House of Beauty

by Melba Escobar

  ‘How are you?’ tried Karen.

  ‘Watching this,’ said Susana as she dragged on the end of a joint.

  ‘This show’s awful.’

  Susana’s initial reply was to turn up the volume.

  ‘You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want,’ she said finally, and Karen smelled alcohol in the air.

  ‘Could I have a sip of your Coca-Cola?’

  ‘Pour yourself one, there’s more in the kitchen.’

  ‘I just want a sip.’ Karen took the glass. ‘Yum, that’s good rum.’

  ‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ said Susana.

  Karen turned off the TV just when Andrea Serna was saying: ‘And up for eviction this week is …’ Susana stood up, angry.

  ‘I offer you my home, I open the door for you to a well-paid job – a job that will change your life – and you show up here, judging me as if you’re better.’

  ‘If the job will change my life, I hope it won’t change me like it’s changed you.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re drinking too much. You’re drunk all the time … and stoned.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s no good for you.’

  ‘And what’s good for me, in your opinion, Little Miss Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt-In-My-Mouth?’

  Karen didn’t say anything. Susana turned on the TV. Protagonistas de Novela had finished. A voice said: ‘Guerrilla, demobilise, your family awaits you,’ and there was a green field with sunflowers, a blue sky in the background, and children running through the grass.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ said Karen.

  ‘Off you go.’

  ‘No, I’m serious, I’m leaving. I found an apartment and I’m moving in tomorrow. I’ve already paid October’s rent.’

  ‘What about Emiliano? What about your dream of bringing him here to live with you? I knew it, I knew you were full of shit. Face it. You’ve spent years telling yourself lies. You’re no better than me, and you’ve already forgotten your son.’

  Karen slapped her.

  Susana stared at her. ‘How much did it cost you to rent the apartment? I’ve said we could make room for Emiliano here, that I’d help.’

  ‘There’s no space here,’ Karen said quickly.

  ‘And there is space where you’re going? You’ve got a room for him? Or did you spend the money for a two-bedroom apartment on boots and handbags?’

  Karen didn’t answer, just took Susana’s address book and the cordless phone, and shut herself in the bathroom.

  ‘You’re a hooker! Accept it! A slut, a gold-digger, now you only want to have nice things, bitch!’ screamed Susana, banging on the bathroom door.

  Full of fury, Karen searched for ‘M’ in her friend’s address book. She found the number for Susana’s mother – Karen had never laid eyes on her, but she’d heard her on the phone with her daughter. She dialled the number she found, waited for it to ring twice, three times.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this Susana’s mother?’

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘I’m Karen Valdés, your daughter’s friend.’

  ‘Has something happened to Susy?’ asked the voice on the other end.

  ‘Yes, Señora. She’s had a relapse. She’s drinking too much, taking drugs, talking nonsense, she’s out of control. She might have to be admitted,’ added Karen slowly. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ve done everything I can, Señora, but your daughter’s unwell and I can’t help her any more.’

  When Karen came out of the bathroom, Susana had left. The TV was still on. Karen packed her things as fast as she could and got out of there.

  28.

  It had been years since she’d done a manicure and pedicure, but today she had to do at least four. Dilia hadn’t shown up, so her appointments had been shared out among everyone else.

  Crouching, Karen filed down Doctor Del Castillo’s corns with a pumice stone. Beside him, his wife, Señora María Elvira, was being taken care of by Nubia, House of Beauty’s longest-serving beautician. On her other side was Señora María Elvira’s friend, Doña Elena.

  Karen looked at those dry feet with greenish nails. It was rare for a man to come into House of Beauty. She wondered what Doctor Del Castillo’s penis looked like. The thought made her squeamish and she tried to shake herself free of it.

  ‘Yes, honey, it’s a real shame, truly. You’re young, you should leave this country, start over elsewhere. This “New Colombia” – all these people with money who have come from who knows where – it’s growing all the time,’ Doña Elena was saying to Señora María Elvira.

  ‘At least the Country Club crowd are still people like us. But look, this problem with the nouveau riche is happening all over the world.’

  ‘True,’ said Doña Elena.

  ‘And then there’s all this terrible violence.’

  ‘These days, simply taking a taxi is a terrible risk – you may as well throw yourself from the fifth floor.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear the news this morning? A man came out of one of those Chapinero motels on Sunday morning and when some men tried to take him on a millionaire’s ride and he resisted, they put three bullets into him,’ said Doctor Del Castillo.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ says Doña María Elvira, who seemed to know everything. ‘John Toll, the DEA agent. On Twitter, they said the poor thing didn’t survive. What a shame! He was so lovely looking, a blond fellow …’

  Karen felt like throwing up, but held it back. She saw three feet instead of one. She steadied herself and breathed deeply, like I’d told her. She concentrated on her breaths, in and out. She tried to count to a hundred, as I’d recommended she did when she felt a panic attack coming on. She tried to imagine she was in the countryside. There were still three feet instead of one. She didn’t get past ten.

  ‘Oh my, how embarrassing for our international standing,’ said Doña Elena. ‘That’s why others see us as they do.’

  ‘What a heartache of a country,’ added Doña María Elvira.

  ‘We need to round up those reprobates and give them what they deserve,’ said Doctor Del Castillo. ‘Do you know the details?’

  ‘He resisted handing over his bag, so they shot him three times. He was bleeding out on the pavement when a good Samaritan took him to San Ignacio Hospital, but as they were arriving he bled to death, the poor guy …’

  ‘And that happened where?’

  ‘In that little park on Calle 59: imagine.’

  ‘An outrage,’ said Doctor Del Castillo.

  Karen wondered if some other gringo could have left a motel in Chapinero and crossed the park on Calle 59 in the early hours of Sunday morning, someone different from the John who handed her an envelope containing 700,000 pesos.

  ‘And what was he doing in Chapinero at that time of the morning?’

  ‘Must have been with a hooker. There are all those motels there,’ said Doña María Elvira.

  Just then, Karen lost control of the nail cutters. Doctor Del Castillo let out a yelp.

  ‘Could the hooker be an accomplice in the robbery?’ asked María Elvira, ignoring her husband’s cry.

  ‘Ouch! Careful, my girl, I’m not all dead yet!’ said the doctor. ‘The poor woman: being a hooker doesn’t make her a murderer.’

  A few drops of blood ran in the water.

  ‘Well excuse me, but a prostitute is no saint,’ said Doña María Elvira.

  ‘The poor family,’ added Doña Elena.

  ‘Poor things,’ echoed Doña María Elvira. ‘Did you know he fought in Afghanistan, only to die by the hand of a savage Indian in Bogotá? It’s so unfair.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Karen barely managed to get out. She ran to the lavatory. She threw up. Then she put down the lid and sat down. Her head was going around in circles. She tried to think. For a second she wanted to call Wílmer, to ask him if he did it. She had a bad feeling. She got up. She went down to the second floor, not giving any explanation to Doctor Del Castillo, who l
ooked on, his mouth open. She went into her cubicle, found Consuelo Paredes’s card in her wallet and dialled.

  ‘Luis Armando Diazgranados, Doña Consuelo. That’s who your daughter was seeing the day she came here for a wax.’

  ‘Who is this?’ said Consuelo Paredes, sounding shocked.

  ‘It’s Karen, from House of Beauty.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Consuelo Paredes, almost shouting. ‘Why didn’t you say so earlier? What else do you know? Tell me!’

  ‘I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this. Please don’t say I told you. If anything happens to me in future, get in touch with Claire Dalvard, you can find her number through the Colombian Psychoanalytic Society.’

  ‘L.A.D.,’ said Consuelo to herself.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Karen.

  ‘Forget it. Look, thank you for this.’

  Hanging up, Karen wondered again if she should call Wílmer. She wavered. She dialled his number and it rang, but no one answered.

  29.

  Jorge Guzmán hired a lawyer who knew how to guarantee that, in just a few days, an agent would be working on the investigation. They had a list of interviews to conduct: with two of Sabrina’s friends, with the doctor who wrote the death certificate, and with Karen Valdés, who was possibly the last person to see her alive. A facial composite sketch of the taxi driver who dropped Sabrina at the hospital was being circulated at the police stations. In addition to this, and armed with a court order, they started inquiring at hotels on the north side of the city, showing a photo of Sabrina and asking if anyone had seen her. They also searched the hotel registry books for her name, but as they suspected she’d used an alias, they didn’t expect this to come to anything. As for the autopsy, since almost three weeks passed between her death and it being performed, it wasn’t possible to find DNA or semen matches. Cojack had put some work into tracking down a sample of Luis Armando Diazgranados’s handwriting, to see if it matched the note found in Sabrina’s bedroom. After various phone calls and false starts, he had succeeded in arranging a meeting with the estate agent who had managed the purchase of a property Luis Armando owned in New Hope. With a little persuasion, Cojack had secured a photocopy of the title deed, signed at the bottom by Luis Armando Diazgranados. According to Cojack’s calculations, it would be a couple of weeks before the handwriting analysis was ready. If the signature matched the note sent to Sabrina, they could link this to the case and put in a request to trace his calls for the past six months, and to have him followed. The DNA test would have been the most compelling evidence, but only if the autopsy had taken place ten days earlier. Even so, the process was underway. For the first time in almost four months, Consuelo Paredes and Jorge Guzmán didn’t feel utterly defeated.

  30.

  It was 31 October, her birthday. As a special treat, Lucía had bought a chocolate-filled pastry, and was eating it now with a bowl of strawberries. She was flipping through the paper when a picture of Eduardo took her by surprise. It wasn’t like the article she’d read a couple of months before, when Health Cross was singled out as one of the corrupt health-service providers; this time, Eduardo Ramelli, as the company’s legal representative, was being accused of robbing state resources. She read the article and, before she could finish, her telephone sounded and wouldn’t stop. Yet it wasn’t people calling to wish her a happy birthday, but people annoyed by what had been written, calling to express their solidarity with Ramelli. She heard phrases such as, ‘That rag should be shut down for printing lies,’ or, ‘We know Eduardo would never do something like that,’ using a plural that Lucía found confusing because she didn’t know whom it included. Even Lucía’s mother called and hurried out the happy birthday to tell her she would always stand by her in hard times, an old chestnut that Lucía interpreted as a gesture of solidarity towards her ex-husband more than towards her. In a confident tone, her mother concluded: ‘They should lock up those journalists for defamation.’ Lucía opted to remain silent. She was about to turn off her phone when my call came through.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked.

  Lucía started crying.

  ‘Want me to come over?’

  ‘Hurry,’ she said.

  Lucía looked at her surroundings and felt estranged from them. The things that had accompanied her all her life now seemed to belong to someone else. So did she herself, so did her very life. She was angry. She couldn’t work out why she’d made the decisions she had. It was too late to reinvent herself, she thought. It was fifty-seven years too late to start again.

  I took her a box of chocolates and a woollen blanket. Lucía made tea. I got there quickly, considering the traffic, and found her in a sweatshirt, her face red and her nose stuffy.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked again, now looking into her eyes.

  Lucía took a chocolate from the box and stared at it a moment before lifting it to her mouth.

  ‘Do you think it’s true?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucía, looking elsewhere. Then she added, ‘Life is a fabrication, don’t you think? Something we make up from start to finish. Even those supposedly happy times that give it meaning are pure fiction.’

  After saying this, she devoured a chocolate in one bite.

  ‘Another?’ I asked.

  ‘No way. Pour me a whisky.’

  It didn’t seem right to point out that it was Tuesday, and only ten in the morning. I opened the cabinet drawers until I found the bottle, searched for a glass, poured her a drink to the brim and handed it to her.

  ‘You’re not having one?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got a patient at one this afternoon.’

  But after saying that, I got to my feet again and poured myself a glass, though a little less generously.

  ‘I used to be interested in the world … You know, at one time I had an uncommon curiosity for the smallest things. The life of mites, fleas …’

  Lucía took a long swig of whisky.

  ‘I think Papá always saw me as an intelligent woman, but in his head my main role was to get married to someone important, maybe a minister. I seemed so mild and gentle to him. He would say to my mamá: “Lucía is so mild and gentle. She’s going to marry well.” That surprised me, coming from a man like him.’

  ‘What’s this about fleas?’

  ‘I found them interesting. I could have been a biologist, an expert in the reproductive organs of cockroaches, for example.’

  ‘Well. Perhaps.’

  ‘Eduardo’s no longer with me, it’s true, but neither am I. Do you get my meaning? There’s nothing left in the place where I was, Claire. Just this old and ugly body, these broken desires from a simple life, with a few blazes of happiness. I’ve always looked for approval, Claire. That’s been my weakness. If only I could have my life again.’

  Lucía took another sip of whisky.

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lucía said, and took the blanket that was on the sofa and started folding it meticulously. ‘I’m sad. Why do we insist on leading lives that are not of our own choosing?’

  ‘True. And you don’t have a daughter,’ I said.

  She threw a cushion at me.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she half-smiled. ‘Lucky my papá didn’t live to see it. He would have been so disappointed.’

  Lucía went quiet. Her gaze rested on the distance, as if she were watching a TV show on the wall. I thought about how many women felt they had spoiled their lives trying to please a third party, for doing things only to be seen doing them, rather than out of pleasure or purpose. Perhaps there were men who did the same, but I had no evidence of that.

  While I didn’t believe the same was the case for me, I knew I had left, almost fled, one society that felt too restricting, only to land in a country where I was always a foreigner. I was a bird with no tree and, yet, I was at ease. Even so, I wasn’t completely happy. It was so difficult to know how to give of oneself in the perfect measure. To give oneself to others without losi
ng oneself. I couldn’t help smiling in irony, because those were the kinds of things Ramelli wrote about.

  ‘There are so many women who don’t ever come to realise what you’re telling me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, what I wouldn’t give to be one of them,’ said Lucía.

  I lit a cigarette, and Lucía stole a drag.

  ‘I don’t remember you smoking,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t use to, before you went to France – actually, I hated cigarettes,’ she said, taking another drag. ‘It’s in the calendar, see’ – she got up and turned the page to July – ‘this red circle means that from that day forward no one smokes in here.’

  ‘And we’re smoking,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, we’re the exception.’

  ‘Sounds fair,’ I replied.

  ‘I’ve been wondering for a long time how so much money could come in from the book sales … I couldn’t work it out, but maybe I looked the other way, didn’t want to know.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself.’

  ‘Whom should we blame, then?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘In this country, no one’s to blame for anything.’

  ‘Where are you going with this?’

  ‘Someone has to take responsibility, Claire. Someone must be guilty.’

  ‘So, you’re going to be the one? You’re volunteering?’

  ‘Did you know there are more than 2,200 species of fleas?’ said Lucía, draining her glass.

  ‘Who could be capable of stealing money destined for health services?’ I asked.

  ‘My ex-husband!’ said Lucía, pouring herself another glass. ‘The man I slept beside for more than three decades!’

  ‘Right, not you.’

  ‘The guru of spirituality and everyday life values. The guy who preaches about good living and transparency in books that I write!’

  ‘What was that, Lucía?’

  ‘Which part?’ she said with reddened eyes.

  ‘Lucía. What on earth? Are you serious?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘You write the books? Are you telling me that Eduardo’s books are really your own?’