“I didn’t understand why my uncle would want to come here,” Lawrence said. “I told him Puebla or Guadalajara were easier to reach. Or that he could head to San Miguel de Allende, where there are plenty of expats. He didn’t come for the fishing, that’s for sure. He never liked that.”
Lawrence looked out a small, stone cut window towards the sea. “I feel like he came to die here. What you said about ghosts… I don’t believe in them, but still I worry that I ought to take him home.”
“A cremation can be arranged, if it makes it easier to move the remains.”
“Yes, I know. The rest, though… I’m not even sure why I’m here,” he said, laughing a dry little laugh. “It’s like this trip has been for nothing. I have no more answers than I did before.”
Viridiana leaned out the window next to him, nodding and he turned his head to look at her.
“I loved him. I had no father but him. No matter all his bad qualities, I loved him.”
Viridiana thought about Daisy and Gregory, the two fraudsters, two murderers, two pale scorpions waiting for her at the house on the cliff. She liked the hint of adventure, of danger, that came with them. Like salt in the air. And she was still doing their bidding, wasn’t she? That was love, maybe.
Despite it all, love.
“I need to know what happened,” Lawrence said.
“You know as much as you’ll ever know,” she told him.
This was the truth. He wasn’t going to find a secret note amongst Ambrose’s papers, Daisy and Gregory weren’t going to sign a confession, Viridiana wasn’t about to tell him what she’d discovered. He had as much as he would ever have. In the end, isn’t that true for everyone? Does a death have any more meaning if you tease out every single detail? A tombstone is a tombstone. Even ghosts seldom narrate their own demise. They go about, diaphanous, existing like pressed flowers caught in the pages of a book, but they are not the lines of ink on the page.
“You can’t stay here forever,” she added.
“Come on. You’re telling me you wouldn’t want to find out? That you wouldn’t try and try?” he asked.
“I’d try,” she admitted. “Are you afraid your uncle is going to be mad at you?”
“I told you I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts either. But sometimes they’re here anyway.”
She had prayed the rosary for Ambrose, but who knew if his spirit would come back to walk around the house one evening. Or even worse, who knew if it would follow them across land and water. Yet she was willing to accept this might happen. She thought now she understood her grandmother better, with her talk of omens and evil winds.
Certain things we must bear.
She’d bear a haunting if she had what she desired. City lights, city streets, a life altered.
Lawrence chuckled. “You’re a curious girl.”
“You can say eccentric. I won’t mind.”
“Eccentric. But I’ll admit, maybe it’s understandable. This landscape is strange,” he said going from one window to another, looking from water to the desert.
“They said Baja California was an island, near the Terrestrial Paradise. They were wrong. It’s not an island and it sits by the end of the world, but it’s something to wonder at anyway. But the problem here is if you stay too long, you’ll never leave.”
She set a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to leave, Lawrence. Rehashing things will only make you more depressed.”
“Who says I’m depressed?”
It was a laughable thing to tell her, not only because he had dark circles under his eyes but because he plain looked unhappy and lonely and melancholic. It was a poised sort of sorrow, one which he wore well, and which she suspected he’d been enacting for a long time. His uncle’s death was but one more unhappy event in a chain of events.
Ambrose had possessed a hearty laugh and he could drag you with it, make you smile when he wanted. Maybe Lawrence had loved his uncle because of this.
“All right, all right,” he said. He looked miserable and took a deep breath. “It doesn’t add up. But if you knew anything you’d tell me, right? If anything was fishy?”
“Sure, I’d tell you,” she lied, but when she’d said “sure” she’d thought of Gregory and the result was that she spoke with an intense earnestness that made Lawrence go mute. It was the earnestness of first love and he could tell.
Viridiana blushed and this made it all even better. Though unplanned, she’d hit the bullseye.
“Let’s head downstairs?” she asked.
Because she wanted to cheer him, because she wanted to smooth things between them like ironing the best linens, she suggested that they visit a very small restaurant which was a bit farther down the coast, a half-hour ride from them. It was the kind of place tourists liked, with stuffed turtles hanging from the walls and puffer fish dangling from the ceiling. The furniture was rattan, and it was exactly the way tourist guides said Baja would be even though they always lied. Baja California was all small fondas, plastic tables, hardly any décor, and signs advertising Pepsi-Cola and Tecate.
This place was like an old Hollywood movie.
He thanked her for that, for the excursion.
She had made progress, that was for sure, although she couldn’t pinpoint what exactly made her say so since he hadn’t said anything in so many words. It had been Lawrence’s eyes, Viridiana decided, which looked at her with a velvet softness and a promise. His distrust had melted. The Baja Californian sun could melt anything away, it seemed.
We’re friends now, she told herself. He trusts me and he likes me and friends do things for each other.
Nothing as sordid as what Daisy had imagined. Not those things.
When she reached the house she hurried upstairs, to Gregory’s room, to share the news. We’ve got him.
Music drifted down the hall and she slowed her steps. His door was closed, light filtering under it, the music seeping out, snatches of voices here and there. She could hear nothing until someone abruptly turned down the volume.
“Quiet that down, it’s giving me a headache,” Daisy said.
Gregory mumbled something. Viridiana pictured him sitting on the bed with a glass between his hands. She imagined Daisy moving around, a cigarette in her mouth, fiddling with Viridiana’s radio. She stepped closer to the door.
“I’m telling you, she’s got what it takes,” Gregory said.
“Being young and having cute little breasts are not all that it takes,” Daisy replied. “A three-dollar hooker is what she is.”
“If we are going to South America we could use someone who actually speaks the language.”
“Expats don’t need to speak the damn language.”
“It would help.”
Gregory paused. He might be refiling his glass or maybe lighting a cigarette for himself. “If it doesn’t work out, we ditch her quick,” he said simply, without any care.
Something broke inside of her when he spoke. It was as if the coyote who was the moon descended and devoured her heart in one single, ferocious bite and all the little girl dreams that she’d been greedily clutching between her fingers spilled out.
Nyiew halah, black moon, the number zero and inside her there was the emptiness between stars.
It would have been kinder to shoot her down.
She pressed those fingers against her mouth to keep a single note of agony from escaping.
Quiet, quiet, she thought.
“You say that, now,” Daisy replied.
“Honey, it’s not like having a third player ever hurt anyone,” he said.
“She’s too fresh.”
“All the better. Let’s use her in South America. We’ll cut her lose after that.”
“No, we ditch her in Mexico, no sense in spending money on three plane tickets,” Daisy insisted.
“What a tightwad you are. She comes through with Lawrence, then she’s at
least earned her plane ticket, hasn’t she?”
“We don’t want to be dragging an anchor. But maybe you want someone weighing you down, maybe you like this girl a bit too much. I told you at the beach—”
“You said bring her to the beach. You said we needed a witness. When Ambrose fell down the stairs, you said—”
“A witness. Not a lover.”
“Don’t start. You get jealous, then you get sour, then all the fun goes to hell. Three-dollar hooker, we both agree on that. I thought she’d come in useful down south, that’s all.”
Her eyes didn’t water. She had no tears. Only that quiet cry which never slipped from her lips. It was stillborn, it was merely a shiver shaking her body and although she thought she’d hit the ground, she was able to stand up.
Turns out you don’t need a heart to live, after all.
Someone—she thought Gregory—decided to change the station and turn up the volume again. It was okay. Viridiana didn’t need to hear the rest. She walked quietly, quickly, down the stairs and into her room. Her radio wasn’t there. Of course not, they had it upstairs. She sat on the bed in silence.
It was an impossible, absolute silence.
Viridiana lay down and pressed her hands against her stomach.
By now, she ought to have lost all the childish innocence she’d possessed, but it had lasted and held true until this very moment.
That is what pained her the most. Not the betrayal, but her steadfast devotion to her betrayers.
So they cheat, she thought furiously. I cheat too.
She did have what it takes. Fuck them both. They weren’t going to take her chances away. Even as Paris dimmed inside her mind, even then she knew they couldn’t take it all away. She’d figure something. Improvise. That’s what Daisy said.
She thought of the men waiting back at La Sirena, and that scared her. They were dangerous. They might hurt her.
Then she thought about her family and her friends, and she wished they were all dead.
She pictured the men from La Sirena jumping through a window and smothering Daisy in her sleep, and then they smothered Viridiana.
She thought of smothering Daisy herself. She could clutch a pillow and murder her.
Viridiana pressed and pressed and the bezoar which she’d pictured so realistically dissolved under her fingertips. It went away and she closed her eyes. It didn’t hurt anymore.
Nothing hurt. She pretended she was floating on the bed, the mattress melting beneath her. She thought of ghosts but was unafraid as she pictured their nacreous body. She pictured Ambrose. His ghost was made of blue and white wisps, like an oyster.
Lawrence stopped by in the morning and was admitted into the living room. Her instincts had been right, she could tell, with one look, that he’d capitulated.
Daisy and Gregory had been up late and were not expecting the visit. Daisy came downstairs hastily in a yellow wrap dress, smoothing her hair with both hands, and told Viridiana to empty the ashtray and bring coffee.
Viridiana put the kettle on and brought back a tray and three cups, the sugar in a dish, plus the empty ashtray. She thought Gregory and Daisy looked older that morning. Like they’d aged years during the night.
Maybe they’d always been this age. More jaded than she realized. Their smiles seemed terrifyingly artificial, the smiles of carnies trying to bilk an unwary customer. They were wax mannequins in a ludicrous horror movie.
“I don’t understand,” Daisy told Lawrence.
“It’s held in a trust. That’s the arrangement my uncle wanted. You will receive a lump sum now, of course. Two-hundred thousand dollars. But the rest is a lifelong trust. You will be able to draw upon it each month, up to a certain limit.”
“A trust? That is for minors. For children,” Daisy protested.
“As I said, it’s what he had planned.”
Daisy sat on the couch, ankles crossed, in a pose that Viridiana thought was supposed to evoke serenity. Gregory was a bit more nervous. When Viridiana set down the tray with the coffee he immediately leaned forward and grabbed a cup, tossing two sugar cubes in it, his spoon rattling against the rim.
“But you control this trust. You must be able to do something,” Daisy said, carefully taking a cup for herself. She drank her coffee black.
“My uncle gave instructions that I could reduce the one million to a more modest amount or that I could eliminate it altogether. But a trust is what he wanted,” Lawrence declared firmly. “I am following his instructions.”
“Well,” Daisy said, scoffing.
Lawrence picked up his cup, took a couple of sips, and set it down again. Now that he had finally made his choice, now that he’d come with his offer, he seemed to have acquired an obvious vitality. The Boy Scout was ready for a camping trip, checking maps and compasses.
“My lawyer is sending papers over. Would you be able to go to the notary public Friday, before noon? We can settle this then.”
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I? I must dance to your tune. I am defenseless.”
Lawrence sighed. “I’m not taking a penny from you.”
“No, you are treating me like a baby,” Daisy said, leaning back and laughing with artificial delight. “I’ll be tied to you.”
“It’s a trust, not a prison sentence, and it’ll have very little to do with me. The lawyers can assist you if you have any questions or if you need anything.”
“You must admit it feels a bit unorthodox,” Gregory said. “This is not the way to dispose of an estate.”
“I think it’s very normal,” Lawrence concluded.
Lawrence bid them goodbye and Daisy escorted him to the door, no doubt hoping to get a few more words in his ear, to plead her case for a couple of minutes longer. It must have done her no good because she soon returned to the living room and, eyeing Lawrence’s abandoned cup, she tossed it across the room.
The sound of it smashing made Viridiana tremble. But the bezoar was gone and she composed herself faster than Gregory, who stood, wide-eyed, staring at the smashed cup, stammering, before he spoke.
“What’s wrong with you?” he yelled.
“Clean that up,” Daisy ordered Viridiana, then turned towards Gregory, arms crossed. “You heard him! Two-hundred thousand dollars. That will hardly cover the money we owe Frank.”
Viridiana hurried to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of rags, and returned to find the volume of their voices had increased considerably.
“So, we give him what we have and—”
“And what? We are left with nothing! I didn’t do all this to end up with nothing!” Daisy said.
“What choice do we have?”
Viridiana leaned down on the floor, drying the spilled coffee, collecting the bits of broken ceramic and placing them on one of the rags, which she wrapped tight.
“We leave. As soon as we sign those documents, as soon as everything is settled, we get into the car and drive away.”
“Are you crazy?” Gregory said. “Do you know what they’ll do to us?”
“We’ll leave Friday afternoon. We’ll leave immediately.”
“And if they catch up with us? You know what’ll happen then. They’ll put a bullet in our heads.”
“Friday. Afternoon.” Daisy repeated.
“You are—”
“Friday night,” Viridiana said, lifting her head and looking at them. “The air conditioning in the car is broken. If we drive out in the daytime it’ll be very hot. And at night it’ll be easier to pass unnoticed, less people on the roads”
Neither of them had expected Viridiana to speak, but now that she had spoken and tipped the balance in Daisy’s direction, Daisy greedily latched on to this.
“She’s right,” Daisy said, giving Viridiana a smirk. “And she gets it. A little girl gets it better than you do.”
“Then we’ll do it, fine,” Gregory said. He didn’t sound pleased but it was obvious he did not wish
to fight the combined attack of both women.
“Then it’s settled.”
“There’s one thing,” Viridiana said. “You owe me that tape.”
“The tape will be yours once we are on the road,” Daisy said.
“I’d like it now. I’ve done what you asked. He gave you the money.”
“It doesn’t mean you get the tape today.”
Viridiana grabbed the bundle with the glass and headed to the kitchen. She tossed it inside the garbage. Damn fucking tape. Damn the both of them. Where could Daisy have stashed it? The house was large and if it was in Daisy’s room, there was no chance for Viridiana to get in there. She now locked the door to her room.
It had to be in Daisy’s room.
Gregory walked in and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He gave her a tired smile. Viridiana opened the kitchen tap, washed her hands and dried them using a pale blue washcloth which she carefully refolded and placed back on a hook.
“You did great. Thank you,” he said.
Viridiana looked up at him. Lying pig, she thought, but she prided herself in the neutrality of her expression, even if she quietly clutched the kitchen counter with one hand, feeling she would not able to properly hold herself up together without a support.
And yet she must.
“The maid’s not supposed to come over today, is she?” he asked.
“No,” Viridiana said.
“Good. Then we can spend some time together.”
Fuck you, she thought. But she also had another idea, an idea that had stretched itself quickly as she picked up the stray bits of cup. It was why she had suggested they drive out Friday night. If she wanted to see that idea come to fruition then she couldn’t let him see anything was amiss.
Viridiana nodded.
He finished his juice and grabbed her by the hand. That morning, he went down on her and didn’t even ask her to give him a blow job until the next day, which showed how generous he was feeling since blow jobs seemed to be one of Gregory’s favorite pastimes.
Viridiana wondered if Daisy did the same thing for him, or if that was reserved to his flimsier conquests. She couldn’t picture Daisy on her knees, perfectly-coiffed, with her nice makeup and nice nails, swallowing.
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