Betty Boo

by Claudia Piñeiro

  For a few yards they drive in silence, then, just before reaching the newsagent, the man says: Did he startle you? A little bit, Nurit says. No, don’t be alarmed. Señor Collazo has been very shaken by Chazarreta’s death, you see; they were very close friends. He runs and runs all day long, no matter what time it is, but he’ll get over it. They reach the newsagent. Right, I’ll leave you here, says the man. Thank you, says Nurit, and then: Before you go, may I ask you a question? Yes, of course, the guard says, and stops the buggy, which had already been moving off. Tell me, do you know which school Chazarreta went to? The man is taken aback by the question. No, I don’t have the slightest idea. But would you know how I could find out something like that? Nurit persists. Did you ask Collazo? Yes, but he didn’t want to tell me, she says. How strange, it’s a harmless question. That’s what I thought. Well, if I see him to chat to I’ll bring it up with him. You’re the lady from El Tribuno, right? Yes, Nurit replies. I’ll let you know what I find out, says the man, but my advice would be not to speak to anyone else about this. My superiors don’t like this kind of thing, us giving information to journalists, do you see what I’m saying? Yes, of course. That would be my advice, the man repeats, and drives away. Nurit goes into the shop and asks for the Sunday papers. Which one? the newsagent asks. All of them except El Tribuno, she says. A resident browsing among the mints looks at her with contempt. Nurit Iscar knows it isn’t because she’s not buying El Tribuno: he has recognized her. She holds his gaze and the man puts on an expression of “the things we have to put up with in here”, chooses two packets of lozenges in the same flavour – menthol – but of different brands, pays for them and leaves. The newsagent looks at her but says nothing, so she volunteers: I get the impression people here don’t like me much. Don’t you worry, the man says, bundling up the papers and putting them in a plastic bag so they won’t get wet. I’m not sure they like anybody very much round here. Nurit smiles, pays for her newspapers and walks towards the door. Then the man, from behind his counter, says: Great pieces, by the way. I really liked today’s, that one about the bad smell. Thank you, she says and, before shutting the door, she asks: You don’t happen to know where Chazarreta went to school, do you? No, not a clue, says the newsagent, why? Nothing really, just something I was thinking about for a piece; well, if you happen to find out, would you let me know? Yes, he says, if I hear anything I’ll tell you.

  Nurit walks along in the rain again. She isn’t worried about getting wet any more, or troubled by the confrontation with Collazo, or alarmed by the way he spoke to her. She’s excited by the certainty that the trail they are following is leading somewhere, and that the missing photograph in Chazarreta’s study is the key, that understanding it will finally unlock the mystery of that death. If that were not the case, Luis Collazo wouldn’t have reacted in the way he did. What now of that initial doubt over whether Chazarreta’s death was suicide or murder? It seems ridiculous now. She’d bet that it was intended as a distraction, the planted knife meant to suggest a link between his wife’s death and his own. But his death is connected to something else, she’s sure of it, something dark and terrible enough to warrant a particularly grisly reprisal: his murder and his friends’, too. She can’t wait to get home, write to the Crime boy and tell him what happened. And, while she’s at it, ask for Jaime Brena’s email. Yes, that too, why not?

  Opening the door into the kitchen, she finds her friends having breakfast. You’re up early, she says. We didn’t have a choice: the telephone wouldn’t stop ringing, Carmen says in a reproachful tone that conceals something more than her annoyance at having been woken up. You forgot to take your phone, birdbrain, Paula says. Nurit pats her pockets: You’re right, I left it behind. Lorenzo Rinaldi called. He said you should call him urgently. Nurit clutches her head. Shit, I forgot to send him yesterday’s piece. But it’s here – look, Carmen Terrada says, showing her the page in El Tribuno with her article on it. No, yes, I sent it to the Crime boy, he’s the one who takes copy, but we’d agreed that I’d send everything to him, to Rinaldi, first, and I forgot last night. There’s a lot going on in that little head, says Paula. A lot, Nurit agrees, heading for the door. Where are you going? To call him from my room. No, my friend, you call him from here, we’ll act as a restraint. And anyway, we want to supervise, says Paula Sibona. We have a responsibility to look after you, Carmen says. And to supervise, Paula repeats. It’s a work call, Nurit clarifies, although she knows that her friends will never be convinced of that. Nor is she. It doesn’t make any difference; we all know where a work call can lead – or do you think we’ve never worked? Carmen says. Just pick up the phone and dial the number: here, in front of your friends. Then, seeing that she’s been left no room for manoeuvre, Nurit takes the phone and dials. No need to pretend in front of them that she doesn’t still know Lorenzo Rinaldi’s phone number off by heart. She waits with the receiver against her ear, Carmen and Paula’s eyes fixed on her. Hello, yes, Lorenzo… Nurit, yes… Look, I’m so sorry that I completely forgot to send you the piece yesterday. I had a headache and… oh, no… really? You liked it… I’m so pleased, yes… yes, it wasn’t easy, I’m really glad you liked it. Now Nurit listens in silence, looks up at her friends, keeps listening. It’s quite clear from the way she looks at them without saying anything that Rinaldi is saying something she’d rather not let slip out. They’ve realized, though, and watch her all the more hawkishly. Eventually Nurit has no choice but to speak a few words, enough for her friends to see where things are going, for example when Nurit, Betty Boo, says: Aha, yes, yes I can. And they, who know her, start worrying. A lot. And they’re also a bit annoyed. Then Nurit Iscar confirms their worst fears: OK, yes, that’s fine, that time’s fine. And no sooner has she said “that time’s fine” and, a second later, “will you come and pick me up here?” than Paula Sibona claps an exasperated hand to her head – open-palmed, to the centre of her forehead – and Carmen Terrada turns her back, opens the newspaper to a random page and buries herself in an article.

  18

  Shortly before Lorenzo Rinaldi arrives at La Maravillosa to take Nurit Iscar out to lunch, Jaime Brena is preparing his first coffee of the day. The Crime boy, who didn’t wake up in the night after all and slept most of the morning too, is pissing ferociously in order to get to the computer quicker to see if there has been an answer from Gonzalo Gandolfini. And there is one. Hello, yes, I’m his nephew. Sadly my uncle died a while ago in a car accident. I suppose that you knew him back in the Little Ranch days. I hope your memories are good ones! (Ha ha). According to my dad not everyone remembers that time fondly. Take care. The Crime boy rereads the message several times, wondering how to proceed. He calls Jaime Brena, who’s having his second coffee now. What little ranch? Brena asks. No idea, the boy says. One of them must have had a farm. I think it’s something else; he wrote it with a capital L and R. It’s a place name, then. Yes, I think so. Have you tried searching for it on the Internet? Hey, Brena, are you really asking me to look online? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, so long as you remember that the web isn’t God. Really, it’s not God? Can you think of anything more godlike than the web? Give me a break, kid. I accept that it’s a kind of religion, just not God. The boy smiles, but Brena can’t see this. Anyway, I did have a look, he says, but I didn’t find anything helpful. What about asking him? Asking who? Gandolfini’s nephew. OK, I’ll try. Tell me, have you had anything from Nurit Iscar? Yes, I emailed you her piece last night as soon as I got it. Oh, I don’t turn my home computer on unless it’s for a very good reason. This is a special event, Brena, turn it on. Anyway, you can read her piece in the paper today. Jaime Brena opens the copy of El Tribuno that’s lying untouched on the grey marble work surface and turns the pages until he gets to Nurit Iscar’s article. Got it, he says, I’ll read it now, and he looks around the kitchen for his glasses. Let me know if you find out anything about Little Ranch. The boy, sitting in front of his monitor, says yes, that he’ll let him know, adding that hi
s email also contained the name of the man who died skiing, Bengoechea, something else he found on the Internet. Bengoechea, OK, Brena repeats, and he hangs up. The Crime boy checks his messages again. There’s another email from Nurit Iscar, relating in detail the morning’s encounter with Luis Collazo and all her thoughts arising from the incident, information that will surely never find its way into the pages of El Tribuno but is intended only for the three-man team they seem to have formed without ever setting out to do such a thing. In a postscript, Nurit asks the boy to forward her email to Brena together with both their phone numbers: so that we can all communicate more easily, she says. And she gives him hers. Reading over the text of her message again, the boy feels a physical sensation he can’t describe or explain. Could it be that for the first time he is excited by his work? It feels like something fizzing inside him. No woman has ever provoked that sensation in him, no football final, not even the Coldplay gig in the River Plate stadium. The boy has always believed that it was not so much a sense of vocation that drove him to finish his journalism degree but rather obstinacy and a determination not to disappoint his mother. At the time of joining the Media Studies faculty he didn’t even know if he was going to specialize in journalism or advertising. But since all the people he liked best were studying journalism, he followed their lead. Or that’s what he’s always told himself. That he ended up in journalism through a combination of fate and lack of initiative. The same applied to the section he occupies now: he ended up working in Crime because it was the first vacancy he found in a newsroom. And yet now, for the first time, he really believes that he could do nothing else. He doesn’t know exactly how the change came about, but right now, on this rainy Sunday, there’s nothing in the world more fascinating to him than this case he’s working on. He forwards Nurit’s new email to Jaime Brena and calls him, too, to tell him to read it. And Jaime Brena, annoyed at having to break one of his most cherished principles of life to use a computer at home but every bit as caught up in the case as the boy is, logs on and reads Nurit Iscar’s email. He answers her: Great stuff, Betty Boo, we’re on our way. Take care, Brena. At the very moment that Nurit Iscar is pondering those words, “take care”, Lorenzo Rinaldi pulls up in front of her house and sounds his horn. She didn’t know that he was already inside La Maravillosa – one of her friends authorized his entry – but such is the antipathy they feel for this man that neither of them felt inclined to go up to her room and inform her of his arrival. Nurit leans out of the window and shouts: Just coming. He must not have heard her, because he sounds the horn again. Hurriedly she grabs her bag, and before leaving dashes into the bathroom to look in the mirror. Probably not such a good idea, but she does it anyway. She arranges her curls, puts on lipstick in a muted tone, an intense but dusty pink, almost brownish, definitely not one Betty Boop would choose; a daytime colour that gives her lips moisture and a bit of shine, making them look younger without drawing attention. Can lipstick make lips look younger? She looks at them, turning her head one way and the other, opening her mouth, forcing a wide smile. She isn’t sure. She strokes her neck, lifts her chin; while she certainly doesn’t have a double chin, her skin has lost elasticity. No, turns out it wasn’t a good idea to go into the bathroom and look at herself: now she’s only going to feel more insecure. The horn sounds for a third time. Paula Sibona appears behind her in the mirror and says: You can hear that man blowing his horn for you, right? Yes, yes, I’m going now. You look lovely, Paula says. She turns round, smiles and says: Thank you, darling.

  As she comes out onto the veranda, Lorenzo Rinaldi gets out of the car, walks round to her side, opens the passenger door and waits there with the door open. She’d forgotten how he always used to do that – getting out to open the door for her. Rinaldi knows and honours all the rules of etiquette governing social interaction between men and women (rules which don’t include being faithful to your wife or not ruining someone’s life by raising false hopes you have no intention of fulfilling, anyway), the kind that not all men preserve these days. Rules such as walking on the outside of the pavement; opening doors (not only to cars, but also lifts, houses, offices, cheap hotels); getting into taxis first so that the woman doesn’t have to slide across the whole of the back seat to the most uncomfortable spot, behind the driver, who’s sure to have pushed his seat back; going upstairs behind a woman and going down in front of her; carrying her luggage; serving the drinks in a restaurant. And, of course, paying the bills, all of them. What would a flapper make of these norms? Nurit Iscar wonders. Is it still gallantry when a man honours all these conventions nowadays, or something closer to humiliation? The humiliating ones are the men who claim to be modern to get out of paying the bill, was what Carmen Terrada always said. But there are different kinds of humiliation, Nurit thinks, as Lorenzo Rinaldi leans forward and says: Hello, Betty Boo. He kisses her discreetly on the cheek and puts his hand on her neck, almost at the nape, under her curls. And she feels it. Feels Lorenzo Rinaldi’s skin against hers three years on. Slipping away from his touch, she sits down, and he closes the door and returns to the driver’s seat. They drive towards the entrance of La Maravillosa. Have you noticed that I’ve got a new car? Rinaldi asks. And she says yes, but it’s a lie because she has no idea what kind of car she’s just got into. If someone put a pistol to her head and forced her to give the make, the model, even the colour of the car she’s riding in, Nurit wouldn’t be able to give an answer. She can never remember who has what car. She doesn’t notice. She can, on the other hand, remember people’s licence plates if they lend themselves to forming words. For example, the BRM on Paula’s licence plate, which she thinks of as BROOM. Or the GRL on the car her ex-husband lets the boys use and which Nurit remembers as GIRL. And the HMD on Viviana Mansini’s car, which stands for HUMID. But she hasn’t yet had a chance to look at Rinaldi’s new licence plate. Do you like it? he asks, and before she can answer, he adds: You wouldn’t believe what it cost – more than a flat in Belgrano, but I’ve wanted it for a long time… Besides, I already have a flat in Belgrano, he says, and laughs. Nurit Iscar glances at her watch and wonders if she’ll be able to bear the hours ahead. All the things she didn’t like about Lorenzo Rinaldi but ignored because she was in love with him come flooding back to her. How did I forget this part? she reproaches herself. You’ve not done so badly yourself, made some good money from those books you published, right? he asks, confirming Nurit’s misgivings. She can’t believe the direction this conversation is taking – is this the sort of stuff they talked about when she was in love with him? Had she let love bestow intelligence and importance on Lorenzo Rinaldi’s conversation and interests? Or had he made more of an effort not to come across as a jerk? Nurit sighs and gazes out of the window. You still get royalties, right? Rinaldi insists. Nurit Iscar would rather not dignify this with an answer but knows she should, or he’ll keep on asking. Some, she says. How much is some? he asks. Oh please, she thinks, you can’t be that much of an arsehole. I don’t know, Lorenzo, she tells him, if you like, when I get home I’ll send you a copy of my latest statement. But he’s oblivious to the irony, and goes on: And how much might they give you as an advance for your next novel? Nurit Iscar looks at her watch again. In dollars, he adds, because you’re in a strong position; you can send it to various publishers, let them fight over it and then sell it to the highest bidder. Like a kind of auction, you mean, Nurit says ironically, but he takes the comment at face value. Exactly, a publishing auction of your new book. There is no new book, she says. Still not? There never will be: I’ve stopped writing. You’re kidding, right? No, I’m deadly serious – did you never think it was strange that I haven’t brought out a book these last few years? No, I suppose I thought that you’d been knocked back a bit by what happened with the last one and that was why you were taking longer. Your last novel didn’t do too well, right? No, it didn’t do too well at all. What was it called again? Only If You Love Me. That’s right, Only If You Love Me; all the same, they must have pai
d you an advance, says Rinaldi. They can’t have known beforehand how it would go. Nurit doesn’t answer but wonders again what she’s doing here. She looks at her watch. I can’t fathom why, as someone who understands so well what needs to go into a novel to make it work, you didn’t stick with what you knew, Rinaldi says. Nurit feels a strong desire to slap him. An overwhelming desire. And she doesn’t hide it. But he, being strangely insensible to other people’s feelings, blunders on: Anyway, just because you got it wrong once doesn’t mean you don’t have a gift. A gift for what? Nurit asks, with undisguised irritation. A gift for knowing what to put into a book in order that people will want to buy it: a bit of this, a bit of that. Why don’t you fuck off, Rinaldi? Hey, where did that come from? he asks, astonished. Look, I’m not going to discuss with you what I write and how I write it because you know nothing about it, she says, with such force that for the first time Rinaldi sees she’s upset. OK, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot. It wasn’t a great start, she agrees. They exit the club in silence after answering a few questions at the gate. Outside on the road, Rinaldi tries again with some routine observations: the rain, local restaurants, Nurit’s latest piece, the president’s murky business dealings, the disastrous state of the country (in his judgement, Lorenzo Rinaldi’s judgement, though he states it as a revealed and irrefutable truth), the sensation of being persecuted by the government – I am a victim of political persecution, he says – and the fact that this persecution, far from cowing him, gives him more adrenaline. She agrees with almost nothing Rinaldi says, about the president, the country, or the supposed risks run by someone in their profession. None of it. She doesn’t even agree with his opinion of the local restaurants. But Nurit Iscar keeps her own counsel, knowing there’s no point in offering up her views. She knows that Lorenzo Rinaldi wouldn’t even suspect that she might think differently. As someone who’s intelligent, professional and has slept with him, how else could she think? How could she not see the reality of things? Today, reality is an entelechy; a theoretical construction. If she were to observe that “her” reality is very different to his, they’d end up in an argument with no logic or ending. Lorenzo Rinaldi would keep trying to convince her, even if she didn’t do the same with him. How could she ever have been so in love with someone who seems so distant now, someone with whom she can’t even have a light-hearted conversation in a car? What are the mechanisms of love that prevent us from seeing things we don’t want to see? Because Lorenzo Rinaldi is the same person he was three years ago. There’s no doubting that. And yet she, back then, only saw the aspects of him that attracted her. And what were they, exactly? His hands, his voice, certainly. But are these enough for a woman to prostrate herself at the feet of a man? If Nurit Iscar had to say now what it was that had made her fall in love with Lorenzo Rinaldi, she would say that it was the fact that he was in love with her – or had said that he was, at any rate. Deeply in love, he used to say. He had still been saying it even at the end – and the fact that she’d believed him. It had been intoxicating to feel that she – named by him, desired by him – had the power to awaken passion, love, tenderness and need in this man. It was a sensation that Nurit Iscar hadn’t experienced for a long time in her own marriage. And she had gambled everything on it. She fell in love with being in love. Was she wrong? she wonders as she stares out of the car window while Rinaldi drones on about the downturn in sales since the advent of online news. No, she hadn’t been wrong to gamble. But she had got the stake wrong. She had needed to know if her body retained the memory of those feelings from her youth, when love, relationships and marriage were still a mystery to her. And it did. Does it still? She doesn’t know. How is your wife? Nurit interjects as Rinaldi is explaining the increased cost of inputs in the newspaper business. She’s fine, he says, fine. What’s she up to these days? Nurit goes on, as though she were talking about an acquaintance, someone distant but in whom she is interested, when the true nub of her question isn’t any genuine interest in Rinaldi’s wife but in establishing that he had, has and will always have a wife. She pretty much lives in Bariloche now, he says. We’d like to retire there. When the time comes, of course, not yet. I bought some land there dirt cheap, some inheritance muddle that we ended up resolving for a pittance, and we’ve built a house there at the bottom of a hill with a view of the lake, it’s a dream of a place. A dream. And Nurit wonders for whom it’s a dream. For Rinaldi? For Rinaldi’s wife? For the deceased who left the inheritance muddle? For people like them? When someone says “dream”, do they suppose that all of us share the same dream? It was a huge lot, he goes on. We divided it up, made log cabins and Marisa – the name rattles her, she’s ceased to be “Rinaldi’s wife”, but someone with her own name, Marisa, a name that Nurit and Lorenzo Rinaldi were always careful to avoid during their relationship – is in charge of running them. She’s very happy there because she’s got animals and plants, too, and she loves all that. I go down there every now and then, or she comes up to me. It’s a dream of a place, he says again. A nightmare, Nurit thinks. It’s about twelve miles from the town centre, you know? I know Bariloche, yes, but not where you have your lot. We’ve already nearly made the money back. Some of the cabins we rent out, but we sold the others for three or four times more than they cost to build; it’s proven to be a very good investment, a fantastic investment. Nurit looks back out of the window in silence.