by Antonio Hill
If she was honest with herself, Regina had to admit that when she married Salvador, sixteen years her senior, it wasn’t because the man was an animal in the sexual realm, although in the early years she’d had no cause for complaint in that respect. No, Regina wasn’t an especially passionate woman, but she was proud. She’d been married for twenty-one years and for the first half of that time she had been tremendously happy. Salvador adored her, with a devotion that seemed unswerving, eternal. And she blossomed in his flattery, in those glances that caressed her like a tight mesh enhancing her curves, but not too tight. The only thing she didn’t allow for when she married this gentleman, unconventionally attractive, tall and already gray in the wedding photo, was that this well-known intellectual’s tastes wouldn’t change over time. If at forty-five Salvador noticed twentysomething girls, at sixty-five his interests were still centred on the same young bodies, the same insultingly smooth faces. The kind that need only soap and water to shine. And those young girls, even sillier than Regina had been years ago, found him distinguished, charming, intelligent. Even romantic. They excitedly read his love stories—urban fairytales with titles like The Sweet Taste of First Dates or Overlooking Sadness, which he started to write when his profound books with experimental aspirations bored even the most pretentious critics—and attended his lectures in which words like desire, skin, taste and melancholy were repeated ad nauseam.
It was a hard blow to Regina, realizing that his constant admiration was fading little by little. Or rather it was subtly shifting in other directions. At thirty-eight Regina was no longer the coveted white ball of the billiards game, the centre of her husband’s attentions; and by forty-five she’d definitely become the black ball, the one whose turn comes only at the end of the game when there’s no other option. Now, turning fifty, after various facial touch-ups that hadn’t received more than a glimmer of recognition from Salvador, she’d decided to change her game. One day logic had prevailed over selfesteem: she had realized that she was fighting against an enemy as brutal as it was implacable, one she could hold back but not defeat. It had been her New Year’s resolution of the previous year: raise her self-esteem whatever the cost. And looking around her, she discovered that the glances her husband no longer gave her could come, surprisingly, from unexpected corners. In one sense, she thought, infidelity restored order and balanced her marriage. And although at the beginning she wasn’t really seeking sex, more to heal a battered ego which didn’t respond to anti-wrinkle treatments or the incisions of a scalpel, the avalanche of feelings she experienced from those strong muscular arms, hard smooth buttocks like blunt rocks, clumsy kisses and that restless tongue, which reached the most remote corners of her sex, was a real surprise. This new-generation lover was capable of fucking her to exhaustion and never losing his smile, of biting her neck like a playful puppy, even of slapping her when the pleasure was so intense his eyes closed without wanting them to. Like her, like everyone, he wanted to be seen and admired, but involuntarily unlike others, the big opinion he had of himself stayed in the street; in bed he was generous and tireless, demanding and affectionate. Some days a real bastard; some days a scared kid who asks for hugs. She wouldn’t have known how to say which she preferred; she did know that week by week she’d become hooked on those games behind closed doors, and the idea of going a month without seeing him, exiled on the Costa Brava with a sexagenarian husband she found repulsive now— the image of Salvador in trunks had become a nightmare she couldn’t escape—and a daughter in a full-on emotional storm was frankly disagreeable. Thank God, she wasn’t “in love” with someone who could be her son; in fact for a while now she had doubted the existence of this love with a capital “L” of which her husband never tired of writing, to the delight of women who wanted to live in such books. It was, simply, the inescapable lure of weeks that without him would have had no core. Although at times, alone in her room, she enjoyed remembering these encounters so much, nevertheless she thought she could go without them . . . That day would come, she was sure, but in the meantime she would hoard explicit gruesome details in her memory to which her body responded without hesitation.
“What are you thinking?” Aleix whispered in her ear. “I thought you were asleep,” she said and kissed him on the forehead. She shifted a little so he could put his arm around her. Their hands intertwined. The force radiating from those strong fingers gave her life.
“Only a little. But it’s your fault,” he purred obscenely. “You wear me out.”
She laughed, satisfied, and his other hand sneaked under the sheets and brushed her thighs.
“Stop,” she protested, moving away a little. “We have to go.”
“No.” He pinned her down with his whole body. “I want to stay here.”
“Ah, come on, get up. Lazy . . . It’s too hot to have you on top of me.” She used a mock-severe tone; like a rebellious child, he held her even more tightly in his arms. At last Regina succeeded in freeing herself; she sat on the edge of the bed and turned on the harsh light on the nightstand.
Aleix lay spread out in the shape of a cross, occupying practically the whole space. She couldn’t help being surprised once again by the beauty of that naked body. It was a bittersweet feeling: a mixture of admiration and embarrassment. Without getting up, she stretched out her arm to grab her bra and blouse, thrown on a nearby chair.
“You can stay in bed if you want,” she said, as she dressed, her back to him.
“Don’t go yet. I have to talk to you.”
Something in his tone of voice alarmed her suddenly and she turned, her blouse half buttoned.
“Does it have to be now?” She finished buttoning the blouse and picked up her watch from the nightstand. “It’s really late.”
He moved to kneel on the sheets and kissed her on the neck.
“Stop . . . If you hadn’t stood me up yesterday, we’d have had more time. Salvador arrives in less than an hour and I have to go to the airport to collect him.”
“I did it for Gina, I already told you . . . And it’s partly your fault: no mobile messages, no contact outside of here. I couldn’t tell you.”
She nodded rapidly, impatient.
“That’s how it has to be. OK, make the most of it while I’m dressing. What do you have to tell me?” She rose from the bed and began to put on her underwear and then her skirt. She didn’t even have time to go home and shower. She’d go straight to collect the Old Man.
“I’m in trouble. Bad trouble.”
Silence.
“I need money.”
“Money?” Regina didn’t know what to say. She turned red and stopped dressing.
He realized he’d offended her; he jumped out of bed, still naked, and came toward her. Regina looked away.
“Hey, hey . . . Look at me,” he said to her. She did so, and then, seeing his face, she understood that he was really serious. “I wouldn’t be asking you if it wasn’t essential. But I’ve fucked up and I need it. Really.”
“You have parents, Aleix. Surely they’ll help you.”
“Don’t be absurd. I can’t go to them.”
Regina exhaled.
“What’s going on? Have you got some college girl pregnant or something like that?”
His expression changed and he grabbed her hand.
“Let go!” He didn’t. He grasped it more firmly and drew her toward him.
“This isn’t a joke, Regina. If I don’t get three thousand euros before Tuesday—”
She didn’t let him finish. She interrupted him with a dry, ironic laugh.
“Three thousand euros? You’re mad!”
Aleix squeezed her hand harder, but then dropped it. They were face to face, measuring each other up.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“Listen, no way. It’s not about whether you’d return it or not. Do you think I can take three thousand euros out of the account without Salvador noticing? And what would I say to him? That the fucking has been a little expensive
this time?”
She was offended: it was what he’d been afraid of, making her feel like someone who has to pay for sex. He tried to explain.
“Listen, I’m not asking you as a lover, I’m asking you as a friend. I’m asking you because if I don’t give it back, these guys will kill me.”
“What are you talking about?” It was getting late. She wanted to finish this conversation and get out of there. “What guys?”
He lowered his head. He couldn’t tell her the whole thing.
“I wouldn’t be saying this to you if it wasn’t important.”
Regina didn’t want to give him any more options: she sat down on the chair to put on her white sandals, but the weight of silence, only broken by the sound of the air conditioning, was too much for her.
“Aleix, I’ll be straight with you. If you really are in trouble, you have to turn to your parents. I can’t solve your problems. Understand?”
“Don’t come over all protective on me. Not when I just fucked you twice.”
She half smiled.
“Leave it, Aleix. I don’t want to fight with you.”
It was his last card: he played it in desperation, with a pang of regret. He fell back on the bed and fixed his eyes on her.
“I don’t want to fight either.” He tried to make his voice sound cold, suddenly unconcerned. “But I think you’re going to help me in the end. Even if it’s only for your daughter’s sake.”
“Don’t you dare bring Gina into this.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t plan on telling her that I screw her mother once a week. I’ll leave that to you.” He lowered his voice: once he’d started, there was no way back. “What I will do is tell that Argentine inspector that I saw frightened, innocent Gina push Marc out of the window.”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“The cold hard truth. Why do you think Gina’s like she is? Why do you think I went to your house yesterday? So she wouldn’t be alone with the police, because your little girl is terrified of what she did.”
“You’re making it up.” Her voice was trembling. Fragmented images of the last few days flashed through her head. She tried to dispel them before continuing. This was a bluff; it had to be this bastard brat’s fucking bluff. She became indignant.
Aleix kept talking.
“She’d been dying of jealousy since Marc told us he’d met a girl in Dublin. And on San Juan she couldn’t take it any more. She put on that dress to hook up with him, but he wasn’t interested.”
Regina got up and went toward Aleix. She had to control her voice, control herself so as not to lose her temper and slap him across the face. Control herself so as to leave no doubts that she was serious.
“You left . . . you stated so to the police and Gina said so as well.”
He smiled. Regina hesitated. Right now all he needed was to sow doubt in her mind.
“Of course. It’s what you do for a friend, isn’t it? In spite of Marc being my friend too. It’s in your hands, Regina. Simple: one favor for another. You help me, I help you and Gina.”
Just then Aleix’s mobile, which he’d left on the nightstand, rang. He stretched out his arm to see who it was and frowned. He answered under Regina’s glare.
“Edu? Something up?” His brother rarely called him, and never without a reason.
While he listened to what Edu had to tell him, Regina slowly picked up her bag. The conversation lasted barely a minute. Aleix said thank you and good-bye and hung up.
He looked at her, smiling. He was still naked, aware of the attractiveness of his body. She knew he had something to say: she saw it in his satisfied face, in that smile expressing more arrogance than any kind of happiness.
“What a coincidence. It seems the cop wants to see me. Monday afternoon. Just enough time for you and me to resolve this matter between ourselves.”
For a moment Regina hesitated. A cold mask came over her face. A part of her, the part belonging to the disappointed woman, wanted to slap that cocky brat’s face, but her maternal side finally prevailed. The first thing was to speak to Gina. She decided the slap could wait.
“I’ll call you,” she said, then turned around.
“What?”
Regina smiled to herself.
“Just that. I’ll let you know.” She turned back toward him, trying to make her expression as contemptuous as possible. “Oh, and if you really need that money, keep looking for it. If I were you, I wouldn’t count on me giving it to you.”
He held her gaze. Bitch, he mouthed.
“You know what you’re doing,” Aleix said instead. He desperately sought a phrase to settle this wrangle in his favor, but found none, so he just smiled at her again. “You have until Monday to save your little girl from this mess. Think about it.”
She waited a few seconds before opening the door and escaping.
18
Martina Andreu looked at her watch. Her shift finished in less than half an hour and she had just enough time to go to the gym before picking up the kids. She needed some good stretches; her back was killing her these days and she knew it was partly due to lack of exercise. She tried to be organized, but sometimes it was simply too much. Work, husband, house, two little children overflowing with after-school activities . . . She placed the papers from the Dr. Omar case in the file with a sigh of frustration. If there was anything that drove her crazy, it was cases that were going nowhere. She began to think this guy had taken off with his macabre music for somewhere else. It wasn’t a ridiculous idea at all: if the women-trafficking network had been his main source of income, now he had to find another way of earning a living. The blood on the wall and the stunt with the pig’s head could have been just a smokescreen, a way of disappearing in triumph, so to speak. Although, on the other hand, the guy wasn’t young. In Barcelona he had his contacts and that repugnant clinic. Maybe he wouldn’t earn enough to make him a millionaire, but certainly more than he’d make somewhere else, where he’d have to start from scratch.
The man’s personality was a mystery. The people of the barrio hadn’t contributed much information. She herself had gone door to door all morning, trying to find out anything, and the only thing clear was that the name of the “doctor” inspired distrust at the very least; in some cases, genuine fear. One of the women she’d spoken to, a young Colombian who lived on the same floor, had distinctly said: “He is a strange guy . . . I used to cross myself when I passed him. He did bad things in there.” She had pushed her a little more and had obtained only a vague “They say he takes the devil out of the body, but if you ask me I say he is the devil in person.” And from then on she was as silent as the grave. It wasn’t that strange, thought Martina: however surprising it might seem, a number of “exorcisms” took place regularly in cities like Barcelona, and given that now the City of Counts’ priests didn’t get involved in these affairs, believers in such things had to find alternative exorcists. She was sure that Dr. Omar was one of them. Searching his clinic had contributed very little but none the less significant evidence: a multitude of crosses and crucifixes, books on satanism, santería and other similar stories, written in French and Spanish. His banking transactions were ridiculous: he’d bought the flat for cash years before; he had no friends; and if he had clients, they wouldn’t go to the station to make a statement. Martina shivered at the thought that these things could still be happening in a city like Barcelona. Modernist façades and modern shops, hordes of tourists ravaging the city, camera in hand . . . and underneath all that, protected by anonymity, individuals like Dr. Omar: no roots, no family, devoting himself to aberrant rituals without anyone knowing. Enough, she told herself. I’ll continue on Monday. She left the closed file on top of the desk and was already getting up when the phone rang. Shit, she thought: last-minute phone calls always lead to problems.
“Yes?”
A woman’s voice, trembling with nerves and with a marked
South American accent, stammered on the other end: “
Are you covering the doctor case?”
“Yes. Your name, please?”
“No, no . . . Call me Rosa. I have something to tell you. If
you like we can meet in person.”
“How did you get my number?”
“A neighbor you questioned gave it to me.”
Martina looked at her watch. The gym was fading into the
horizon.
“And you want us to meet right now?”
“Yes, straight away. Before my husband gets back . . .” I hope this is worth it, thought Martina, resignedly. “Where can we meet?”
“Go to the Ciutadella. I’ll be behind the fountain. Do you
know where I mean?”
“Yes,” answered Martina. Taking the kids to the zoo in the
park so much had its advantages.
“I’ll wait for you there, within the next half-hour. Be punctual, I don’t have much time . . .”