“You’re lying.”
“I’m not! But you are,” she shot back.
“What?”
He looked at her blankly, but it was not the blankness of innocence, he simply did not know what to say. She tightened her fingers around the handles of the bicycle.
“You don’t need a translator. You could probably write an essay in Spanish. I saw you back there, you… you and your stupid notebook. You were testing me,” she said.
He blushed a vivid crimson, like a boy caught scarfing down a cake. Deception did not suit him. Viridiana wondered if it suited her? She’d never been much of a liar, but these days she was learning dissimulation. That was not quite like lying. Not yet. But it might be. People like Gregory and Daisy must have started somewhere. Did they pile little tricks together and build up to outright fraudulence? Or had they known insincerity from the start?
Maybe it was a simple case of metamorphosis and, like a caterpillar, once you stuff yourself with enough falsehood, you’ll naturally transform into a butterfly. No one can chide the caterpillar for doing this. It was, after all, a butterfly all along even if it didn’t know it.
“All right, I was. I don’t know who to trust in this town.” Lawrence said. “It’s obvious the authorities don’t care about anything that happens here, and they might not be honest with me, but they might with a local. I couldn’t be sure you, or any of them, weren’t going to fudge facts.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know. And I know now that you aren’t bullshitting me, unlike everyone else.”
“That’s great. But you’ve caused me a lot of trouble.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Forget it,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s Friday. Go have a beer or find something to do.”
Viridiana got on her bicycle and rode toward the pharmacy. She needed to purchase an Alka-Seltzer or she’d never make it back to the house. The pharmacist, however, was busy conversing with Patricia and took his time counting the change and bidding her goodbye. When Viridiana stepped out, she found four men lounging next to the entrance, right where she had left her bicycle.
Alejandro, Paco and their friends.
They’d been drinking. They still carried with them a bottle which they were passing around. Perhaps they were getting ready to hit the cantina, or to pile into a car and drive to the next town, where they had a pool hall. They might have passed through the town square without pausing, but Viridiana was sure Alejandro had spotted her bicycle.
He’d spotted it and rested his back against the wall of the pharmacy and waited for her.
Why did it have to be Friday? If it hadn’t been Friday, things would have been much better, she was sure of it. But Friday was party night for the young people in town. Or as close as they could get to a party. Cheap beer, for sure, and perhaps music if someone had a place and a record player. Friday and these assholes were looking for sport, for a game, and she was the amusement that would open their evening.
She could walk back into the pharmacy and wait until they were gone. She could also ask the pharmacist to fetch her mother, like a child who must be held by the hand and escorted home. That would not go well.
She could brave it. Alejandro might be drunk and irritable, but the night was early. He could be almost sober and less likely to lash out at her.
There was no use in cowering. Viridiana put her purchase in her backpack, walked forward and looked straight at Alejandro, who was casually resting one hand on the bike.
“Do you mind? I need to go,” she said.
“This is yours?” he replied, but he didn’t move his hand.
“You know it’s mine.”
“You’re probably right. Since so many things in town are yours. My money, for example.”
Alejandro stretched out a hand and Paco handed him the bottle. He drank, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, returned the bottle to Paco, all while staring at her and blocking her way.
“Your gringo friend fired me, Dianita. He said he didn’t need me to translate for him anymore.”
“He’s not my friend,” she replied. Her stomach still hurt, she hadn’t even had the chance to sit down to drink the damn Alka-Seltzer, and now her mouth tasted sour, too. What a fucking day.
“He said you were. And you sure were friendly to him, costing Paco and me a fare that day he arrived in town. And now, costing me more work. You owe me.”
“I didn’t say anything bad about you.”
“I don’t believe that,” Alejandro said. “You’re always saying shit about me. So, yeah. You owe me. Why don’t you go down with me to the beach, to talk the terms of your debt.”
“The day I get a lobotomy, sure,” she said. There was no sense in being nice to Alejandro if he was already in one of his moods.
“How’d you get him to fire me and hire you? Did you spread your legs wide?”
“Fuck you. You’re a pig.”
“What a bitch you’ve always been,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t even realize I’m joking.”
“Move away,” she ordered. “Pig. Asshole.”
She tried to shove him aside and he did not move, arms crossed, standing firmly in front of the bicycle.
His friends laughed.
“Hey, do you want it?” he asked. “Okay, okay, you can have it.”
Alejandro grabbed the bicycle and tossed it on the ground, then he began stomping on it. Viridiana tried to pull him aside, to make him stop, but he laughed and tried to pin her against the wall, at which point she slapped him.
“What the hell is going on?”
Alejandro turned around and his friends, who had been hooting and clapping, stopped as everyone looked at Lawrence. A couple of elderly ladies, carrying bags filled with bread, halted their steps, as did two men who were headed to the tiendita, and the butcher who had closed up for the day and was going home. It wasn’t that odd to see young men harassing a woman, but when the woman in question was a girl like Viridiana, and when an out-of-towner American was about to get involved in the confrontation, it caused heads to spin.
“Nothing’s going on,” Alejandro said. “And if anything is going on, it’s not your business.”
“Maybe it’s the business of the police,” Lawrence replied.
“Really? You want to get Homero involved?” Alejandro turned to his friends and spoke in Spanish, chuckling. “This pendejo thinks he can sic Homero on us.”
“Ah, you don’t want no problems with that asshole,” Paco said. “He thinks he’s Erik Estrada these days, it’ll cost you.”
The men agreed that it was best to head wherever they had been headed in the first place. Viridiana knew they did not do this out of courtesy, but self-preservation. Homero played cards often, and often lost, so he took bribes liberally and he would no doubt ask each and every one of the men to pony up money. Which is why nobody but an idiot would call the cop to the site of a brawl in the first place, but Lawrence, being American probably didn’t know this rule.
“Bye, Dianita,” Alejandro said, blowing her a kiss. “No hard feelings, alright?”
Viridiana crossed her arms and watched as the men walked away. The two elderly ladies shook their heads. Viridiana knew they’d tell her mother about this.
“Hey, everything okay?” Lawrence asked.
“Lovely,” she said.
He grabbed the bicycle, righting it, and she practically snatched it from his hands, checking to make sure it looked to be in decent shape. In the scuffle she’d misplaced her hat, and Lawrence bent down to pick that up too. He held it out to her.
“I could get the car,” he said. “Drive you back. It’s dark.”
“I noticed,” she said, looking up at the lamppost, a couple of moths circling around it. She got on the bike.
A boy, no older than ten, climbed onto the coin-operated horse outside the pharmacy, ignoring the “out of order” sign and making a buck
ing motion. He was accompanied by two other boys who urged him on, even though they knew that the pharmacist hated it in when they did that.
Alejandro and his cronies had once been like those boys, engaging in small pranks and devilries which turned slowly more unpleasant. They had emerged from their cocoons to become something dangerous.
She guessed that was the other reason why she’d dumped her boyfriend: she couldn’t tell what he’d turn into. Nice guy, but what if he shed his skin one day and revealed a new beast? At least with Gregory she knew she was standing next to a chameleon, a proven liar, and that somewhat simplified things.
She looked at Lawrence, Boy Scout and cowboy, wishing to brandish a tin sheriff’s star like the one they’d played with when they were kids, and she wondered what animal existed under his hide.
Then she shoved all those dark thoughts, shoved the bezoar back into the pit of her belly, tried to tell herself Paris was around the corner and Gregory looked like a matinee idol, and that’s what mattered. Love, adventure, passion.
She wanted to be in a romance movie. Wanted to be Audrey Hepburn with her fabulous dresses and her breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Though, as she pedaled, she wondered if she hadn’t wandered into the dark streets of a noir.
Chapter 17
Daisy was in a mood. Not exactly angry. She paced around the living room. Round and round she went, until Viridiana, not knowing what to do with herself, went to her bedroom to listen to the radio. When she came out for lunch, Daisy had vanished and since Delfina had already left for the day, Viridiana felt like she could finally relax.
But not long after she sat down, the doorbell rang, and she found herself staring at Lawrence. He’d driven there again in Reynier’s car. The top of the convertible was off, and in the backseat there was a bicycle.
“Hey,” he said, smiling at her, speaking quickly. “I brought this for you.”
Viridiana looked at him, then at the car. She felt as though she had been out too much in the sun, even if she’d spent the whole day inside. Like she was looking at a mirage. “What? The bicycle?”
“Yes. It’s brand new.”
“I can’t take that,” she said.
“Why not? Look, I saw what those guys did to your bike the other day.”
“It’s not broken.”
“No, but you could use a new bicycle, couldn’t you?”
He turned his head to look at her old bicycle, which was propped by the front of the house. It really did look like shit. The seat ripped and taped back in place, the frame scratched and the paint chipped, the handles wrapped in electrical tape. “Maybe, but why would you get me one? I don’t understand.”
“Because I feel bad. You were right. I caused you a lot of trouble.”
She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and placed her hands in the pockets of her jeans, giving him a shrug. “It’s okay.”
“Then you’ll keep it?”
“God, I don’t know,” she said.
“Mind if I park it here then? And you can decide later? I’m hoping Daisy is around, I want to ask her something.”
“Come in.”
He took the new bicycle out and set it next to her old one. There was no comparison. His bicycle even glinted.
Viridiana went to get Daisy, who headed downstairs quickly, smiled at Lawrence coolly, and shook his hand.
“I’m sorry about our last meeting, I upset you,” Lawrence said.
“It was upsetting, but I understand,” Daisy said. “You cared about Ambrose.”
She said this with a certain queenliness, as if she were a mother accepting the apologies of an unruly child. Viridiana had seen her act like this before. She disliked it very much. It reminded her of her incipient youth. Age had granted Daisy gravitas.
“I did.”
Daisy picked up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter which had been carelessly left on the living room’s coffee table. “How can I help you today?” she asked.
“I was hoping to have a look at my uncle’s papers. The stuff he would have had in his office.”
“Why?” she replied carefully running a manicured nail against the edge of her cigarette case, her eyes on Lawrence, her smile was turned on bright, like a light switch. Ninety watts right there, and with the oh-so-crimson lips the effect was hypnotic, but he didn’t seem much affected.
“For one, I must ensure all his affairs are in order. For another, it may help me make a determination on the matter of his will.”
Daisy seemed to think it through, then nodded, lighting her cigarette and making a lazy movement with her right hand, as if indicating the direction of the office.
“I’m sure we both want everything dealt with as quickly as possible. Viridiana can show you. She knows where he kept everything, I paid little attention to his papers.”
“Thank you.”
“Perhaps later you can join us for dinner?”
“I’d like that.”
With that, they walked away. Since that one day, Viridiana had not bothered to spend time in Ambrose’s office. She had even avoided it out of a superstitious fear. Ghosts clung to the living, her grandmother said. They could follow you onto the street, and even into a new home, if you let them. Ambrose was buried in the cemetery and she had prayed for him, but there was still too much of him in this room.
All around them were the books which had belonged to the previous owner—another dead man—and the volumes Ambrose had shipped here himself. Most of all there were papers. Ambrose carried with him many things, both important and meaningless. She had ordered it all as best she could.
Lawrence looked at a pile of pages stacked by the typewriter.
“Was he really making progress on his book?” he asked.
“Bit by bit. He was too undisciplined at times,” she said, mindful of her choice of words.
The young man lifted the top page from the pile, scanning its contents, then looked at the ones beneath, carefully lifting a few more and returning them to their place on the stack.
“What about the rest? His correspondence? Notes?”
“Some of it is in this drawer,” she said opening a cabinet. “Some of it here,” she indicated the shelf on which the letters he had received were stacked, as well as the carbon copies of the ones he’d mailed. Lawrence unfolded a couple of them and peered at the envelopes.
“What are you hoping to find?” she asked.
“He liked writing things down. I don’t know, I’m looking for clues. For something.”
He opened a box, but it only contained carbon paper.
“You’re sure Daisy killed him.”
He placed the top back on the box and set it back in its place. Then he leaned against the open door of the cabinet, frowning. A tired scout who had hiked through the wilderness.
“I’m not sure she killed him. I’m not sure of anything, that’s the problem. All I know is he was heading back to Mexico City, and I don’t think it was for the fresh air,” he said.
“Did your uncle mention something?”
“Not enough for me to get a clear picture of what was happening. But he was fed up with Daisy.”
“You said he gave his wives generous settlements. If he was fed up with her, wouldn’t Daisy still have collected her check?”
“Not if he was really upset. Or concerned.”
It would have to be a really big concern, wouldn’t it? Viridiana remembered the IDs she’d found in the bathroom. Maybe Ambrose had found similar identity documents amongst Daisy’s things. That could have set him off.
Lawrence turned his head, to look at her, and she wondered if she looked terribly guilty because his eyes narrowed, turning hard. “He never mentioned anything to you? Maybe he said why he was cutting his trip here short.”
“He wouldn’t have had to explain anything, and he didn’t. He gave me a check for the remaining weeks I was supposed to work here and he…”
If she hadn’t looked guilty before, she sure as hell looked guilty now. She thought of Gregory, which made her blush, as she recalled the day Ambrose handed her that check. Or rather, the night. Gregory had come to her room. She’d shown him the radio she’d bought, and he’d asked her to give him a blow job.
“What?” Lawrence asked, when she trailed off.
“He said Daisy and Gregory were parasites.”
“They are. Gregory doesn’t have a job. He lives off his sister, apparently. And she lived off my uncle.”
“Was that so bad? Daisy is beautiful, young, smart.”
“And Ambrose wasn’t. Is that what you are saying?”
“You think she’s a gold-digger. What’s so wrong about that? He wanted a younger wife, she was there. They worked out an arrangement.”
“Except maybe the arrangement wasn’t enough.”
“Or he was reneging on it,” she countered back, thinking of all the times she’d seen Ambrose be rude to Daisy. He was a clown, a bore, even cruel.
Lawrence ran a hand across the desk, the tip of his index finger resting on a silver letter opener. He looked at her.
“You didn’t like him at all, did you? And you like her.”
He seemed surprised, and that almost made Viridiana chuckle because he must know his uncle was a prickly man. Sure, at his best Ambrose had been jolly, even generous—that check he’d given her could attest to it—but he wasn’t a likeable person. Then again, she supposed people are always different in front of a special audience, they changed their flesh masks. Ambrose might have been a saint to his nephew. Now that she thought about it, everyone in this house—Ambrose, Gregory, Daisy—existed under the cover of a different identity.
Same for her.
Viridiana was not who she thought she had been. The summer heat was stripping layers off herself, like peeling bark from a tree. She was, at present, not quite an accomplice, not quite an innocent, but certainly not quite the original Viridiana.
“I didn’t like him, and I do like her. Maybe you’re right and she did kill him. But she probably didn’t leave a note in here, for you to find,” Viridiana said.
Untamed Shore Page 17