup of manzanilla tea and sat on the sofa next to him. It was Saturday. Lupe and the girls had watched Sabado Gigante and were now upstairs in bed. It was time for the news. Sticking to routine was how they had survived the weeks since Maria’s death.
“I paid your tuition through to graduation.” Luz stirred her tea. “It’s not refundable.”
Juan Pablo’s jaw dropped. Luz smiled for the first time in forever.
It was so hard to be the only decision maker now. Carmelita had helped her so much; taking Martina and Sophia for sleepovers with her girls, bringing over food, and talking quietly to Lupe who seemed incapable of doing anything these days. But Luz was head of the family now, solely responsible for the future of the Alba family. She moved into Maria’s shabby bedroom and lay awake nights, wondering if she had the strength to keep going. The house felt more claustrophobic than ever, as if shrunk by sadness.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Juan Pablo protested. “Nobody’s working.”
“We had a deal,” Luz said. “You’ll finish Santa Catalina first.”
“Luz, that was before--.”
“No,” Luz cut him off. “I have an appointment on Monday with a placement agency. I’ll get a day job in Veracruz so I can help Lupe with the baby at night.”