Lore’s vision is collapsing toward a middle point, an avalanche of darkness sweeping in from her periphery. “Oscar, it’s not—?qué le dijiste? What exactly did you tell him?”
“Jesus Christ.” Oscar pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lights one and takes a deep drag. He blows the smoke toward the window. The sun has disappeared behind thick sooty clouds, casting an eerie winter-like pall over the parking lot even though heat shimmers off the pavement. “So it’s true?”
“Of course it’s not true!” Lore half rises from her chair; pain pushes her back down. She groans. She needs Oscar to leave. Her daughter is in danger.
Oscar exhales another stream of smoke, and the smell nearly makes her heave. “Does Fabian know?”
Lore is sweating. “Oscar, look. You know Fabian was mostly in Austin for two years. Two years, Oscar, when it was just me and the cuates, in these times. I made a mistake. I slipped. I met him in DF. But Jesus, of course I’m not married to him! I actually—” Lore swallows, knowing there is no going back. “I actually broke it off with him months ago. He’s been trying to contact me. I won’t have anything to do with him.”
Of all the lies she’s told, this is the one that makes her hate herself. But she thinks of losing Fabian, losing the cuates. Almost losing her baby. Her eyes well with tears, and she turns that gaze up to Oscar, knowing its power.
“Please,” she says. “No one else has to know. Right?”
Oscar smokes the rest of his cigarette in silence, staring at her. “Fuck, Lore,” he says, stabbing out his cigarette in her ashtray. “What is he doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he dangerous?”
Her thoughts are a frantic, spiderlike tangle. Nesting, hatching, ugly.
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
Oscar sinks into a chair across from Lore. His expression has become grudgingly protective. “Do we need to call the police?”
“No, no.” Lore shakes her head. “But I need to know: What did you tell him?”
“Well, he introduced himself,” Oscar says roughly. “As your husband. Said he’d heard a lot about me. I sort of laughed at first. I thought it was a joke, said Fabian must have hired a good plastic surgeon.”
Lore closes her eyes, breathing deeply to stave off the nausea.
“The next thing I know he’s pulling out this picture, and it’s you, and he obviously saw that I recognized you, and he said, ‘Are you telling me she’s married? To someone else?’ Then he starts demanding your address, which I obviously didn’t give him. I was about to call security when he asked for some paper and an envelope.” Oscar reaches across Lore’s desk and taps the letter. “What does it say?”
She needs him on her side. Lore takes a letter opener and slits the envelope open, pulling out the note and a key. “Hotel Botanica. Room one fourteen.”
Oscar scowls. “Doesn’t look over to me.”
She sweeps everything into the plastic trash can beneath her desk. “Well, it is.”
Oscar stares at her for a long, inscrutable moment. Then he stands, reaches again for his pack of cigarettes. “You fucked up, Lore. Fabian’s a good guy.”
“I know.” Her voice breaks. “Please, Oscar. Keep this between us?”
Oscar shrugs one shoulder. “It’s none of my business.”
Lore grabs her purse and rounds her desk. “Thank you,” she says, rummaging through her purse for her keys to lock up. But her hands are shaking, and the purse slips from her shoulder to the floor, dumping dull blue tubes of lipstick, her powder compact, crumpled gum wrappers, business cards, and her wallet straining with too many receipts and not enough cash. Lore lets out a snarl of frustration, and Oscar watches, smoking, as she gathers everything back in, finally grasping her fistful of keys.
“I mean it, Oscar,” she says, as they separate at the end of the hallway. He at the elevator, she at the door to the ladies’ room. “Thank you.”
Oscar grunts. “Just—be careful, okay? Se veía muy enojado.”
She waits in a stall for her heart to calm. Oh, Andres, she thinks. Why did you come? Why now? Her back throbs with an ache that goes deeper than bone, radiating out from her most intimate places, and she thinks Just a little longer at the tadpole as she returns to her office and pulls the note and key from the trash can. Just hang on a little longer.
Andres knows Fabian’s name now. He can look up their address in the motel phone book. She has to reach him first. Before she loses everything.
Cassie, 2017
Duke packed his duffel for the farm right after our conversation. He hesitated at the door. “What are you going to do? For Christmas, I mean?”
I felt my aloneness so acutely then. I’d never had a huge group of friends. My college roommate, Em, was the only person I’d kept in touch with from those days. I thought I remembered she was going to see her husband’s family in Chicago this year. My father had told me recently that I was always welcome home, but this was my home, this little bungalow on the East Side, with Duke, this home we could no longer share, and then what? For a frantic moment I almost took everything back. Then I remembered telling Duke to ask me anything, how there was nothing more he wanted to know.
“I’ll be fine,” I said to Duke, forcing a smile.
Duke’s duffel fell to the crook of his elbow, and he hiked it back up. His eyes were bright with pain. “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”
“Say hi to your family for me.” Your family. No longer mine. Though they’d never been mine anyway.
I hurried into the bedroom before he could see me break down.
It was still a Wednesday, a workday. I poured myself a heavy glass of Cab and dragged the covers over my lap in bed. One of those once-or-twice-a-winter cold fronts had moved in overnight, and the sky outside my window was white as spilled milk—stratus clouds, horizontal layering with a uniform base, like the clouds are sewn together, my mother used to say, only you can’t see any of the seams.
For the next two hours, I robotically scrolled through my Google alerts and recapped the most interesting murders I could find. I couldn’t afford to get fired now.
The bottle of wine was half-empty, my nose raw from blowing into cheap toilet paper. The garment bag of my mother’s wedding dress peeked out of our cramped closet. The clawed grip of yearning took my breath away. The family I had briefly imagined—Duke, Andrew, and me—was gone. I had nothing left.
Nothing but the book. Finding the whole of Lore’s story, the truth of it.
It was nearly five o’clock. Oscar Martinez should still be at work.
He answered his extension with the same rough bark of his name.
“Oscar, hi, Cassie Bowman.” Before he could say he didn’t want to talk to me, I hurried through. “I just have a quick question. How did Lore’s health seem to you that afternoon?”
He didn’t have to ask which afternoon, and the question seemed to catch him just off guard enough to answer. “Pues, she’d come from the doctor, so I figured stomach virus or something.”
“Why stomach virus?”
“Just. Seemed like it was hurting. Why don’t you ask her? She’d know better than me.”
Yes. Yes! I was getting somewhere. “One more question.” I felt reckless with the wine. “Lore couldn’t remember. Was the key Andres left metal or plastic?”
“Metal,” he said.
I closed my eyes. I knew it. I fucking knew it.
“Thanks, Oscar,” I said. “You’ve been a huge help.”
I ate a bowl of leftover macaroni and made a strong French press coffee. I needed my head clear. I was too close to this. Too close to her. I needed to untangle the intimacies between us so I could see the situation clearly.