“All right, get out a shovel and come and dig me out of here,” Lucia said, relenting, her curiosity aroused.
A short while later, Richard, bundled up like an Inuit, had rescued his lodger and taken her and Marcelo upstairs to his house, which was almost as cold as the basement. Cursing how miserly he was when it came to heating, Lucia followed him to the kitchen, which she was familiar with from previous brief visits. Shortly after arriving in Brooklyn she had been there, intending to cook him a vegetarian meal, but Richard turned out to be hard to please. She considered vegetarianism an eccentricity of people who had never been really hungry, but nevertheless took great care in preparing his meal. Richard ate two platefuls, thanked her politely, and never returned the favor. This was when Lucia had been able to see how restricted her landlord’s way of life was. Among the few pieces of unremarkable furniture in dubious condition, pride of place went to a shiny grand piano. On Thursday and Saturday afternoons she could hear from her lair the sounds of Richard and three other musicians performing together for the sheer pleasure of playing. In her opinion, they were quite good, but she had no ear for music and next to no musical culture. She had waited several months for Richard to invite her to one of these afternoon sessions to hear the quartet, but the offer never came.
Richard occupied only the first floor, and his bedroom was the smallest in the house, seeming more like a cell with bare walls and a tiny window. The living room appeared to be a stockroom for the printed word, while the kitchen, also piled high with books, was recognizable as such thanks to a sink and an unreliable gas stove that had the habit of turning itself on without any human intervention and was impossible to fix because there were no spare parts for it anymore.
THE PERSON RICHARD INTRODUCED as Evelyn Ortega was extremely short and was seated at the rough wooden table that served as both desk and dining space, her legs dangling from the stool. Ensconced in a garish yellow parka with the hood up and firefighter’s boots, she did not appear to be hysterical so much as stunned. She ignored the newcomer’s arrival, but Lucia went over and held out her hand, without letting go of Marcelo or taking her eyes off the cats, who were observing the dog closely, hackles raised.
“Lucia Maraz. I’m Chilean, the tenant from the basement,” she said.
A trembling childlike hand poked out of the yellow parka and feebly shook Lucia’s.
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Lucia.
“I bumped into the back of her car when I was returning from the vet’s. One of the cats was poisoned with antifreeze. I think she’s very scared. Can you talk to her? I’m sure you’ll understand her.”
“Why?”
“You’re a woman, aren’t you? And you speak her language better than I do.”
Lucia addressed the young visitor in Spanish to find out where she came from and what had happened to her. The stranger woke from her catatonic state and pushed back the hood but did not raise her eyes from the floor. She was a very small, thin young woman, her face as delicate as her hands, her skin the color of pale pine, and her black hair coiled at the nape of her neck. Lucia guessed she must be a native Central American, possibly Maya, although the characteristics of the race—an aquiline nose, pronounced cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes—were not very prominent in her. On the principle that foreigners understand English if you shout at them loudly enough, Richard told her she could trust Lucia. In this case it worked, because the girl responded in a singsong voice that she was from Guatemala. She stammered so badly that she could barely string her words together; by the time she had finished a sentence it was hard to remember how it began.
Lucia managed to understand that Evelyn had taken the car belonging to her employer, someone called Frank Leroy, without permission, while he was traveling and his wife, Cheryl, was taking a nap. With difficulty, the young Guatemalan added that after Richard had crashed into her she had been forced to abandon her plan of going home without mentioning what she had done. It was not Cheryl she was frightened of, but Frank Leroy; he was a vicious, dangerous character. Her mind in turmoil, she had driven all over the neighborhood trying to come up with a solution. The dented trunk would not shut properly and had even sprung wide open on a couple of occasions; she had been obliged to pull over and improvise tying it up with the belt from her parka. She had spent the rest of the afternoon and evening parked in different spots, but only stayed a short time to avoid drawing attention to herself. During one of these stops she finally noticed the card Richard had given her, and had come to his house as a last resort.
While Evelyn remained seated on the kitchen stool, Richard took Lucia aside and whispered that their visitor either had mental problems or was drugged.
“Why do you think that?” she asked, also in a whisper.
“She can hardly speak, Lucia.”
“Don’t you realize she has a bad stammer?”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am! And besides, she’s terrified, poor thing.”
“How can we help her?” asked Richard.
“It’s very late, there’s nothing we can do now. How about if she stays here tonight, and tomorrow we take her back to her employers’ house and explain about the accident? Your insurance will pay for the damage. They’ll have no reason to object.”
“Except that she took the car without permission. They’re bound to throw her out.”
“We’ll see tomorrow. For now we have to calm her fears,” Lucia decided.
The interrogation she gave the young girl cleared up some aspects of her relationship with her employers, the Leroys. Evelyn did not have fixed hours in their house: she in theory worked from nine to five, but in practice spent the whole day with the child she was looking after and even slept next to him so that she could attend to him if need be. In other words, she worked the equivalent of three normal shifts. According to Richard and Lucia’s calculations, she was paid much less in cash than she was entitled to. To them it seemed like forced labor or slavery, but this did not matter to Evelyn. More important was that she had somewhere to live and was safe. Mrs. Leroy treated her very well, and Mr. Leroy only occasionally gave her orders. The rest of the time he ignored her. He treated his wife and child in exactly the same way. He was a violent man and everyone in the house, especially his wife, trembled in his presence. If he found out she had taken the car . . .
“Calm down, Evelyn, nothing’s going to happen to you,” Lucia told her.
“You can sleep here. This isn’t as bad as you think. We’ll help you,” added Richard.
“For now what we need is a drink. Do you have anything, Richard? Beer for example?” asked Lucia.
“You know I don’t drink.”