Private House

by Anthony Hyde

  Bailey took the book from her, flipping it over: Invitados was printed across the cover in gold. He turned back, to Hugo’s entry. It wasn’t very legible, although Lorraine, reading around Bailey, could make out “Toronto” and the date; he had arrived Friday, April 29, the day after she had. But the signature itself was almost unreadable. She was able to decipher “Hugo” only because she was looking for it, and after that she could only guess. Mean. Mair. Meen. Mine. Or Nair. Hugo Nair . . . Was that a name? Lorraine gave up. Bailey handed the book back to the woman and Lorraine said, “Ask her if she doesn’t have something where he printed his name.”

  Las letras separadas. Lorraine caught this as Bailey spoke, but the woman was shaking her head even before he was done, and then she began speaking very quickly, as if somehow forestalling him. Bailey said, “She says that all the forms go to the police. I don’t know. But I’d say she’s telling the truth.”

  The woman heard this. “Truth. Sí, sí.”

  “But this is so hard to read. Ask her to try to remember—”

  Bailey didn’t let her finish and started to explain. The woman replied, volubly, then looked at Lorraine, lifting her voice as though she was speaking to someone hard of hearing. “Mr. Hugo. Mr. Hugo!”

  “I am Lorraine . . . Stowe. He was Hugo . . . ?”

  The woman looked at her, not understanding at all, and turned to Bailey for help.

  Mathilde broke in, “The airline must have his name, Lorraine . . . or they could find it. Even if they wouldn’t for you, they would for the police.”

  That was true. Presumably. And it was something, though it didn’t seem very much. Lorraine gave up. “We’re not getting very far,” she said. “Tell her we want to see his room. Inside his room.”

  This request clearly made the woman unhappy but Bailey’s bullying had cowed her. “She says it’s all right except she has to come with us.”

  Lorraine nodded at the woman, and smiled. She didn’t seem much mollified, and led them upstairs, past Phil’s door and into the same dim hall Lorraine remembered from her visit on Friday. The woman led them straight in, not bothering to knock, and then stood aside, her weight on one leg, a pose, as if she was letting them look over the room as prospective tenants. She folded her hands on her skirt and her voice became complacent. “Clean. Very nice. Nice window. Very bright all day.”

  That was probably true. Still, Lorraine thought, it wasn’t much of a room, charmless, and obviously improvised from some other space. It was one big room with a corner partitioned off for a washroom. It would be all right for students discovering Havana: they’d be on the streets or at the beach all day, and in clubs all night. All they wanted was a bed. And if a young woman were to give herself upon it, she wouldn’t remember the room, probably not even the boy, only the sun or the stars shining in the window and the excitement of her success. Had that young woman she’d seen at Coppelia been here? But of course there was her other speculation, certainly encouraged by Phil and Jack, that it was Hugo who’d given himself and Almado who’d scored the success. She moved toward the bed, thinking this; and when she pulled down the blanket, she knew what she was looking for—but she pushed it away. Semen would be only another ambiguity, hardly what she needed. She walked across to the washroom, looking in. She saw that the drain of the shower was wet, but then the shower was dripping, so it was just something else that meant nothing. She opened the mirrored cabinet above the sink—not even an old tube of shaving cream. Nothing. Closing the door, she saw her reflection, but this only made her think that it was Hugo who had been effaced.

  When she came out, Bailey was looking in a wardrobe and Mathilde was going through the bureau beside it, slipping drawers in and out.

  “He’s gone,” said Bailey, rattling hangers. “There’s nothing here.”

  “This is empty,” said Mathilde, closing the last drawer.

  Bailey said, “He came on the 29th? What day was that—”

  Lorraine said, “A Friday. The day after I did.”

  “So, he stayed a week, and went home. That’s what it looks like.” Lorraine, for an instant, felt her back go up and she wanted to say no; but then she told herself not to bother. He went on, “When did you speak to him last? Not Saturday.”

  She shook her head, but kept her voice quite neutral. “No, Thursday. But he didn’t say anything about leaving. I must say, he didn’t sound like someone who was leaving.”

  Mathilde glanced at Lorraine, then over to Bailey. “And why would he have paid until today, Sunday?” Lorraine smiled at Mathilde, to thank her for her support. But now something occurred to her. And she was so startled by it that Mathilde noticed and said, “What is it?”

  But Lorraine was looking down at the floor and doing a slow pirouette. And she couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. “Bailey, ask her if she has cleaned this room, if she has been in here at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just ask her.”

  Lorraine turned and looked at the woman as Bailey spoke, trying to be as friendly as she could. And the woman at least kept her eyes on Lorraine as she replied, though they faltered finally and she was looking at Bailey as he translated her reply. “She hasn’t been in here once. She says she only cleans when someone leaves.”

  Lorraine wondered. “Make sure of that. Make sure she’s telling the truth.”

  “Lorraine, she’s telling the truth.”

  “Yes, but it’s important.”

  He began talking to her again, and the woman lifted her arms in the air, speaking very quickly. Bailey said, “She keeps saying she didn’t steal anything . . . that’s what she thinks we think.”

  “Lorraine, what is it?” Mathilde asked again.

  “Remember . . . I told you. My note. I pushed it under the door. That was Friday morning. Where is it now?” She looked at Bailey. “Ask her if he had anyone up here? Visitors? Friends? You see, it should be on the floor.”

  The woman was listening to Lorraine, and she understood enough that she began shaking her head, and then she turned to Bailey, and elaborated everything in Spanish. He said, “She doesn’t think so. She doesn’t always know when people visit—it’s a private entrance. That’s partly why people come here—”

  “Sí, sí,” said the woman.

  “And he’s on the third, the top. She can’t tell if someone’s going all the way up. Maybe they are visiting the person in apartment two.”

  “She’s a landlady, Bailey. She knows what’s going on in her own house.”

  Bailey tried this line, but the woman began shaking her head again. Bailey shrugged. “She says it’s a private house. It’s none of her business. She doesn’t spy on her guests. But she says she’s pretty sure no one visited him.”

  “There must be a wastepaper basket—something. Ask her.”

  There was a pail, under the sink: empty. The woman said people were supposed to take it downstairs every day.

  “Somebody took it,” Lorraine said. “Somebody had to.”

  Bailey shook his head. “Not necessarily. Maybe he did. When does the plane leave for Toronto? Think of it. He picked up your note. He put it in his pocket. He packed his bags, walked out of here, caught his plane—lucky guy.”

  Mathilde said, “When is the plane to Toronto?”

  “Not until the afternoon. Around three. Yes, it could have happened like that. But I don’t think so.” I don’t think so. Now, as she said this, Lorraine was convinced: and she was convinced in a way she hadn’t been before. Somebody, other than Hugo, had taken that note. Had they also cleared out this apartment? The note proved something was happening and now she believed. Then something else occurred to her, something rather simple. The woman hadn’t knocked as she’d come in the room—yes, she’d seen that at the time. Now she opened her bag, found her wallet, and took ten pesos out. She held it up and looked at Bailey. “I want to know when, precisely, she last saw Hugo—when she last saw him with her own eyes. Not ‘a couple of days ag
o.’ But when.” She’d known he wasn’t in the room because she knew he was already gone.

  The woman kept her eye on the note, her ear on Bailey. She hesitated before replying but then was brief: Miércoles.

  “Wednesday,” said Bailey.

  Wednesday. On Thursday, Almado had left his note at the hotel and met them in the Merced. So Hugo must have found Almado on Tuesday. “Ask her, did he move out—did she hear him taking out his bags? Tell her—” She gently waved the note. The woman eyed it like a cat. And she said, after quite a pause—balancing ten pesos against God knows what else—“Sí.”

  “You thought he was leaving?”

  She shrugged. “He pay.”

  So why should she care? “This was Wednesday night?”

  The woman, understanding, nodded. “Sí, sí.” Then she amended this to “Afternoon. Yes? Late. Late afternoon.”

  That was when Phil and Jack had seen him. Lorraine thought, I’m going down a rabbit hole.

  “He was by himself ?”

  “Sí, sí.”

  “Bailey, ask her: did he leave anything with her?”

  To this, the woman shook her head.

  Mathilde jumped in, “So Hugo was gone by Wednesday night, and so were his bags. Why move out—when he was paid up until today?”

  The woman said something. Bailey said, “She wants her money.”

  Lorraine gave it to her.

  After that, there was no point staying.

  They went downstairs and on the street they stood blinking in the sun.

  “Well,” said Mathilde, “where does that leave us?”

  She was hoping not to have to say it herself—nowhere. She was hoping that Lorraine would say it for her. But it was Bailey who turned to Mathilde and he said, “What about that business of yours last night?”

  Mathilde tried to brush it off. “Oh, that was nothing.”

  But it was too late. Lorraine turned to her. “Mathilde, what are you talking about? What business?”

  Mathilde squeezed her eyes shut for a second—there’d only been time on the phone to tell Bailey a little of what had happened. He didn’t know that she hadn’t told Lorraine: that she’d decided it was better if Lorraine didn’t know. She opened her eyes, and remembered something she’d told herself last night in the darkness. “Lorraine, in real life there aren’t any clues.”

  “Mathilde, I insist.”

  “It was nothing. I didn’t see any point in bringing it up.” She took Bailey’s hand, raised it, and quietly lied. “I was going to his place after I left you, but Adamaris called me on my mobile. After we left the restaurant—you remember—she’d followed Almado, and ended up on the Malecón, way out. He was getting into a taxi and she heard the address. Since I was in a taxi myself, I thought, why not? I thought he might lead me to Hugo, but he didn’t. It didn’t come to anything.”

  “But where did he go?”

  “San Isidro and Aguacate. That’s what she heard him say, the corner. It’s not far from that church, you know . . . the Santeria one, where we met him. Where he stole my camera.”

  “You went there? At night ?”

  Mathilde laughed, dropping Bailey’s hand. Instead, she took Lorraine’s arm, and started them walking. Lorraine’s surprise and shock, such a normal reaction for her, made it easier to come together again. “You see, I take you more seriously than you think. Yes, at night.”

  “But what happened? This is incredible!”

  “Nothing happened—nothing important. That’s why I didn’t say anything about it. He came and I was able to follow him. I don’t know where . . . not far. But then he disappeared. It was dark.”

  “But that means he must be living there!”

  “Yes, I thought that, but I really don’t know where.”

  Lorraine stopped—Bailey, walking behind, almost banged into them. “You must have some idea. We can go down there. Now. It’s daylight. You’re bound to recognize something.”

  “Do you think so? He just vanished.”

  “But he can’t have.”

  “It was too dark even to see the street—I really don’t know where I was. All I remember was, I finally found Cuba Street.”

  “That’s a start. Don’t they run parallel? Aguacate and Cuba—”

  “But I was just wandering by then.”

  “Well, we can wander the same way.”

  “We’d be wasting our time.”

  “All right, but tell me, which way did you walk from the corner? I’ll go down there myself.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “I can ask people. If he’s living there—”

  “Oh, Lorraine, you are blackmailing me!”

  “No, I’m not. You don’t have to come—it’s safe now. Surely.”

  “But I can’t let you go on your own!”

  “Just show me—that’s all you have to do. You never know—”

  Mathilde, feeling exasperated, sighed. “All right. . . . We’ll all go. But if we don’t find anything . . . ?”

  “Let’s just see.” And then she added, “For half an hour. Just that long.”

  It was as close to an agreement as Mathilde could manage. Bailey said nothing. They walked along the narrow, broken sidewalk, toward Parque Central where you could always find a taxi. After a time, Mathilde found it easy to drop back and let Lorraine lead the way. For the first time that morning she and Bailey were more or less alone, and Bailey murmured to her, “I’m sorry, I should have kept my mouth shut back there.”

  Mathilde took his hand again, forgiving him. Ahead, Lorraine was walking briskly, as if she was certain of her destination. Mathilde watched her: she was still trying to think in English, and she found the phrase she wanted, no nonsense, that’s the way Lorraine was walking, which was not really something you had in French—très carré perhaps, but that was more like comfortable . . . or squared away, settled. . . . Except Lorraine’s walking wasn’t settled, it was no nonsense . . . It was part of something that had been there all along, but had now come to the fore. Had she been disguised? Had she now taken off her mask? But if she was revealed, it was odd, because it also seemed that Lorraine had withdrawn into herself so Mathilde now felt a barrier between them. All their differences were coming to the fore; Lorraine was older, a Christian, a Canadian . . . now this all meant something. She was an entirely different person, really. A different kind of person. All the same, Mathilde didn’t want to lose her, to be blocked out. She was partly to blame. She had lied, there was no point denying it. Not telling her had been a lie, in the first place. And back there she hadn’t said what had really happened last night. In a way, she had lied because she’d believed her. It could have been dangerous. She thought of the dark street and those young men, following her. And they were the simplest form that danger could take. Almado was something else. Almado was a creep, to use Bailey’s word, and Mathilde admitted to herself that she wanted to go to the police—either that, or drop the whole thing. Yes, after last night, that’s what she wanted. But she knew the police were out of the question. She looked up at Bailey. He’d threatened the Cuban woman with the police but they frightened him, too—she knew that, even if he didn’t like to say so. Cuba was a police state, after all. It was very pleasant for the tourists but they didn’t have to live here. All the guidebooks made that plain enough. If you were caught smuggling a Cuban up to your room, nothing happened to you but the Cuban learned what trouble meant. Remember: you’re leaving, but they can’t. Bailey had said as much when she’d called him this morning and told him about going to Hugo’s casa. “I don’t mind, I guess, but not unless you’re sure. If the police get worked up, I’ll pay in the end.”

  In Parque Central they got into a taxi. Lorraine had walked so far ahead that she was standing beside it, the door open, waiting. It was one of the government taxis; some of them were Peugeots but this was a Skoda. Mathilde slid in beside Bailey. They sat close together, while Lorraine wedged herself into the corner, on the other side. But
the gap between them wasn’t all Mathilde’s fault, she thought. It occurred to her now that Lorraine had lied to her—yes, she had— because Lorraine hadn’t told the truth the day she’d said she was going to the art gallery. Yet it wasn’t a question of lying; each, in a way, was only thinking of the other while still being herself. Bailey slipped his hand over her thigh and she felt desire stir. Yes, that was something else he had said on the phone. “Of course I’ll come, but it wasn’t how I was planning to spend the day.” Now she felt it too. It was always so direct with him, what she wanted: I want to be under this man, I want to feel his weight pressing me down. What Lorraine wanted . . . that was harder to figure out. What was she doing? What did she think she was doing? It was up to her, she thought, to keep Lorraine out of trouble. She leaned forward and said to the driver, “Right here.”

  The taxi drew in. Mathilde was mildly surprised. The corner was busy; everywhere you looked, people were out and about. It was Sunday, but, more than that, Mathilde felt the sense of a holiday.

  They stood there, blinking; it was bright and hot. It was a slum, but the people looked happy, smiling, calling to each other—quite different from the morning they’d walked down to the Merced. Some had pulled out chairs, and sat in the street in front of their door: men had set out a table and were playing chess. A woman in a suit, with a great silk puff at her neck and a bouquet of lilies in her hand, hurried past on four-inch heels, as sure on her feet as if she were wearing sneakers. Mathilde looked around. “I waited here. You see, I was here before him. Adamaris told me he was on the Malecón, she’d followed him all that way—I had to wait five minutes or so.”

  Lorraine said, “I do give you credit for nerve.”

  Mathilde said, “We went up here . . . I think.” In fact, they hadn’t. She was remembering the direction the boy on his bicycle taxi had headed after he’d dropped her. She led them that way, walking slowly, letting her bag swing loosely from her shoulder. She strolled. . . . She seemed to be walking in a fine cloud of dust. The sun was incredibly bright. It poured down, searching you out. Did she feel deceitful? Something of the line between Lorraine and herself was now reproduced inside herself, dividing her. And it annoyed her; she told herself not to make so much of it. Lorraine had to be taken out of harm’s way: there was no need to feel guilty. Still, it bothered her; probably because it was premeditated, wasn’t just a matter of saying what came into her head. I’m no good at scheming, she thought. And after two blocks, she stopped and said, “This is too far,” and turned around, and took them back, to the street where Almado had actually gone. “Yes, this is where we turned, I’m sure of it.” And after that, up to a point, everything she said was quite true. “It was so dark, there weren’t any lights. . . .” Across the street from the building with the hole punched through the wall—where she’d seen the cat—she stopped. “I’m not sure, but I think we passed this place.”