“I got so mad at him…it would suck to move away. I want to go to school in La Roja, with you and the girls.”
The dog had come over to try its luck with Florencia, and now she leaned down to pet its ears so she could hide her face a little. She didn’t want Rocío to see that she was about to start crying; if Rocío left Sanagasta, Florencia would run away with her, she didn’t care. But then she heard the best possible news, the best she’d heard in her life.
“So I told him that, I asked him if we could stay. And guess what? He told me we were leaving Sanagasta but only to move to La Rioja. He’s already talked to the secretary of tourism about a job. Isn’t it great?”
Florencia pressed her lips together and then said it was awesome. She finished her Coca-Cola to swallow her emotion. “Let’s go to the rose plaza,” said Rocío. “The buds opened, you can’t imagine how pretty the flowers are.”
The dog went with them, and so did what was left of the Coca-Cola. Night had almost fallen. All the streets in the center of Sangasta were paved and lit. Through the windows of some houses they could see people gathered, many of them women, to pray the rosary. Florencia was a little afraid of those meetings, especially when there were candles lit and the flickering glow illuminated all the faces and their closed eyes. It looked like a funeral. No one prayed in her family. In that, they were very strange.
Rocío sat down on one of the benches and said, “Finally: Flor, now I can tell you. Back at the kiosk it was no good, they might have been listening to us. You’ve got to help me with something.”
“With what?”
“No, first tell me you’re going to help me. Swear it.”
“OK, I swear.”
“OK. Check this out.”
Rocío opened the backpack she had carried the whole way to the plaza and showed her what was inside. When the light from the streetlamp fell onto it, Florencia gave a startled jump: it looked like the meat was a dead animal, a piece of a human body, something macabre. But no: it was uncured chorizo sausages. To relax and to keep Rocío from laughing at her moment of panic, she said, “What do you want me to help you with, a barbecue?”
“No, dummy. It’s to scare the shit out of Elena.”
Then Rocío explained her plan, and in her eyes it was clear that she hated Elena. She knew, clearly, that Elena had been her father’s girlfriend. She knew they had fought over the police academy, but that the real problem was something else. Still, she didn’t admit it. It only came through in the way she talked about Elena, the way her voice trembled with happiness when she imagined her humiliated. It was clear she wanted to punish Elena and defend her mother. Florencia focused all her mental energy; someone had told her once that if you wished hard for something you could make it happen, and she wanted Rocío to confide in her, to trust her. If only she would, then they would really be inseparable. But Rocío didn’t say another word, and so Florencia just agreed to meet her after dinner behind the Inn, and to bring a flashlight.
—
They could get in through the gate by the pool, which was always open. Anyway, in Sanagasta no one locked their doors. It was the off-season, so the whole big building that surrounded the pool area was closed. Only the main building was in use, the one that looked out onto the street; in between the two was the casino, which was also closed that time of year except when someone rented it out for a special occasion. The Inn’s shape was odd—it really was a lot like a barracks.
Florencia and Rocío went in barefoot so they wouldn’t make any noise. They had keys because Rocío’s father still had a set for the back door and a copy of the master key for the bedrooms. Rocío figured he’d planned to return them and then forgotten in the heat of the argument. As soon as she saw them, she had the idea: sneak into the Inn at night, when the employee on duty was sleeping in a room in the front building, far away. They’d go into several of the rooms, make holes in the mattresses—which were made of foam: it wouldn’t even take a sharp knife to tear them—stick a chorizo inside, and remake the bed. In a couple of months, the smell of decomposing meat would be unbearable, and with luck, it would take them a long time to find the source of the stench. Florencia was surprised by the nastiness of the plan, and Rocío said she’d seen it in a movie.
No sooner did they open the gate than they saw Blackie, the most protective of the Inn’s dogs. But Blackie knew Rocío and greeted her by licking her hand. To soothe him further she gave him one of the sausages, and he went off to eat it beside a cactus. They made it inside with no problems. The hallway was very dark and when Florencia turned on the flashlight she felt a savage fear; she was sure the light would illuminate a white face rushing toward her, or that it would betray the feet of a man hiding in a corner. But there was nothing. Nothing but what should have been there: the bedroom doors, some chairs, a sign for the bathrooms, the computer room where the machine was turned off and some framed photos on the walls showed Chaya harvest festivals of years gone by. The Inn always filled up during Chaya, and they threw lively chayero parties on the grounds.
Rocío signaled for her to follow. She was very pretty in the dark, thought Florencia. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was wearing a black sweater, because night in Sanagasta was always cold. In the silence of the empty building Florencia could hear Rocío’s agitated breathing. “I’m crazy nervous,” Rocío murmured close to her ear, and she brought Florencia’s hand, the one not holding the flashlight, to her chest. “Feel how my heart is pounding.” Florencia let Rocío press her hand against that warmth and she had a strange feeling, like she had to pee, a tingling just below her belly button. Rocío let go of her hand and went into one of the rooms, but the feeling stayed with Florencia, and she had to grip the flashlight with both hands because the light was trembling on the wall.
Tearing the mattress with the kitchen knife they’d brought turned out to be easy, just as Rocío had predicted. Nor was it difficult to put the meat into the hole. From the side the knife opening was noticeable, but once they put the sheets back on the trick was perfect. No one would ever guess that there was sausage or anything else hidden in the mattress; at least not right away. They carried out the same operation in two more rooms, and then Florencia, who was starting to get scared, said: “Why don’t we go, this is enough.”