With no hangover, it was difficult to tell myself the thing we normally say the morning after doing something stupid: Blame it on the alcohol. But…with no hangover…with no hangover there’s not even any reliable proof that you went overboard with the drinks and you have no alibi to hide behind, just…shame. Because you fled from your wedding, okay, but you want to win your ex-future-husband back. And, suddenly, in the middle of your plan, you invited a guy you just met to come with you on the vacation where you’re supposed to be finding yourself. And when you invited him, you meant it, because you wanted to. So much so that…you booked a flight for him.
Patricia found me at the breakfast bar pretending to check travel documents on my iPad. Actually, and I don’t think this’ll come as a shock to anyone, I was thinking about what it would be like to travel to all those places with David. Well, my head was splitting time between thinking about that and driving myself crazy.
“Who let you in?” I grumbled when she chucked her Louis Vuitton agenda onto the marble, alongside her laptop in a case and a pile of papers held together with a hair tie.
“You don’t seem very happy to see me.”
“I’m not happy because you’re here to tell me about the private detective who’s swindling you and I’m not in the mood. Because, like I already said, the Catholic church is looking for your mother-in-law’s phone number to let her know they want to canonize your husband while he’s still alive. Saint Alberto de Rascafría.”
“Yes. Saint Alberto.” Her lip curled in disgust, and…even that didn’t make her look ugly.
“Genes are despicable.”
“It could be worse. You could be Candela.” She pointed to the aforementioned as she appeared in the kitchen dressed in…what the hell would you even call it? A towel? A towel with three holes: one for the head and two for the arms.
“Her problem isn’t genetic. Her problem is that fashion matters as much to her as whatever your detective found does to me,” I pointed out helpfully.
“Are you trying to get into it with me?” Candela helped herself to a cup of my coffee. “This is disgusting, Margot. What do you put in it?”
“Nothing.”
“Look at her. She really is ugly,” Patricia teased. “This is what you’d get from AliExpress when you order something like me.”
“You smug whore.” Candela laughed. “You’re so fucking smug. Have you seen your knees? You have the ugliest knees I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“You’re both such losers.”
I got up, ready to escape to my room, but Candela stopped me.
“Don’t abandon me with this one. She doesn’t look good. She’s in an even worse mood than usual. What if it turned out to be true that Alberto’s out there fucking like a rabbit?”
“Your mother is the one who put me in a bad mood,” Patricia explained, opening the fridge. “She makes me want to eat carbs. But like, binge on carbs. She says she doesn’t like that the kids go to summer school, that it’s not a good look.”
“So send them to her. Make her exercise her role as grandmother,” I said slyly.
They both looked at me like I had suggested putting the kids up for adoption.
“The detective…” Candela pestered her. She wanted her piping-hot tea.
“Babe, for someone with your career, you’re such a cunt,” I muttered.
“I have to compensate somehow. Tell us, tell us.”
Patricia sat down, grabbed her laptop, typed, and turned it toward us. In front of us were a bunch of pictures of my brother-in-law doing…things. Things like getting into a car with a lollipop in his mouth, going to work, having coffee and churros for breakfast, smoking a cigarette outside his office, eating a hamburger, picking up something from the dry cleaner for my sister (because it was definitely for my sister, I would go all in on that bet), eating a chocolate palmier, and getting back in the car.
“He ate all that on the same day?” Candela muttered.
“I mean, come on…is he a private detective or an obsessive nutritionist?” I asked.
“He can sweat if off later in the gym, Patri. With that huge amount of crap he eats. The poor guy does sweat, even if you refuse to believe that.”
“This guy has anxiety…” I pointed out, waving toward the photos.
“I have anxiety. Why does he eat so much? Go on, explain it to me. Because I can think of one thing that makes you really hungry.”
“Do you think Alberto is cheating with churros?” Candela asked, bewildered. Considering how intelligent she was…
“Stop,” I interrupted. “Because I can tell you that when someone’s having an affair, they normally get a new look, they take better care of themselves and get hotter; they’re not shoving everything they can find made with palm oil down their throats.”
“He’s hiding something.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
I grabbed my iPad and headed toward my room.
“I can’t wait to have you out of my sight,” I snapped before I disappeared.
“Girl, what if Alberto realized he’s being followed, confronted the detective, and offered him more money to give him an alibi? So he shows you this shit and not the truth, I mean,” Candela threw out there, at the speed of light without drawing breath.
In the silence that fell after, I could hear the furious galloping of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
As soon as I closed my bedroom door, my phone lit up with a message, but before I could see who it was from, a call came in from Sonia at the office.
“Hi, Sonia,” I answered, immediately opening my email on the iPad. “Is everything okay?”
“Nothing new here. I won’t bore you with the details, but when you get back from your vacation, you can read everything that’s been covered. I’m calling about your trip.” I could hear she sounded really excited. “When you have a minute, if you can, please have a look at your inbox.”
“I have it open.” I smiled. I knew her so well.
“I sent you the itinerary, a proposal of a plan for the days you’re there, the hotel reservations and the information for the flight. As soon as you send me the registration information, I’ll send you the tickets.”
“What would I do without you? Die?”
“Not at all.” She laughed. “I found good hotels from the chain, but nothing the Kardashians would choose, just like you told me. Five stars but nothing garish. And…by the way, as you can see, I booked you in using your first name and your second last name, so nobody will know you’re the boss.”
“I’m not the boss.”
“Come on, you hold a thirty-seven percent stake in a very lucrative multinational. You’re the boss.”
“Thanks so much for the discretion. I don’t want people to be sucking up to me wherever I go and monitoring my comings and goings.”
“Done and done. Now they’ll just think you’re a single multimillionaire.”
I bit my thumbnail. Fuck. That gave me kind of a lot of freedom, didn’t it?
“Thank you, Sonia.”
“I’ll let you go. If anything comes up or you have any questions, call me.”
I blew her a kiss, said thank you again, and hung up.
When I reopened WhatsApp, I saw that the message that had come in right before the call was, of course, from David. It was a photo. I don’t know how he managed to pull it off on his phone, but the cackle it drew from me rang through the house.
The photo was the cliché you got when you Googled “Greek beach paradise,” and, over that, he had scribbled a stick figure that was supposed to look like me. He had even drawn on the cross-body bag and my brown mane.
To post on your Instagram. When you’re traveling in style, everyone can see it. Speaking of seeing…am I going to see you before you leave?
I closed the app, searched for his contact, and called him. He picked up on the second ring.
“Amparito, relax, I can see your femoral artery from here,” I heard him say to one of his bosses.
“Damn, Amparito must be very forward. The femoral is in the groin,” I said.
“The jugular, the jugular, Amparito. I don’t want to see your femoral,” I heard him yell. Then I heard giggling. “She’s on fire today… I think she had a few swigs of something strong after lunch. What’s going on, princess?”
“Princess?”
“I’m just messing with you.”
“I loved your Photoshop. It’s super sophisticated. Barely noticeable.”
“Imperceptible. Just…what NASA is missing.”
“What does NASA have to do with anything?”
“I dunno. Mars, Princess Sad Eyes. You have two days left here in this swamp of horrors.”
“Don’t talk about my Madrid like that.” I laughed.
“You haven’t been outside yet today, have you? It stinks from the heat. The Sahara wind is blowing over us. As you can imagine…I’m wearing a cardigan right now.”
“Well, at least we’re going to Greece on Friday, right?” I tested the waters.
“Stop saying that, you witch,” he whimpered. “Can you imagine? That would be the shit.”
I fell silent, staring at the wall, biting my lip. My fingers had unconsciously opened the email with David’s flight reservation.
“Margot? You still there?” he asked.
“I think I’m scared to go alone.”
“You’re shitting yourself, duh. But when you’re there and you suddenly find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to do, just think, What would David do? Or even better, vividly imagine me there, in the jeans that make my ass look great, doing cool things. And then do them.”
“You would do cool things?” I scoffed.
“Sure. I’d take you to Thermopylae…”
“There’s not enough time.”
“…where three hundred brave Spartans died…”
“There’s not enough time.”
“…led by Leonidas…”
“There’s not enough time!”
“Hey, hey, you history fanatic, you have to calm down,” he teased. “Do you guys hang out in plazas debating which was the coolest polis?”
I didn’t answer. I was hallucinating David Sánchez Rodrigo’s ticket standing in front of me. It was actually him disguised as a plane ticket, with a confused face and waving arms and legs.
“I think you’re driving me crazy,” I mumbled.
“Hey…” he spoke softly. “Why don’t we have dinner tonight?”
Candela burst into my room.
“Hang up. Mama found out you’re going to Greece alone and she’s…” She shook her hand, like when we were little. “She wants us to go to dinner.”
“To dinner?”
“I’m passing; the old lady isn’t going to miss me. But Patri says she’ll go with you… She’s obviously the one who ratted you out, and she feels guilty.”
“You’re getting all this, right?” I said into the phone.
“Yes…how about tomorrow?”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Well, don’t make any plans tomorrow. And on Thursday I’ll come over and help you pack.”
I looked around me. My room, my room alone, was forty square meters, including the closet and the bathroom.
“No, that’s okay, that won’t be necessary.”
“See you tomorrow. And whistle if you need a tamer for your mother.”
“Thanks, David. You’re the best.”
“The best…” he repeated in a murmur. “Tell that to Idoia. No word from her since the other day.”
“We’re in the same boat.” I sighed.
Candela sat on the bed next to me.
“Did Patricia leave yet?” I asked my sister.
“No way. She’s in the kitchen making herself a grape and cheese sandwich.”
“Please…she’s lost it. David, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow, sad eyes.”
“Not so sad anymore.”
“Not anymore, no.”
I hung up and stood up.
“What am I gonna wear so your mother doesn’t call me a whore? Patricia!” I yelled. “What should I wear?”
“Better make it the dress the old lady likes the best,” she yelled back. “Hang on, I’ll be right there.”
She was heading toward the door when Candela rushed forward and slammed it, leaving the two of us alone inside.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Yeah, I was about to ask you the same thing.”
And in front of me, the email. The flight confirmation. David’s.