He sighed and retreated.
He wiped the steamed-up bathroom mirror with a towel and stood before it as he buttoned his shirt. It was almost time. He put on one of the new jackets and lowered the volume of the television. He’d left it on; that was a new habit. Before going to the door he picked up his soiled double-breasted jacket to remove his wallet and the cell phones.
He found something else in the pocket. He recognized it as soon as he touched it, but he had to examine it in order to make sure. The flower was a bit worse for wear from being in his pocket, but even so it was still smooth, firm, and redolent with its elegant masculine aroma. A gardenia.
He held the flower for a few moments, glanced at the jacket and then back at the gardenia, and wondered how the bloom had gotten there. Puzzled, he opened the drawer and confirmed that it still contained the flower he’d deposited there that very morning, bedraggled but unmistakable. He put the two gardenias side by side on the dull surface of the nightstand and studied them. He decided at last that something must have happened when he fainted in the greenhouse. He’d been admiring the gardenias and perhaps, when he fell, a flower had been . . . but then that seemed absurd. The flowers in the greenhouse had been twice as big as these . . . and yet . . .
It had been a strange day of experiences just as bizarre as those of the previous one. Everything in recent days had been so unreal that it was difficult to reconstruct sequences from the chaos that had overtaken his life. Perhaps he’d simply picked the flower and stuck it in a pocket without realizing what he was doing.
A sudden knock at the door gave him a start. He opened it expecting to see the innkeeper’s wife who’d dropped by from time to time, perhaps concerned he might be lonely. She’d offered to fix him something to eat, had delivered fresh towels, or had let him know the soccer match was starting on television, even though he’d told her he wasn’t much of a fan.
Mei Liu, her face marked by fatigue and almost unrecognizable, stood outside his room. Her expression was half apology and half apprehension.
“Mei—why are you here?”
His question was one of resignation instead of reproach; his tone was surprised but gentle. He opened his arms and took her in. She burst into tears. As he held her he felt his anger ebb away completely. It would surely come back redoubled in the course of the day, but the warmth of her body comforted him unexpectedly and provided something he hadn’t been aware he was missing. It made him aware that since the moment of álvaro’s farewell and departure, he hadn’t really embraced anyone. Except little Samuel.
It took him quite a while to calm Mei. The tissues he provided one after another contained her tears at last. She took her first look at his room. It must have seemed stark and unhappy to her, for she asked in a sad, choked voice, “But why are you staying here, Manuel?”
“I’m here because I have to be here. But how about you? Why are you here?”
Mei freed herself from his arms and went to the window. She dropped her purse and took off her thin coat. She looked outside and then back around the room. Manuel saw her focus on the blank sheets of paper stacked on the old desk. She looked at them in silence for a few moments, almost as if she were drawing from them the words she was about to say.
“I know you told me not to come, and I tried to respect your wishes, but . . . Manuel, I don’t ask for forgiveness, but I want you to understand. As soon as he had to take over his family’s affairs, álvaro asked me to keep them entirely separate. The fact is, from the moment he described his approach, it never occurred to me it might hurt you like this. I’d never have been a part of it. It seemed to me he was being forced to deal with something purely commercial, and he just didn’t want to discuss it.”
“All right, Mei, I suppose you’re right. I guess that perhaps someday I might understand. It wasn’t your fault. But you already told me all this on the phone. Why did you come?”
She nodded and even gave him a woeful little smile of acknowledgment. “Because I have something to tell you, something I remembered when you called to ask about álvaro’s other telephone.”
That caught Manuel’s attention.
“He kept that iPhone on the desk. It didn’t ring very often, and he picked it up when it did. Once or twice I answered it. Each time I did, I found myself speaking to the same man, someone with a strong Gallego accent who spoke perfect Castilian Spanish. He was very educated and polite; you can always tell that much from someone’s voice. It was se?or Gri?án. You must have met him.”
Manuel nodded at the description of the administrator.
“Last Friday álvaro and I were in his office. He’d gotten a call from Gri?án that morning. I know that’s who called because I heard álvaro greet him. But in the afternoon he got another call. The person on the other end of the line was shouting so loud I heard him across the room. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he was obviously very angry. álvaro sent me out of the room, but you know his office and mine are separated only by a glass partition. He listened for a while, said a few words, and then ended the call. He was worried when he came out; I knew him well enough to see that. He muttered an excuse about going out for a coffee or something and left the office.
“Then the phone rang again. I want you to understand he’d authorized me to take those calls. I promise you they were usually just routine messages like ‘Tell álvaro to call me,’ or ‘Tell álvaro I mailed him the documents for the firm,’ and I would just answer, ‘Yes, I’ll tell him,’ or ‘He’s in a meeting right now.’ I just mean that even though álvaro generally picked up, there was nothing out of the ordinary about this.” Visibly nervous, Mei bit her lower lip. “So when it rang, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. The number displayed on the screen was really strange, only three or four digits. But anyhow, the administrator’s office has lots of extensions and sometimes he’d use one that didn’t display caller ID. So I picked up.
“It’s been years since I heard it, but I immediately recognized the sound of coins being accepted by a pay phone. It wasn’t Gri?án on the other end. It was a different man. He sounded really agitated and didn’t give me a chance to say anything. As soon as the call was connected he said, ‘You can’t ignore him, you hear me? He has proof. He knows you killed him and he’ll tell the world if you don’t do something.’”
Mei said nothing more. Her body sagged like that of a marionette when its strings are cut. She had to grab the windowsill to stay on her feet, as if what she’d just said had emptied her completely.
Manuel was astonished. “‘He knows you killed him’? Are you sure?”
Mei nodded and closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened again her face was submerged in grief. “I didn’t say anything. I just disconnected. The phone started ringing again right away. I guess the man on the pay phone thought the call had been dropped. I didn’t answer. I went out for a coffee as an excuse to get out of there. When I got back álvaro had already returned. There were no more calls, but later I saw him talking on that same phone. When he finished, he came out and told me he had to move up the meeting with The Hero’s Works and was getting on the road right away. He was ‘officially’ spending the weekend in Barcelona at the Catalu?a hotel group’s convention.”