Daniela was born at seven months. Carlos attributed this early birth to Lucia’s irresponsible behavior, since only a few days earlier, while she was painting white clouds on the sky-blue ceiling of the baby’s room, she had fallen off the stepladder. Daniela spent three weeks in an incubator and two more under observation at the clinic. This still-raw little being, resembling a hairless monkey and connected to tubes and monitors, gave her father an empty feeling in the stomach similar to nausea, but when finally she was installed in her crib at home and determinedly grasped his little finger, he was won over forever. Daniela was to become the only person Carlos Urzua would submit to, the only one he was capable of loving.
Lena Maraz’s pessimistic prophecy did not come true, and her daughter’s marriage lasted two decades. For fifteen of those years Lucia kept the romance alive without the slightest effort on her husband’s part, a great feat of imagination and tenacity. Before the marriage, she had known four important loves. The first was the self-styled guerrillero she met in Caracas, dedicated to the theoretical struggle for the socialist dream of equality, which as she quickly discovered did not include women; and the last, an African musician with rippling muscles and dreadlocks decorated with plastic beads, who confessed to her he had two legitimate wives and several children in Senegal. Lena dubbed her daughter’s tendency to adorn the object of her infatuation with imagined virtues her “Christmas tree syndrome”: Lucia chose an ordinary fir tree and decorated it with baubles and tinsel that over time fell off until all that remained was the skeleton of a dried-out tree. Lena put this down to karma: getting over the Christmas tree stupidity was one of the lessons her daughter had to learn in her current incarnation to avoid repeating the same mistake in the next one. Though a fervent Catholic, Lena had adopted the idea of karma and reincarnation in the hope that her son, Enrique, would be born again and could live a full life.
For years, Lucia attributed her husband’s indifference to the tremendous pressures of his work, little suspecting he spent a good deal of his time and energy with casual lovers. They lived together in a friendly way, but with their separate activities, separate worlds, and separate rooms. Daniela slept in her mother’s bed until she was eight. Lucia and Carlos would make love whenever she crept into his room so as not to wake the child; this left her feeling humiliated, as it was almost always on her initiative. She made do with crumbs of affection, too proud to ask for more. She managed on her own, and he thanked her for it.
Lucia, Richard, Evelyn
Upstate New York
Stuck in their motel room smelling of creosote and Chinese food, Lucia, Richard, and Evelyn could have found the final hours of Sunday endless, but in fact they flew by as they told each other about their lives. The first to succumb to sleep were Evelyn and the Chihuahua. The young Guatemalan girl took up a tiny amount of space in the bed she had to share with Lucia, but Marcelo sprawled over all the rest, stretched out with his legs stiff in front of him.
“I wonder how the cats are,” Lucia said to Richard around ten, when they too finally began to yawn.
“They’re fine. I called my neighbor from the Chinese restaurant. I don’t want to use my cell phone because they can trace the call.”
“Who’s going to be interested in what you say, Richard! Besides, you can’t tap cell phones.”
“We’ve already discussed that, Lucia. If they find the automobile—”
“There are billions of calls crossing in space,” she interrupted him. “And thousands of vehicles disappear every day. People abandon them, they get stolen, they’re dismantled for spare parts or are turned into scrap, they’re smuggled to Colombia—”
“And they’re also used to dump dead bodies at the bottom of a lake.”
“Is your conscience bothering you?”
“Yes, but it’s too late for me to change my mind. I’m going to take a shower,” announced Richard, heading for the bathroom.
Lucia looks really good with her crazy hair and those snow boots, he thought as the boiling water scalded his back, the perfect remedy for the day’s fatigue and the flea bites. They might argue over details, but they got on well; he liked her combination of sharpness and affection, the way in which she flung herself fearlessly into life, that expression of hers somewhere between amused and mischievous, her lopsided smile. In comparison he was a zombie stumbling into old age, but she brought him back to life. He told himself it would be good for them to grow old together, hand in hand. His heart began to pound when he imagined what Lucia’s weird hair would look like on his pillow, her boots beside his bed and her face so close to his that he could lose himself in her Turkish princess’s eyes. “Forgive me, Anita,” he murmured. He had been alone a long time and had forgotten that rough tenderness, that empty feeling in the pit of the stomach, the rushing blood and sudden surges of desire. Can this be love? he thought. If it is, I wouldn’t know what to do. I’m caught. He chalked it up to his fatigue; doubtless his mind would clear in the light of day. They were going to get rid of the car and of Kathryn Brown; they were going to say goodbye to Evelyn Ortega, and after that Lucia would return to being simply the Chilean woman in the basement. But he didn’t want that moment to arrive. He wanted all the clocks to stop so that they would never have to part.
After the shower he put on his T-shirt and trousers, since he didn’t have the nerve to get his pajamas out of the backpack. Lucia had laughed at the amount of stuff he had packed for just two days and would think it ridiculous he had included his pajamas. Now that he thought about it, it was ridiculous. He returned to the room refreshed, aware it was going to be hard to sleep; any variation in his routines gave him insomnia, especially if he did not have his hypoallergenic ergonomic pillow. He decided it would be better never to mention that pillow to Lucia. He found her lying in the narrow space the dog had left free.
“Move him off the bed, Lucia,” he said, approaching with the intention of doing so himself.
“Don’t even think it, Richard. Marcelo is very sensitive. He’d be offended.”
“It’s dangerous to sleep with animals.”
“Why’s that?”
“For health reasons, to begin with. Who knows what diseases he might—”
“What’s bad for your health is to wash your hands obsessively, the way you do. Good night, Richard.”
“Have it your way. Good night.”
An hour and a half later, Richard began to feel the first symptoms. His stomach was heavy and he had a strange taste in his mouth. He locked himself in the bathroom and turned on all the faucets to drown out his intestines’ explosive roar. Opening the window to let out the smell, he sat shivering on the toilet, cursing ever having eaten the Chinese food and wondering how it was possible he was the only one of the three to be suffering. His churning stomach caused him to break out in a cold sweat. Shortly afterward, Lucia knocked on the door.
“Are you all right?”
“That food was poisoned,” he muttered.
“Can I come in?”
“No!”
“Open up, Richard, and let me help you.”