The renewed silence on the other end of the line was proof to him she felt caught and was racking her brains for something to put him off.
“I’m not lying, Manuel. Why would I lie to you?” Her voice had risen, and she sounded close to tears. Excuses, questions, any possible evasion to avoid answering directly. “He’s . . . he’s in Barcelona, in the meeting with the board of directors of that hotel chain in Catalu?a.”
Manuel clenched the phone so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He closed his eyes and with a great effort resisted the desire to fling it away, destroy it, smash it into a thousand pieces to silence the lies coming through the line. He tried to control himself when he spoke again, to resist the urge to shout.
“Two police officers just left here. They told me álvaro couldn’t be in Barcelona because he got killed last night in a traffic accident, and now he’s in the morgue in Lugo. So you can goddamn well tell me, because there’s no way you don’t know. Where is álvaro?” He drew out every syllable in a long, low hiss in an effort to contain his anger.
The woman’s voice broke and turned into a wail so shrill that he could hardly understand her. “I’m sorry, Manuel, so sorry!”
He broke the connection. Mei could have been his third possible life preserver, but she’d failed him.
THE ARCTIC SUN
The waiting room smelled of despair. Two rows of plastic chairs faced one another and left hardly enough room to pass. Respiration and fetid body odors floated in a cloud of stinking vapor that blurred the grieving faces of those waiting. Disconcerted, he went back out into the hallway. The security guard at the counter there kept an eye on him. Manuel nodded to indicate he intended to stay in the hall. He’d dismissed the idea of making his way to the last available seat. That would have meant negotiating the knees and feet of people waiting and muttering a long string of apologies to those skeletal presences. He chose to remain standing to avoid all those eyes. He also chose to lean against the wall close enough to the door to make sure of a reasonable volume of fresh air, even though he had to put up with the stern vigilance of the guard.
Lugo had received him with sullen skies the color of chalky water, as if the town were an extension of this miserable room. The clouded weather and temperature in the mid-60s were a brutal change from Madrid’s blinding sun and muggy skies. This early September weather seemed almost artificial, a literary trope orchestrated to create an atmosphere of oppression and despair.
Lugo had no airport. He’d thought about flying to Santiago de Compostela, the closest one, and renting a car there, but with the nameless dread lurking inside him he felt incapable of waiting two hours for the flight. That dread would have exploded in the cramped cabin of an airplane.
The hardest thing had been to open the clothes closet, push aside their suits, and locate the little suitcase. He’d filled it hastily with the absolute necessities, or at least that’s what he’d thought. Later he found that in his hurry he’d grabbed four useless garments and forgotten almost everything he really needed. He thought back to the fugue state of his last few minutes at home. The quick check for flights from Madrid, the hastily packed suitcase, and the deliberate refusal to look at the photo of the two of them that stood on the chest of drawers. He hadn’t examined it then but couldn’t get the image out of his head now. A mutual friend had taken it during a fishing trip last summer. Manuel was looking distractedly out over the silver surface of the sea, and álvaro, younger, slim, his olive skin gleaming in the sun, watched him and smiled his typical smile, so subtle and so discreet. álvaro had gotten it framed, and Manuel had taken endless pleasure from it. That photo showed Manuel at his most typical—distracted, as if he’d just missed a moment of great meaning he’d never be able to recover. The instant captured by the camera had confirmed his suspicion he’d never been entirely present in his own life. Today that image amounted almost to an indictment.
The vigil at the morgue, a never-ending immobility, imposed a sudden halt. He’d rushed to travel, deluded by the confused thought that one minute more or less might change the fact that álvaro was dead. He’d gone through the house like a sleepwalker, stopping to survey each room and confirm the presence of things that had belonged to álvaro and in some way embodied him: his photography books, his sketchbooks on the table, and the old sweater hanging on a chairback, the one he wore at home and had refused to throw away even though it was faded and frayed at the cuffs. He studied each item, almost surprised they still existed now that álvaro was gone. As if somehow with his disappearance they’d have ceased to exist and vanished into thin air. He glanced quickly over his own desktop and without thinking gathered up his wallet, cell phone, and phone charger. Perhaps most surprising was his present certainty that he hadn’t saved The Sun of Tebas or the morning’s work he’d thought had gone so well. Then came the ominous task of entering the name of that dreadful city into his car’s navigation system. He drove nearly three hundred miles in silence in less than four and a half hours, interrupted only by persistent calls from Mei that he didn’t answer. He couldn’t recall whether he’d turned off all the lights at home.
The sound of a man weeping made him acutely uncomfortable. The man’s face was buried in the neck of a woman who had to be his wife. He was whispering unintelligible words. Manuel saw the woman’s tired expression as she rubbed the back of the man’s head. He saw the expressions of others in the room who were pressing their lips together, breathing deeply and gulping for air, like children trying to endure pain.
He hadn’t wept. He didn’t know if that was normal or not. There was one instant just after the sergeant and corporal left that he’d almost surrendered to tears, when before his frightened eyes the contours of his home blurred and began to dissolve. But weeping required warmth, or at least some sort of arousal; the arctic chill that had invaded his house had frozen much of his heart.
Two men in elegantly tailored suits stood at the counter. One was a few steps to the side as the other muttered in a voice so low the security guard had to lean over to hear him. The guard nodded and without hiding his interest in the visitors pointed toward the waiting room.
The one who’d consulted the guard exchanged a couple of words with his companion. Both came toward the room.
“Manuel Ortigosa?”
The man’s polished elocution and the expensive suit caught the attention of everyone in the waiting room. These men were too well dressed to be physicians or policemen. Manuel nodded.
The one who’d addressed him held out his hand. “I’m Eugenio Doval. Allow me to introduce se?or Adolfo Gri?án.”
The other shook his hand as well. “Could we have a word?”
The introductions only confirmed his suspicion they weren’t physicians. Manuel motioned toward the waiting room and the other people there, offering to accompany the strangers inside.
Ignoring the frankly curious expressions of those within, Gri?án looked up through the room’s turbid haze to the ill-defined yellow stain across much of the ceiling. “Dear God, no! Not here. We greatly regret we didn’t get here earlier and you’ve been obliged to endure this ordeal alone—is there anyone with you?” he asked, though his initial survey of this mourning company had apparently answered that question for him.
Manuel shook his head.
Gri?án looked back up at the stain on the ceiling. “Let’s go outside.”
“But they told me to wait here.”