49

ADRIANA

Monday, June 25, 2012

T he following morning I cloistered myself in the MAC Interpretive Center, receiving and unpacking the signs for the display cases. I also spent some time going through catalogs, deciding which mannequins we should order. There were various models, some rigid and others with flexible joints that were double the price, but none of them ended up convincing me; they were too dull. Now, I pictured them with tattoos, dressed in bright colors and with more elaborate hairstyles. I thought of going to Héctor’s office and getting him to help me choose. We could always personalize them once we owned them. I was busy with this when Elisa called me on my cordless office phone from her office, located barely thirty feet away down the hall. We’d been avoiding each other, even at lunchtime. I preferred to sit with Paz and her two assistants.

“Could you come by my office, please?” she said, trying to sound distant.

I answered her curtly, without any need for pretense. “Of course. As soon as I finish what I’m doing I’ll be there.”

I was about to knock on her office door when I realized she was talking to someone. I froze when I overheard something I was definitely not expecting.

“So you’ll come by to pick me up in Little Bastard at ten. Yes, I think I can arrange everything.”

Was Jairo in her room? I listened carefully and deduced it was a phone conversation, since I couldn’t hear any other voice apart from Elisa’s, saying good-bye with a languid laugh. I returned to my office, trying not to make a sound with my heels, a challenge given the century-old parquet floor. I sat down in my chair, facing the desk, and pretended I was reading the invoices in front of me. Impossible. What I’d just heard had thrown me completely.

A short while later she came in, quite unlike the sulky Elisa who’d called me a little earlier. Now, an exultant smile lit up her face, and she walked up to me to give me two overly effusive kisses.

“Weren’t you going to come to my office?” she asked, shutting the door behind her.

“Yes, I was just heading that way,” came my uncomfortable reply. I didn’t really know where all this was going. “What did you want?”

“Could you stay over tonight with the kids?” she begged me. “I have a dinner with my friends from the gym, and we’ll be back late. I wouldn’t ask you if I could avoid it, but Marcos is away at the Monreal Livestock Fair and he won’t get back from Teruel until morning.”

“You have dinner with your friends on a Monday?” I asked her.

“Yes, it’s just that Luisa is getting separated. She’s having a hard time and we wanted to cheer her up—”

I couldn’t go on listening to her. I just exploded. “Oh, come on! Drop it, will you? I heard you arranging a date with Jairo, so don’t use me as a baby-sitter, and stop with the lies.”

She went pale for a moment, pressing her lips together tightly. “Were you spying on me?”

What’s with this obsession that I’m spying on everyone ? I thought. If people were more discreet about discussing their secrets at work, I wouldn’t spend my entire life finding out about their misfortunes.

“I wasn’t spying on you. I was about to open the door to your office, and I overheard you from the hallway. By the way, if you have these sorts of conversations again, it would be a good idea to lower your voice, no matter how emotional you become when Jairo del Castillo is talking to you.”

I stood up and held her gaze. She withstood it for a moment and then she collapsed into the armchair where Iago usually sat when we had our meetings.

“It’s not what you think,” she muttered with what was almost a childish pout.

“Oh yes it is. I might have my doubts with someone else, but not with Jairo.”

Her look of defeat confirmed what I’d said.

“There are things I haven’t told you,” she began, taking off her shoes and tucking her feet under her on the armchair.

“For a change.”

“Look, Jairo’s been in love with me for four years,” she said solemnly, as if she’d just revealed the existence of the Atlantic Ocean to me.

“He told you that, or did you work it out for yourself?” I imagine my eyebrow arched all by itself.

“Both.”

“All right. Tell me whatever it is you have to say; this promises to be interesting.” I encouraged her with a wave of my hand as I seated myself on my desk like a Buddha.

“Look, when they opened the MAC and hired me, I had just recently married your cousin, and we’d just had Á lex. Despite that, Jairo was always charming toward me. Too much so for my taste, and it made me feel uncomfortable, because I couldn’t really understand what he was looking for in someone like me who’d just become a mother. When our little girl was born, I received a bouquet of orchids that was bigger than the hospital cradle. It was from Jairo del Castillo. When I inquired about a similar bouquet at the florist’s, they told me it cost something like six hundred euros. Marcos didn’t even notice; you know what he’s like with those sorts of gestures. He also didn’t notice when Jairo gave her an Armani baby outfit for her christening. He did the same thing when Álvaro was born. Tell me, what would you have wanted me to do?”

“Hmmm, I don’t know . . . What about politely sending the presents back to him, or not allowing yourself to be bought or impressed by flattery?”

She dismissed my suggestions with a grimace.

“But were you aware that, in the meantime, he was sleeping with half of Santander?” I persisted.

“Yes, but always thinking about me,” she hastened to reply. “At least that’s what he tells me.”

What an artist, Jairo , I had to concede.

“And the business with the previous curator of prehistory—did he also tell you he was thinking about you then?”

“He told me he started to pursue her to make me jealous,” Elisa said, lowering her voice as if she were in the confessional box. “And I have to admit he succeeded. I swear I hated her: for going out with him, and above all, for daring to break every code, and doing what she felt like doing.”

“Terrific! So now you have a heroine you can emulate.”

“Let me finish,” she said. “During the carnival fiesta, the two of us disappeared for a while. It’s true, we’d never gone so far before, but that was when he told me he’d been in love with me all these years, that he’d stopped seeing other women since the business with Nieves, because he could see it hadn’t worked with me, and that he was tired of playing games.”

“And you believed him,” I murmured in despair, pulling my hair up into a ponytail in a gesture I hoped would calm me down.

“Listen, I’m not a child who believes everything she’s told, but he was very convincing,” she said, defending herself and pointing at me with the heel of one of her shoes.

“Anyway,” she continued, “he caught me by surprise that night, so I put him off. He told me he understood and that I should take my time; he’d wait for me . . . Until this Sunday, when he rang me, really worried about me and Álex. Apparently, his brothers had told him what happened with the lioness at Cabárceno. He insisted that we have breakfast together this morning, and he wants us to get together tonight. Four years, Adriana. He’s been in love with me for four years, waiting for me.”

Four years weaving his web to catch you and two hundred others besides. You’ll be tonight’s meal, nothing more. He has the advantage. Four years for him is like five minutes’ attention at a bar for any of us. But how to explain that to her?

“And where does that leave Marcos?”

She sighed. “It’s just that your cousin has become so . . . predictable.”

“Jairo is really predictable, too, believe me,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

Predictable in that he’ll seduce you; predictable in that he’ll leave you stranded; predictable in that you’ll end up getting hooked because you’ve never known anyone like hi m — and you never will for the rest of your short life.

That was when I realized I’d started to think like a longevo .

“Elisa, even if Jairo were the very god of sex”—He probably is , I thought—“that won’t be the solution to your problems with Marcos.”

“Marcos won’t find out,” she replied immediately, convinced.

“But you will.”

“I’ll be able to handle it.”

“Jairo will handle you.”

“Since when are you an expert on the Holy Trinity?” she cried out, sitting upright in the armchair.

What a stupid question . . . from the very beginning. You could have held off a bit.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“I warned you about the gossip, but you haven’t separated yourself from Iago and Héctor at any stage. You should hear what Paula’s saying about you.”

“I have no idea what she’s saying out there, but that girl didn’t like me from the first day I entered Iago’s office.”

“That’s exactly why,” Elisa confirmed. “Do you know why nobody has asked you which twenty-five percent you belong to? Because you might as well have been displaying a poster on your back with Iago’s face on it from day one.”

“I never intended to start anything with my boss, and I assure you that I’ve shied away from it, but I don’t owe you any explanation beyond that.”

“The same goes for me with Jairo.”

“That’s true, but don’t count on me to look after your kids while you’re cheating on my cousin.”

“I’ll get by on my own, then. In any event, you owe me a favor. I brought you to this museum, so don’t speak to Marcos about anything we’ve talked about.”

That’s what I’d been afraid of. “You’re asking me to betray him, too?”

“That’s exactly what I’m asking,” she said, sizing up the strength of my opposition with a glance.

“Well, you’re exacting too steep a price for doing me a favor.”

“That’s the way you see it.”

I understood that Elisa had made up her mind, but I thought I still might be able to do something to avoid the situation, though I was well aware of the danger involved. I wasn’t doing it for her but because I was angry at the effect her affair would have on my cousin and the children. I sighed and gave it a go.

“As far as I can see you’ve already decided that you’re going to go ahead with this, but I think there are a couple of things you should know.”

“Surprise me.”

“Do you remember the blond waitress the night of the carnival party?”

“The Barbie doll one? Yes, I remember. She looked like a go-go dancer.”

“Jairo ended up with her that night.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, you ought to. When I went out to my car in the parking lot at about three in the morning, I saw them fooling around in a car parked near mine. I think that was the same night he told you he’d wait for you.”

Her lips tightened until they were white. “That’s a lie, and anyway, you have no way of proving it.”

“No, of course not. It didn’t occur to me to take some photos with my phone in order to persuade my cousin’s wife not to sleep with one of our bosses. Although if you like, you can prove to yourself that Jairo hasn’t turned into a saint who’ll wait for you forever. Every Friday he ends up in a foursome with three women. If you just go out on the town that night or ask around out there, you’ll know that I’m not lying. It’s a fact, and he doesn’t hide it much.”

“With three at a time?” she repeated, turning pale. “How can you have such a twisted mind?”

“Me, twisted? You haven’t seen anything yet with Jairo,” I said, shaking my head.

Elisa put her impossibly high heels back on and got up from my armchair with all the dignity she could muster.

“I refuse to go on listening to you. Will you or won’t you stay with my kids tonight?”

“No, of course I won’t.”

She opened the door and went out, slamming it behind her with a force that reverberated throughout the entire floor. It sounded as if her heels were crushing little crustaceans as she made her way down the corridor.

I was left staring at the empty space she’d left behind in my armchair. Should I call Marcos? To tell him what? That his wife was going to be unfaithful that night? Elisa would deny it, and anyway, I was already poking my nose far too deeply into their marital affairs. But there was something that was worrying me even more. Why was Jairo throwing all his heavy artillery at Elisa now, at this very moment? After four years of nothing more than prowling, he’d started his definitive campaign of relentless pursuit and takedown precisely on that very Sunday. It had to have something to do with what had taken place on St. John’s Eve with me and Iago. There was nothing happenstance when it came to Jairo. What was he up to?

I spent the rest of the morning in the Interpretive Center, trying not to think about what had happened. What’s the most complicated thing that needs doing? I thought, looking around the untidy space. The panels. The panels about the itinerant camps were driving me mad. Fine. Then that was what I was going to do . . . to stop thinking about Jairo, about Elisa, about my useless cousin who’d be analyzing stud bulls three hundred miles away not even suspecting his wife was going to be spending that night with a three-thousand-year-old Scythian.