[2013] Pierced by the Sun

by Laura Esquivel

  Captain Martinez smiled, surprised by Lupita’s attitude. In his hands he held a transcript of Lupita’s official account of the events in question. “Yes, I’ve reviewed it. By the way, I wanted to ask you about the wrinkle you mentioned in your statement. What exactly do you mean by that?”

  Lupita fidgeted in her seat. The question unnerved her. She couldn’t figure out the captain’s intention in asking her this.

  “Well, it was similar to the one on your shirt collar, except yours isn’t the result of improper ironing. It seems like when you folded your shirt you did so carelessly and the collar was squashed.”

  “Go on. I’m interested.”

  “Look, hands also iron. Sometimes it’s not enough to iron a piece of clothing, it also has to be folded properly and with the right amount of pressure, smoothing out all creases. Oh, and you shouldn’t leave your jacket on the same sofa where your cat sleeps because its hair sticks to it.”

  Captain Martinez couldn’t help but show an admiration that illuminated his eyes. This woman’s words were the most refreshing thing he had heard in a long time. He watched as Lupita mimicked the action of flicking cat hair off her shoulder, and he noticed that she grimaced when her wounded finger brushed against her clothing.

  “What happened there?”

  “Nothing important, just a splinter.”

  “Judging from the wound it looks like a big one.”

  “I know, right? But don’t worry, it’s got nothing to do with the investigation. Now back to the wrinkle. Don Larreaga was wearing a shirt with a wrinkle in it, and two hours later the wrinkle was gone. In that window of time he must have changed his shirt. His secretary says he didn’t change in his office, and his driver says they didn’t go home.”

  “Are you suggesting we investigate where he changed?”

  “Well . . . yeah . . .”

  “I’ll make a note of that. But first I want you to take a look at this video that some tourists sent in last night. It was unintentionally recorded by the shoe shiner who works the corner down the street. They asked him to take a photo, but he pressed the video button instead. Take a look.”

  Lupita watched the video of a young couple posing and smiling. After a couple of seconds the woman asked, “Got it? Did it come out okay?”

  “I don’t know, I guess, here, take a look,” answered the shoe shiner.

  The phone was still recording, so the couple became blurry as the camera focused on Lupita crossing the street next to an unknown man who was heading in the direction of the delegado’s car. Inocencio was already at the door, ready to open it for his boss. The delegado was on his phone but raised his free hand to wave at the strange man, whom Lupita almost ran into. The man waved back, and then the camera jerked toward the sky, ending the video.

  “As you can see, the suspect’s face isn’t clearly visible from this angle. He is our only suspect, and you are our only witness, so we will require you to assist our sketch artist.”

  “I don’t know if I can. I didn’t get a good look at him. I mean, I did, but I don’t remember his face.”

  “Please make an effort. Any detail will be of great help and I’m sure your cunning observation skills will come in handy. The artist is waiting for you.”

  Lupita—for the first time in years—felt appreciated by the man sitting in front of her. It made her feel great. Her mood skyrocketed, and her tongue loosened.

  “What I can say right off the bat is that if this man is the killer I don’t understand how you think he killed the delegado from that distance. But whatever, if he’s the one who did it we’re in trouble because that man walks without the slightest hint of fear.”

  Captain Martinez smiled again. He definitely liked this rough woman.

  LUPITA LIKED TO KNIT AND EMBROIDER

  Each activity had its own appeal and charm. If Lupita had to choose between them, she would find herself in a great dilemma.

  She was passionate about knitting because it allowed her to reach a state of peacefulness, and she loved to embroider because it let her express her creativity. Both activities were liberating. They allowed her to exist outside of time. It was during her prison sentence that she’d learned to knit, and she had discovered that this activity made the hours fly by as she lost her sense of time. When she was able to concentrate on each stitch, every thought that tormented her mind disappeared. There were only courses, wales, and the trail of peace that the synchronized motion of her hands left behind. At the end of the day she had a piece of fabric that she could show her fellow inmates to prove that she had accomplished something good, dignified, and beautiful. Stitch by stitch she recovered her dignity and freedom.

  Embroidery also had its charm. She loved to embroider a piece and then apply sequins. One of the things she liked the most about working with sequins was that if she messed up the position of a sequin it was easy to correct the mistake. If the needle had made a wrong turn and the sequin was placed crookedly, all she had to do was thread the needle back through in the opposite direction and that would fix the error. It undid the stitch and the sequin was free to be repositioned correctly.

  That afternoon she had been correcting stitch after stitch. Between her injured finger and her hangover you could say she had chosen the worst day for embroidering. To make matters worse, the swollen finger prevented her from wearing a thimble, so she pricked it constantly with the needle. Still, Lupita had no other choice but to embroider against all odds, because she planned on going dancing that night. She needed to feel approval, and she wanted to stand out above everyone on the dance floor. She wanted to shine and laugh. She wanted to shake her hips, delightfully wrapped in her marvelous sequined dress.

  As she passed the needle through the fabric she thought about the path of whatever object had slit the delegado’s throat wide open. Whatever it was, it pierced his neck side to side. But what could it have been? What could be sharp enough to slice through like that but at the same time leave no trace? She could not believe that the Crime Scene Unit had not found a single shred of evidence. Just as the needle was piercing the fabric, something had pierced Larreaga’s neck fast enough to be invisible to the naked eye, and it must have crashed to pieces against something. Her obsessive mind dragged her back to the moment of the crime despite her reluctance. She wanted to forget it all, to think of something else. Most of all, she wanted to celebrate what she considered her final triumph over alcohol. Since the fifth of tequila she had drank before her meeting with Captain Martinez that morning, she had not had another drink. Lupita took that as a sign that she could control her drinking. She powered through the embroidery of the sequined dress, and as she was slipping into it, she heard loud banging on her door and Celia’s shrill voice yelling, “GUADALUPEEEEE!!!!”

  Celia calling her by her given name instead of the shortened Lupita was a very bad sign. She carefully cracked the door, and Celia shoved her way in.

  “What’s the matter with you? How could you say that shit about Gomez in front of everyone? My clients expect discretion and anonymity! I told you that in confidence and you pull this bullshit on me?”

  “Calm down Celia, let me explain!”

  “You have nothing to explain, pendeja. I can tell you’re drunk again. Fuck you! I thought you were worth something, but I realize you’re nothing but a fucking wino that can’t wait to pass out in the street.”

  “Don’t speak to me like that.”

  “I’ll speak to you however I please, because it’s the last time we’ll ever talk! I’ll have you know that Gomez sent the legal department after me and they shut down my beauty parlor because of you. Happy now? Go celebrate in your whorish dress!”

  Celia stormed out of Lupita’s apartment and slammed the door.

  Lupita fell back on a chair, stunned and hurt by Celia’s words. She had never seen her so enraged. Lupita felt that this breakup with her best friend left her defenseless. Like Celia had let go of her hand and dropped her down a bottomless pit. She had nothin
g to hold on to, like a sequin that had its thread cut. It was a feeling Lupita had experienced years before, the day she began her prison sentence.

  The only thing that had saved her then was knitting. In prison she had become a compulsive knitter. Knitting allowed her to unite, to connect, to integrate. With every stitch she held on to dear life. Threads hold us together. That’s why every time she got wasted Lupita asked whomever she was with to hold her hand. She knew that if they let go she’d dissolve, be lost forever in nothingness. She would forget about everything and everyone and lose her mind completely.

  When these thoughts overcame her, the only thing that kept her sane was the hope that not all was lost. That everyone could be rescued. In knitting jargon, when a stitch comes loose from the rest it is “dropped,” and it leaves a hole in the garment. The wonderful thing is that it can be rescued and reattached with a hook. In real life, when one severs the connections that bind them to the pattern of life it also causes a hole, an enormous one. But that doesn’t mean there’s no solution. People can be rescued, but they first must recognize the invisible threads that link them to others, our points of union. Our points of contact. That’s why Lupita still couldn’t fathom why her colleagues—who thought they were hot shit—couldn’t investigate criminals’ points of contact. That was the key. She didn’t just mean linking users to dealers or murderers to accomplices, but discovering those deep threads that people use to knit their personal story, their hidden threads. One thread leads to another, and so forth, but what makes a thread want to become part of a pattern? Finding the answer to those questions was Lupita’s specialty, but not tonight. Tonight she felt her last thread had been severed.

  LUPITA LIKED TO DANCE

  When she danced she would enter an endless trance in which nothing else mattered. She could dance for hours, and the pain in her feet disappeared completely. Her feet always hurt because when she was a girl she never had a new pair of shoes. She always wore hand-me-downs from the daughters of her mother’s employers. Of course, she never got shoes that fit her; some were too large, some were too small. Consequently, her feet were irreparably damaged. But that didn’t keep her from going out to a dance hall every weekend.

  She liked to know men were staring at her body. It aroused her. She was wearing the little black sequined number she had been repairing a few hours before. It was a vintage dress from the ’40s she had bought at the Lagunilla market. Fashion back then was elegant yet appropriate for chubby people like her. The dress draped at the waist and it disguised her belly. She had let her long black hair down and styled it like María Félix in the film Doña Diabla. Usually she kept it braided and hidden under her police cap. She looked spectacular. The femme fatale persona suited her.

  She had decided to go out in spite of the altercation with Celia because she was sure that dancing would cheer her up. As soon as she sat down she ordered a bottle of rum and some Cokes. It only took half an hour for her to drink it all. She wasn’t aware of how dramatically she was relapsing into alcoholism. The only thing that mattered to her now was drinking. Just like before, when her love for booze surpassed her love for anyone or anything. Back when she loved no man, no woman, no dog, no taco or torta. All she cared about was drinking bottle after bottle. The reason was irrelevant, the excuses infinite: someone gave her the stink eye, her mother had died, the government was corrupt, the president was an imbecile. This night it was because Celia was mad at her. Lupita was falling into the same pattern. Even worse, she was getting really pissed off because a lot of people were just sitting at their tables instead of dancing. She was there to have a good time and people were not cooperating. She tried to get their attention, signing and gesturing for them to hit the dance floor, but no one obeyed. Lupita got tired of this, so she found a dance partner who didn’t resist. If the rest of the bitter assholes just wanted to sit, so be it! But she wasn’t going to let her big night go to waste.

  Lupita thought that people who didn’t dance were selfish and lonely. Dancing required one to follow a partner and move at their same rhythm. A good dance partner could become one with the other. He or she could feel, predict, and anticipate his or her partner’s movements in a game of harmony. But Lupita was also aware that there were men who were bitter and selfish even though they danced. These were the technical dancers, the ones who only cared about showing off. They sought the public’s approval before their partner’s and executed inconsiderate moves like spinning the woman over and over only because it would look great to spectators. That was precisely the kind of fucker she was dancing with. She was on the verge of puking and the jerk didn’t even notice. Even worse, this guy’s hands didn’t give her the slightest confidence. Lupita felt he wasn’t holding her firmly enough, and that at any moment she could spin out of control. She suddenly stopped dancing and wobbled to her table, leaving a very bewildered dance partner behind. Lupita never left a dance unfinished but she couldn’t spin anymore. She felt phenomenally nauseous. In order to recover she took a large gulp of her Cuba libre and observed the few couples that were dancing.

  Lupita loved to discover details that were unnoticed by most people. She could tell what kind of underwear women were wearing: thong, bikini, granny panties, even if a lady wasn’t wearing any underwear. With the men it was more fun. To figure out if a man was wearing boxers, briefs, or nothing at all required a certain degree of audacity, and Lupita had more than enough. From the way he danced Lupita could tell a man who merely fucked from a man who knew how to make love. It was very revealing to observe how a man caressed his partner’s back and how he used his hand to spin the woman in one direction or another. It was not a good sign if he pushed her violently. It was fundamental that he keep a rhythm, and terrible if he didn’t. That meant he would likely never have a simultaneous orgasm with his lover. Although in the area of sexuality a lot of factors weighed in, like the man’s degree of horniness. To determine this Lupita turned to her very particular method of observation that she referred to as three-cushion billiards. It consisted of observing how much a man was attracted to a woman’s curves as she walked by him: if he just looked at her tits, or if he also looked her up and down and then turned to see her ass. Lupita could predict the exact time, to the second, that would pass between the first time a man met a woman and when he looked at her ass. Depending on the subtleness or lust he displayed, Lupita could determine if the man was a horny wanker, just slightly aroused, or a degenerate. Based on her judgment she liked to imagine which man she would consider sleeping with. The only men she definitely never would fuck were rich kids and bodyguards. She found no trust in their gaze, if she could even look at their eyes at all, because they usually wore shades, something that caused her great discomfort. She loathed facing a black screen in which she could only see her own reflection staring back at her.

  TEZCATLIPOCA’S BLACK MIRROR

  In ancient times the original inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico used to make obsidian mirrors. Obsidian was associated with sacrifice, as it was used to fabricate the knives used to slice open the chests of the sacrificed. An obsidian mirror was a magic object that only sorcerers could use. It is said that if you stared into a black mirror you could travel to another time, another place, to the world of the gods and the forebears. The obsidian mirror was the main attribute of the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, whose name means “Smoking Mirror.” In black mirrors it was possible to find the different manifestations of human nature. You could know a human being’s darkest side but also his or her most luminous. The observer and the object coexist. Legend says that once Tezcatlipoca deceived his brother Quetzalcóatl using a black mirror. By looking into the object Quetzalcóatl saw his dark side, his false identity, and betrayed himself. He had to fight the darkness in order to regain his light.

  Lupita suddenly noticed that rich kids and their bodyguards had overrun the dance hall. That had to be the reason why no one was dancing. Those fucking brats ruined everything. Why go to a dance hall if you can’t even
dance? When they discovered a popular spot, they took over and arrived in droves to do as they please. They got wasted and abused the power they had from their fathers’ positions and their hired muscle. Lupita, as a general rule, hated bodyguards. The only time she didn’t hate them was when they waited outside for their employers. When they were alone they dropped their pretense of toughness and solemnity and relaxed. They joked, talked about sports, and laughed. But as soon as their employers came close, their gazes grew cold and their bodies tense, and their butt cheeks clenched tighter than a delegación’s budget during electoral periods.

  Lupita observed a rich kid trying to convince a girl to dance with him. The girl was refusing. The rich kid insisted, and the girl’s boyfriend defended her. One of the bodyguards stepped in and drew his gun. Lupita reacted with lightning speed. She quickly reached the bodyguard and kicked the gun out of his hand. In the blink of an eye two more bodyguards cornered Lupita, but she held her ground.

  “Ooooh, how scary! Look at all the bodyguards. Come at me, c’mon motherfuckers. I’ll take you all. You’re fucked.”

  Lupita’s attitude threw them off and created enough of a diversion for a large group of security guards from the dance hall to intervene and defuse the conflict. After a heated discussion with some shoving—which ripped Lupita’s dress—the security guards bounced the rich kids and their bodyguards before they shot up the place. Lupita followed them to the front door chanting, “Pussies! Pussies!”

  She could feel she was being watched. A lot of people were staring at her, some with fear, some with admiration, and one onlooker gave her special attention. It was Captain Martinez, who stared at her fixedly.

  Even though Lupita was intrigued to know why the captain was there, she had so much adrenaline pumping through her that she didn’t know how to react.

  “Why don’t you take a picture?”