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"How long have we been in this strange conversation, Salas?"
“I have no idea. I acknowledge that I’ve lost track of time.”
"We should go back inside, it must be lunchtime already."
"Morgan, have you ever thought of committing a madness?"
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, anything: moving abroad, parachuting, or in my case, I might escape from this center...”
"It's dangerous to leave the comfort zone, doctor.”
"Dangerous, eh? Tell me: how long ago did you leave the comfort zone with your wife and children?”
"Ok, you’ve caught me off guard. I wouldn’t know how to answer.”
“I suppose. The fact is that if you think the adventure is dangerous, you shouldn’t border the path of the routine: it is lethal. This has been the ninth lesson, I think.”
Sunday 12 and Monday 13 November 2006
A few minutes before the events in Ámber's psychiatric center changed completely, Rafael Salas was weighing the idea of moving the bishop or, on the contrary, moving one of his pawns to take out the black pawn of Cándido the Tertullian. He opted for the second option, and, after executing the movement, looked up as if to say to his opponent, your turn.
"Ainge, Maxwell, Bird, McHale, Parish," whispered Cándido in a whisper, his pupils pinned to his figures. “Substitutes: Archibald, Buckner, Henderson, Carr and Robey.”
Salas heaved a sigh that represented how tired he was of always hearing the same names.
One of the youngest nurses in the center, one who combed his hair so slick that the top of his head looked like the black billiard ball, stopped short as he passed the table where the game of chess was playing. That morning his shift was to work the lounge room.
"What is he reciting this time?" He asked Salas with a funny grimace, referring to the Tertullian.
"The Boston Celtics roster sometime in the 1980s," he said dryly, looking up at the boy with his chin resting on his hand, as if boredom had caused the weight of his skull to be heavier.
The young nurse let out a smile and gave Salas a sympathetic look.
Suddenly something happened in the room that made the boy with the shiny hair tighten the muscles of his face. When Salas turned his head to where he looked, he found that the activity of the whole room had stopped to observe with some terror the newcomer. The old neurosurgeon had not seen this man before, for he knew with certainty that if he had, he would remember such a grotesque description.
A chimpanzee. That was the image Rafael formed in his mind as he focused his interest on the visitor. It was the perfect example to demonstrate the well-known hypothesis in which Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is based: man comes from the ape (if that was really a man). Even stooping as he moved, Salas could tell that his real height was no more than five foot 2 inches. He did not walk, but dragged his feet in a grotesque gesture that, had it not been for the facial details of the above, it would have undoubtedly been his most shocking facet. But it was the gesture of the face that caused the most chills among those around him. Huge and round green eyes watched him closely, like two headlights; and the eyelids seemed unnatural because, among other things, they were devoid of eyelashes. His skull was covered with a rough, viscous skin, stained and scarred, but without a single hair. The creature had hair in abundance on the area of his chin, building a dark and tangled beard. Salas had the ironic and untimely occurrence that, from having his head upside down, i.e. the chin at the highest point and the skull where the chin is, the subject would possibly be less monstrous.
But more than his physical appearance, what called Salas’ attention was the effect on everyone present, both patients and nurses. The lounge room had suddenly been invaded by a frigid silence, only altered by the almost imperceptible murmur of Cándido.
"Ainge, Maxwell, Bird, McHale, Parish. Substitutes: Archibald, Buckner, Henderson, Carr and Robey,” continued the Tertullian, absorbed, as if everything outside the chessboard did not exist.
The seconds that continued were strange. The madman because if something was clear, Rafael Salas at that moment was that it was another patient that gave a quick review to the room with lively but confusedly soulless eyes, and then moved to where the game of chess was playing. The young nurse turned away from pure instinct as he passed him. Rafael, for his part, waited expectantly for the next movement of the creature, which would surely arrive long before that of the absorbed Cándido.
"Look, Félix, what a surprise. The mad senile cheater!” The chimpanzee suddenly snapped, staring at some lonely world in his brain.
So confused did Salas find the phrase as the fact that he communicated aloud to himself (probably because he had no one else to talk to). He soon realized that each of his movements was like the logic of a slot machine: totally unpredictable. The creature turned on itself to the point of finishing his sentence and ran out from where he had come.
"It's Félix," the nurse said over the deep silence. He had paled with the event. “Hell, he shouldn’t be loose.”
Salas became like a spring, associating immediately the name of Félix with the violent blows produced the other afternoon against the door of the office of director Grau. Strong as if he had help from a wooden log...
It took a few minutes for the room to return to normal, and almost half an hour for Rafael to get tired of waiting for Cándido's next move. The ex doctor got up and went out the door, without a word and left the game of chess.
"Ainge, Maxwell, Bird, McHale, Parish. Substitutes: Archibald, Buckner, Henderson, Carr and Robey...”
He walked alone in the middle of the garden looking for Saul Morgan with his eyes, when a cry as if from another world made his skin prickle.
"You're a senile cheater! Senile cheater!”
Turning his head, he found Félix sitting on one of the cold stone benches in a corner of the garden, by the wall. He wore an old woolen sweater and white slippers. He was looking at him. The creature lived confined inside its dark cell, which explained that almost no other patient had seen him before. That morning turned out to be an exception to his routine.
"Hello," Salas said matter-of-factly.
He approached very slowly without looking away from the grotesque figure and stopped half a meter from him, standing by the bench.
"Félix is scared," he moaned softly.
"My name is Rafael, and I'm not going to hurt you." The old man reached out and touched Félix's shoulder with the wisdom of a man about to feed a Bengal tiger. For his astonishment and relief, he didn’t flinch at the touch. "Your name is Félix, isn’t it?"
"The iron keeps a very ugly secret," he said, not paying attention to Salas's questions. “After the music of bells.”
Rafael frowned.
"Are you trying to tell me something?"
"The incomplete protects the iron tube, Félix.”
"May I know what these things mean?" Asked Salas, who suddenly felt a deep curiosity for the patient.
"Look, Félix, the crazy senile cheater wants to know about the bell music," he continued with his nonsense. “And the incomplete protects the secret with the iron tube.”
"I see you like puzzles, my friend," said the old doctor, gaining confidence. The Bengal tiger was turning into a kitten.
"The mad senile cheater is clever, Félix.”
"So they're riddles!" He raised his voice, euphoric. “I got it right, right? Let's see... who's the crazy, cheating senile? It's me?”
Excited as a gifted child, Rafael tried his luck with the language the other practiced.
“The senile cheater is clever," Félix repeated.
“It's me!” Cried Salas as he clapped his hands.
"If this crazy monster thinks I'm crazy, he’s fucked," he mumbled, more with irony than with indignation.
"And tell me, why do you say I'm a mad senile cheater?"
"The mad senile cheater is clever. But Félix will not tell you what the iron tube holds. It's a secret.”
"Félix, listen to me." He grabbed the creature's arm, still unresponsive. "Why am I a cheater?"
"He's a madman, and he's dangerous, is he not, Félix?"
“Oh shit!”
"Stop repeating the same and answer me!"
Dominated now by exasperation, Salas' hand tightened around Félix's wrist and waved it. Suddenly he scrambled like a rabid dog and threw Salas hard against the lawn.
"Félix is in danger!" He yelled at himself, as if he had not realized the danger was from himself. “Help!”
Terrified, Salas saw from the ground how the sick man rushed over to him and imprisoned his neck with two monstrous hands. More than squeezing him, they gripped him. Rafael would remember forever the dreadful emptiness of those eyes. Martians, dumb.
"Félix, I don’t want to hurt you!" The old man groaned. A sick man was strangling him.
"Félix is going to annihilate the mad senile cheater. Yes, I’ll do it!”
The old man, who was beginning to notice the lack of air, desperately sought the help of someone out of the corner of his eye, but from his position, he could only see bits of grass. He tried to scream, but he only managed to spit out an agonizing hiss.
"Félix will annihilate you!" Repeated the beast again and again.
Just as Salas was about to lose consciousness, someone came running and pushed Félix away. The oxygen again fed his lungs. Once free, the old man felt the area of his Adam’s apple and recovered. When he recovered his sense of sight, he saw the nurse handcuffing Félix behind his back. Then several nurses led the creature to his cell.
Rafael Salas didn’t speak to anyone about what had happened; he didn’t even thank the nurses for being saved. He went straight into his narrow room and pondered all afternoon. He knew he was scared to death.
He stayed awake for much of the night.
The morning was bright and pleasant in the city of Madrid when Alyssa entered the kitchen and took a can of soda from the fridge. She was already beginning to feel that the walls of the apartment were closing in on her, so she had to find a way to distract herself without having to go outside (she had forbidden herself from the moment she arrived at the house, for the police were searching in all the city for her). To kill the time until Jaime returned from his morning errands, she had made some series of abs using a cushion like tatami. After exercising and running all the television channels several times, she could not think of anything else to do but attack the fridge. Fortunately, Jaime entered the apartment carrying several bags full of food. He said hi loudly, and when he joined her in the kitchen, he pulled a newspaper out of one of the bags and dropped it on the counter.
“Good news! It seems that they’re already forgetting us.” Alyssa took the newspaper and went through the pages quickly; she just read the headlines.
"I stopped being news," she murmured to herself, so happily surprised that she didn’t remember to take a moment to realize that he, too, had ceased to be a novelty for journalistic fashions.
Ignoring her lack of regard, Jaime opened the refrigerator door and joined Alyssa with a bottle of beer. Then he extracted a can of stuffed olives from the shopping bags.
"Let's celebrate!" He exclaimed euphorically, and Alyssa imagined that he was exaggerating on purpose. She thanked him for his optimism with a sweet smile.
"You're still wondering what I did in Oxford, right?" Alyssa asked casually, already sitting on a chair in the living room, while she carried an olive to her mouth. She chewed it slowly as the two pairs of eyes probed each other.
Jaime had prepared a low table with two coasters, olives and a bowl of chips. The stereo played, at a very low volume, a Van Morrison record. After a few seconds in which only the warm voice of the singer from Northern Ireland was heard, Jaime responded with the same warmth and with very bright eyes.
“Not at all! In fact, what was going through my head was how you will manage to prove my innocence and give me back my job.”
"Well, you need patience. Each thing is at it's own time.” Alyssa uttered the last sentence syllable to syllable as she gave her accomplice touches with her hand on his knee. “Come on eat the potato chips.”
Each sentence she uttered was as if she were trying, on the one hand to be more intimate, and at the same time to extract information from the other. For Jaime, the conversations with Alyssa had become exciting games of strategy, and he was convinced that she had the same opinion.
They took the rest of the day to get used to living together as good roommates. After lunch, while he was scrubbing the dishes, Alyssa opened the cabinet where Jaime kept the DVDs and proposed loudly a movie session for dessert. He, as a good movie buff, accepted with delight.
About half a session into The Fugitive, both had seen it before but they agreed it would be a wildly ironic choice because of their personal situation. The landline rang it was María Vergara interested in her brother’s mood. Unexpectedly, she began to speak with obvious coldness when she learned that Jaime had begun to share his apartment with a young girl.
"That was my sister," he informed her as soon as he hung up, prompting Alyssa to tell him about her family for the first time.
No luck. All she responded was a nod with her chin and a "come on, let's get back to the movie."
As the minutes passed, Jaime found her more enigmatic. Although his contact with her was normal, even quite agreeable under the circumstances, he had the feeling that she was showing a tiny percentage of her true life. Only the tip of the iceberg. He didn’t even know what she was doing when she was not hiding from the police, or what she wanted to be in the future, for example. It was enough to ask her a question:
“Are you going to college?”
“Nope. I study on my own what I consider interesting.”
Why doesn’t that surprise me? Jaime thought.
"And what do you consider interesting?"
“Political science.”
"Well, if you want advice, you're going to have to enroll in college to earn a living. That's how the world works,” he said, he really didn’t know where he wanted to go with this.
Am I trying to be her friend or her father?
"There are a lot of things I have yet to change for my world to work," Alyssa replied sharply more than she intended. Then she turned her attention to the screen and concluded the subject.
They finished watching the film in silence and then they were talking on the couch until nightfall. They talked about many things that had nothing to do with Alyssa's past, or with her studies, or with the Shapiro case or the Lennard mystery. Jaime realized that he was getting along better with an 18-year-old girl than with the people around him.
"I have to take a shower," Alyssa exclaimed suddenly, as if she were late somewhere. She gave her companion one last glance of complicity and rose in the direction of the bathroom.
“OK, meanwhile I'll make dinner.”
Jaime cooked some baked sea bass with an onion vinaigrette and green bell pepper. As Alyssa showered and dried her hair, he prepared the living room table and partially opened the window curtains so that the lights of those who were still working in the buildings of the financial zone could be seen. She came out of the bathroom in flip-flops, wearing a white tank top and some pretty worn jeans shorts. He asked her jokingly if she wouldn’t be cold with so little clothing, to which she simply shrugged. The dinner smelled wonderful, so Alyssa scarfed her sea bass without uttering a single word. Jaime, worried, was looking at an ugly scar on her shoulder. When they both finished, the young woman thanked him for dinner and they toasted with white wine.
A couple of hours later, having been tinkering with Jaime's computer (always with his permission), Alyssa was getting ready for bed. When she slipped through the sheets of the sofa bed in the living room, she noticed that she was irritated. And her condition was due to Jaime. It had been many years since she had been in love with a man, if she had ever been. She had learned to distrust them, no matter how good a hunk they might present. Charley treated her acceptably for years. They slept a countless number of times, and until he committed suicide, he had never laid a hand on her (though it had been close). She owed him her having become a grown woman at such a tender age, but she certainly never loved that unscrupulous pig.
Jaime had the irritating male gesture of looking at her ass and legs before her face. Instead, he didn’t react like the other men she had met. When Alyssa approached voluntarily with some excuse to be able to touch him, he looked away and walked away. Unheard of. He couldn’t have been nicer to her since he'd agreed to shelter her. He behaved like a gentleman, offered himself to everything with a smile and always asked her opinion on any subject they were talking about.
The first thing she had done that morning when Jaime went jogging was to snoop around in his drawers and closets with the intention of finding some evidence, such as a photo or a letter, to prove that he was dating a girl. She even went unsuccessfully into his private files stored on the computer. The man looked like a loner. Like me. Then, when he returned, she had intentionally provoked him by confessing what she had been doing, and even asked about his sentimental life. Instead of an indignant scolding on his part, the question seemed to surprise him positively. He mumbled something ironic and went into the shower while shouting, "No woman can stand me, Aly!"
So she was irritated with him. Damn it, Jaime had treated her in two days better than anyone else in her life.
She continued lying there as she listened to Jaime brushing his teeth and as he left the bathroom. To aggravate her anger, he had just locked himself in his bedroom without even saying good night. The last thing she heard was the hollow punch made by the mattress when Jaime fell on top of it, two feet away from her on the other side of the wall. She rose uneasily, went to the window, and stared into the darkness where the offices were once lit. She stayed in that state a few minutes before making a decision.
Jaime Vergara was reading a novel by Stephen King when he heard a creak in the doorway. Glancing up from pure reflection, he saw Alyssa standing under the doorframe. She was completely naked.
"What-what are you doing?" He asked, uneasy as if a rotten zombie had just entered his room.
He rummaged under the covers and covered himself to his neck, as if he were nude.
She shrugged her shoulders. Then she went to him, took the book from his hands and kissed him on the lips. Jaime swallowed hard as he pulled her away to look into her eyes, thirsty and submissive. He had an erection. As he did not complain, Alyssa climbed onto the bed and straddled him. She kissed him again and stroked his erection. Jaime was puzzled. He pulled her away from his body.
“Aly... this is not right. You’re a child.”
“A girl?” She said, suddenly looking offended. “Well your crotch doesn’t think the same. I want to sleep with you and it’s obvious that you want to sleep with me. What’s the problem?”
"Well, we barely know each other, Aly. I don’t know anything about your life and...” The words stuck in his mouth. “And you just got naked in my bed, for God's sake.”
"Well, don’t be a fool, and take advantage of the fact that you have me naked in your bed, all for you," she countered, this time deciding to tackle the ear area with her tongue.
Jaime pushed her arm away again, so hard this time that he pushed her out of bed onto the bedroom floor.
"I'm not one of those who fuck anyone at first," Jaime snapped, suddenly irritated, and was immediately struck by a terrible sense of guilt.
“Anyone?” Alyssa repeated from the position of a simple companion dog. She was on the floor, naked, humiliated “Very well.” She sat up and went to the door, very dignified. “Good night.”
Jaime received the "good night" as a poisoned dart directly to his heart.
In the next few seconds, which turned into a frankly embarrassing moment, Jaime watched as Alyssa disappeared from his sight leaving behind a painful slam. When at last he was alone in the dark, it took him more than two hours to sleep.
Neither of them had noticed an apparently insignificant detail that night, Alyssa had forgotten to turn off Jaime's computer, leaving open the software she had used. One of them was the chat application, whose webcam pointed to the center of the room, right where Jaime's bed was. By the time Alyssa got naked between her sheets, there was a user logged in to chat. Almost 500 kilometers away to the north, in his room, wallpapered with posters of football players, a ten-year-old boy who adopted the pseudonym Jasper who had just witnessed everything.
When Jaime left his room with the first lights of the next morning, Alyssa still slept peacefully in the living room. He had an orange juice, trying to make as little noise as possible, showered in a hurry and went out the door with the intention of going to buy stamps and invest in a tenth lottery. To tell the truth, it was only a cheap excuse to avoid the irremediable moment of meeting up with Alyssa again (Jaime had not sent a letter in the mail for years, and rarely bet). And it was irremediable because, whether he liked it or not, she lived in his house and he couldn’t get out of it, so that if he didn’t want to flee like a coward, he didn’t consider it as an option, he had no choice but to face her. To face her. An expression too hostile for the warmth he had taken to her.
All night long he had tried to forget the image of her without clothes and the way she looked at him with her particular docile gesture from the threshold of his room. On several occasions he drew in his mind the silhouette of the fragile body under the white tank top, walking impassively with the swagger so sexy that it caused the image of her walking in her black boots with heels, darker than an abyss itself. It was an image that caused desire. He had come to the conclusion that what really terrified him was that his carnal instinct would take control of his decisions the moment he faced her again. That he simply had no idea how he would react when they were back in the same room.
After almost two hours walking the streets of the neighborhood in which he tried to classify without success what his brain and heart told him, he decided to face the harsh reality: he had to go home and talk to Alyssa. Apologize.
He experienced a strange euphoria that grew as he approached his building. He went to the portal and went up the stairs two at a time.
"Aly!” He shouted from the hallway, realizing that Alyssa had already risen. The sofa bed in the living room had returned to its original shape and the curtains billowed with the autumnal breeze coming through the hollow of the window, Jaime went to the kitchen and then to the bedroom. The calm was absolute.
"Alyssa?" He insisted, now with a thread of concern in his voice.
"Where the hell are you?" He muttered as he looked around the house. It was as if the earth had swallowed Alyssa.
On the table in the living room he found a notebook paper that, in a blue pen and irregular calligraphy, read as follows:
Dear Jaime. I'm sorry to disappear as if by magic and without warning. I have to do something with urgency and it would be dangerous for you to accompany me.
I cannot thank you for everything you've done for me these days. However, you deserve to know all my truth. Now I do not have time, and besides I do not want you to find out through a letter, but if you are still interested in me and in my history, it is in your hands to know it. Travel to the town of Ámber, in Cantabria, and ask for Óliver Morales. He lives in a beautiful house surrounded by a white fence next to the beach. He will give you answers.
Take care of yourself; I hope to see you again.
Love,
Aly
PS: I hate sea bass...
In Jaime’s mind came three very definite thoughts and in a very specific order. The first thing he regretted immediately after reading the note was Alyssa's disappearance from his life. She had vanished as if by magic, as she herself had said. Suddenly, now completely open he felt alone in his own home, and experienced an uneasy sensation in his heart area.
The second feeling replaced that pain with anger and impotence. He realized that Alyssa had broken her part of the bargain. Not only had she disappeared without a trace, but also she hadn’t moved a finger to help him in the Shapiro case, as she had promised. He felt like a complete fool.
For the third thought he needed to take a few seconds of reflection, because what had just happened inside his head required it. Subconsciously he had regretted, and with more force, the loss of Alyssa than her betrayal. And that was troubling. He knew that the Shapiro case, his loss of employment, and his more than possible condemnation had been relegated to the background, for, incredible, as it may seem, the feeling of loneliness after her departure had invaded him more than he had come to think.
Not knowing very well what was going to be his next step, he sat down on the couch. He missed her. He wanted to see her again, and he wanted to go back in time to have her back in his sheets.
Had she left him, hurt and embarrassed by what had happened the other night? It was most likely. He regretted referring to her as anyone, and using the force to throw her out of bed had been the last straw to break the camel’s back. Deeper repentance came over him, and then guilt. He had expelled her that was the only reality.
He shook his head to get rid of ideas that could only harm him, and read the note a second time.
Ámber.
Where had he heard that name before? Was it not Sara's town? A relentless spark burned in his brain. Sara! At that moment he remembered the psychiatrist's call the other afternoon informing him of the call on Skype. He had taken it for granted, and then... then came Alyssa and...
"Damn!" He shouted again and again in the air, as if he were the coach of a team that had just got the decisive goal in a final. "Shit, shit, shit!"
When he calmed down and tried to think, he realized that he had no way of getting in contact with Sara, except to travel to Oxford and look for her there. Impossible! On the other hand, he could travel to that northern town, find Óliver Morales, and discover the great secret of Alyssa, which was what his soul really wanted. If he left now, he could be there before sunset.
It took less than fifteen minutes to prepare a backpack with some essential hygiene and food items. He went down to the garage, where he started the Porsche, and he took the northern highway, ignoring the speed limits set by the law.