Santa Quiteria Clinic exuded ostentatious luxury. The five-story building loomed in the middle of an expanse of extensive gardens, groves, and even an artificial lake. Manuel parked in the public lot that wrapped around the employee parking spaces near the elegant sloping drive. A circular flowerbed stood before the entrance. The place looked more like a palace or an embassy than a medical establishment. A black Mercedes at the entrance reinforced that initial impression.
Manuel was about to get out of his car when he saw two women come out of the main door into the portico of the main entrance, arm in arm with their heads close together. Catarina and the dowager marquess. Manuel sat and watched. The older woman raised a hand to signal the driver to wait. It was her car; that might be Damián’s cap he saw through the car window. From where Manuel sat it would have been impossible to overhear them even if the rain hadn’t been pouring down. Their expressions, body language, and gestures were clear evidence of the complicity between them. They now stood face-to-face, their hands intertwined. Their smiles and expressions showed their feelings of mutual esteem.
Manuel saw something move inside an ordinary white pickup truck parked off to his right and partly concealed by a large mimosa bush. A man sitting inside was watching the women with an interest as keen as his own. Manuel couldn’t see who he was.
He looked back and forth between the watcher and the women. The two spoke for a while longer and then hugged warmly in farewell. The rear door of the Mercedes opened, and the marquess’s nurse got out. She went up the stairs and gave her arm to the elderly woman just as Catarina had done. The two went to the automobile and left. Catarina went back inside the clinic.
Manuel got out. He opened his umbrella and held it to hide his face, just in case the sound of the closing car door caught the watching man’s attention. He went around his vehicle, walked up to the passenger side of the pickup, and yanked the door open.
Vicente, Catarina’s assistant at the greenhouse, was startled to see him. His bloodshot eyes and the tears on his face showed he’d been weeping for a long time. Manuel closed his umbrella and pushed a box of tissues, a pile of crumpled used tissues, and an overcoat to one side in order to clear the passenger seat. He glimpsed the butt of a revolver in the pocket of the overcoat. The gardener didn’t move at first, but then he picked up the coat, threw it carelessly into the backseat to make room for Manuel, and again slumped over the steering wheel. He didn’t bother to try to hide his tears.
“Vicente. What are you doing here?”
The man lifted his head and jutted his chin toward the clinic entrance. He shrugged. “I have to talk to her.”
“With Catarina?”
Vicente turned to look at him, and his face betrayed his surprise. “You didn’t know? She fired me.”
That explained why the pickup no longer bore the nursery logo. Manuel looked behind and saw the truck bed was still loaded with tools, flowerpots, cable ties, and metal stakes for laying out hedges.
Into his mind came the echoing conversation between Vicente and Catarina he’d overheard in the greenhouse.
“Vicente, maybe this isn’t the right time or place.”
“She doesn’t want to talk to me. I’ve been working with her for five years, and yesterday that horrible nurse came to the greenhouse and gave me this.” He held out a creased envelope.
Manuel carefully extracted a sheet of paper as crumpled as the envelope. The notice advised Vicente Pi?eiro he was immediately discharged from any and all activities having to do with the estate, instructed him to leave the premises at once, and enclosed a check for his salary, vacation pay, and all additional compensations, including a generous separation payment as thanks for his services. Manuel looked inside the envelope and recognized the gray-toned paper of a bank check. The bold sweeping script matched the appended signature of the dowager marquess. On the line for the amount she’d written Fifty thousand euros, a huge amount.
“She discharged me like . . . just like any employee.”
Manuel remembered Gri?án’s comment: this family considered outsiders as no more than servants to be compensated for services rendered.
“I thought we had something special,” Vicente said miserably.
Manuel remembered Catarina’s comment in the greenhouse: What you want is never going to happen, because I’m Santiago’s wife, and he’s the man I want to be with.
“Maybe you were imagining—”
“No, Manuel!” He erupted in anger. “I’m certain, I’m not making it up, it’s real!”
“Maybe so, and perhaps there was something once. But even so it looks as if Catarina has made up her mind. Don’t you think so?”
Vicente sat looking at him gravely. The man’s lips slowly puckered into an almost infantile pout, and tears again began to flow. Vicente covered his face with his hands and again put his head down on the steering wheel.
Manuel sighed. “Vicente, I think it’s time for you to go home.”
The man choked back his tears, took another tissue, dried his face, blew his nose, and tossed the wadded tissue on the floor. He admitted his defeat. “You’re right. I should leave.”
Manuel opened the door, but before he got out into the rain he looked back at the gardener.
“And . . . Vicente, I don’t know why you’re carrying a weapon, but nothing good can come of it.”
The man dolefully contemplated the wrinkled mass that his overcoat had become and then looked back at Manuel. He nodded and turned the key in the ignition.
Manuel stepped out of the elevator onto the fourth floor. He found no one at the reception desk or in the silent empty halls at this early hour of the afternoon. He followed the posted signs in search of the room number Lucas had given him. He located it at last at the end of a corridor, one side of which was entirely glass. A door in that hard transparent surface provided access to a fire escape. The rain and the low light outside rendered the smooth, unyielding surface as a long stretch of hopelessness reflecting his walking figure. Voices from the end room interrupted his moody thoughts. The door was ajar. They weren’t shouting, but the tones were sufficiently heated for him to hear every word. He planted himself against the wall by the door and turned to watch the corridor behind him to keep from being surprised as he eavesdropped.
“You have to respond,” Catarina pleaded. “You must make the effort!”
“Leave me alone! Go away!”
“I’m not going to leave. You’re my husband.”
Santiago mumbled something indistinguishable.
“Because I’m your wife, and we’re family. Don’t push me away, Santiago. Lean on me, let me take care of you.”
“I don’t want to live, Catarina. I can’t go on like this.”
“Hush! I don’t want to hear that kind of talk from you.”
“It’s true. I don’t want to go on. I don’t have the strength.”
“I’ll give you strength. Our child and I both will—did you forget the child? Santiago, the baby we’ve wanted so much. We’re going to be very happy, Santiago, I promise.”
“Out!” he shouted. “Get out of here! Leave me alone!”
“Santiago!”
“Just leave me alone!”