2666 (59 page)

When
Rosa
fell asleep he
took off her high-heeled shoes and covered her with a blanket. He turned off
the lights and for a while he stood looking out through the blinds at the
parking lot and the highway lights. Then he put on his jacket and quietly left
the room. At the desk, the clerk was watching TV and he smiled at Fate when he
saw him come in. They talked for a while about Mexican and American TV shows.
The clerk said that American shows were better made but Mexican shows were
funnier. Fate asked if he had cable. The clerk said cable was only for rich
people or faggots. Real life was on the free channels, and that was where you
had to look for it. Fate asked if he thought anything was really free in the
end, and the clerk started to laugh and said he knew where Fate was heading but
he wasn't about to be convinced. Fate said he wasn't trying to convince him of
anything, and then he asked whether he had a computer he could use to send an
e-mail. The clerk shook his head and looked through a pile of papers on the
desk until he found the card of a Santa Teresa cybercafe.

"It's
open all night," he said, which surprised Fate, because even in
New York
he'd never
heard of cybercafes that stayed open twenty-four hours.

The
card for the Santa Teresa cybercafe was a deep red, so red that it was hard to
read what was printed on it. On the back, in a lighter red, was a map that showed
exactly where the cafe was located. He asked the receptionist to translate the
name of the place. The clerk laughed and said it was called Fire, Walk With Me.

"It
sounds like the title of a David Lynch film," said Fate.

The
clerk shrugged and said that all of
Mexico
was a collage of diverse and
wide-ranging homages.

"Every
single thing in this country is an homage to everything in the world, even the
things that haven't happened yet," he said.

After
he told Fate how to get to the cybercafe, they talked for a while about Lynch's
films. The clerk had seen all of them. Fate had seen only three or four.
According to the clerk, Lynch's greatest achievement was

 
 
t
he TV series
Twin Peaks
.
Fate liked
The Elephant Man
best, maybe because he'd often felt like
the elephant man himself, wanting to be like other people but at the same time
knowing he was different. When the clerk asked him whether he'd heard that
Michael Jackson had bought or tried to buy the skeleton of the elephant man,
Fate shrugged and said that Michael Jackson was sick. I don't think so, said
the clerk, watching something presumably important that was happening on TV
just then.

"In my opinion," he said with his eyes fixed on
the TV Fate couldn't see, "Michael knows things the rest of us don't."

"We all know things we think nobody else knows," said
Fate.

Then he said good night, put the cybercafe card in his
pocket, and went back to his room.

For a long time Fate stood with the lights out, looking
through the blinds at the gravel lot and the incessant lights of the trucks
going by on the highway. He thought about Chucho Flores and Charly Cruz. Once
again he saw the shadow that Charly Cruz's house cast over the vacant lot next
door.
  
He
 
heard
 
Chucho
 
Flores's
 
laugh
 
and
 
he
 
saw
 
Rosa
 
Mendez stretched out on the
bed in a bare, narrow room like a monk's cell. He thought about
Corona
,
Corona
's gaze, the
way
Corona
had
looked at him. He thought about the man with the mustache who had joined them
at the last minute and who didn't speak, and then he remembered the man's voice
when they were fleeing, as shrill as a bird's. When he was tired of standing he
pulled a chair over to the window and kept watching. Sometimes he thought about
his mother's apartment and he remembered concrete courtyards where children
shouted and played. If he closed his eyes he could see a white dress lifted by
the wind on the streets of
Harlem
as
invincible laughter spilled down the walls, running along the sidewalks, cool
and warm as the white dress. He felt sleep trickling in his ears or rising from
his chest. But he didn't want to close his eyes and instead he kept scanning
the lot, the two streetlights in front of the motel, the shadows dispersed by
the flashes of car lights like comet tails in the dark.

Sometimes he turned his head and glanced at
Rosa
sleeping. But the third or fourth time he realized he didn't need to turn and
look. It simply wasn't necessary. For a second he thought he would never be
sleepy again. Suddenly, as he was following the wake of the taillights of two
t
rucks that seemed to be in a
race, the telephone rang. When he answered he heard the clerk's voice and he
knew immediately that this was what he'd been waiting for.

"Mr. Fate," said the clerk, "someone just called to
ask if you were staying here."

He asked who had called.

"A policeman, Mr. Fate," said the clerk.

"A
policeman? A Mexican policeman?"

"I just talked to him. He wanted to know if you were a guest
here."

"And
what did you tell him?" asked Fate.

"The truth, that you were here, but that you'd left,"
said the clerk.

"Thanks,"
said Fate, and he hung up.

He woke up
Rosa
and told her to
put on her shoes. He packed the few things he had unpacked and put the suitcase
in the trunk of his car. Outside it was cold. When he went back into the room
Rosa was combing her hair in the bathroom, and Fate told her they didn't have
time for that. They got in the car and drove to the motel reception. The clerk
was standing there polishing his Coke-bottle glasses with the tail of his
shirt. Fate took out a fifty-dollar bill and slid it across the counter.

"If
they come, tell them I went home," he said.

"They'll
come," said the clerk.

As
they turned onto the highway, he asked
Rosa
whether she was carrying her passport.

"Of
course not," said
Rosa
.

"The
police are looking for me," said Fate, and he told her what the clerk had
said.

"Why are you so sure it's the police?" asked
Rosa
. "It could be
Corona
, or Chucho."

"You're
right," said Fate, "maybe it's Charly Cruz or maybe it's Rosita
Mendez putting on a man's voice, but I'd rather not wait to find out."

They drove around the block to see whether anyone was lying
in wait for them, but everything was calm (the calm of quicksilver or the calm
that heralds border dawns), and the second time around they parked the car under
a tree in front of a neighbor's house. For a while they sat there, alert to any
sign, any movement. When they crossed the street they were careful to stay away
from the streetlights. Then they hopped over the

 
 
f
ence and headed straight for the backyard. As
Rosa
searched for her keys, Fate saw the geometry book
hanging from the clothesline. Without thinking, he went over and touched it
with the tip of his fingers. Then, not because he cared but to defuse the
tension, he asked Rosa what
Testamento geometrico
meant and
Rosa
translated it for him without comment.

"It's odd that someone would hang a book out like a
shirt," he whispered.

"It was my father's idea."

The house, although shared by father and daughter, had a
clearly feminine air. It smelled of incense and blond tobacco.
Rosa
turned on a lamp and for a time they sat back in
armchairs draped in multicolored Mexican blankets, neither one speaking a word.
Then
Rosa
made coffee, and while she was in
the kitchen, Fate saw Oscar Amalfitano appear in the doorway, barefoot, his
hair uncombed, dressed in a very wrinkled white shirt and jeans, as if he'd
slept in his clothes. For a moment the two of them looked at each other,
wordless, as if they were asleep and their dreams had converged on common
ground, a place where sound was alien. Fate got up and introduced himself.
Amalfitano asked whether he spoke Spanish. Fate apologized and smiled and
Amalfitano repeated the question in English.

"I'm a friend of your daughter's," said Fate,
"she asked me in." From the kitchen came Rosa's voice, telling her
father in Spanish not to worry, that he was a reporter from
New York
. Then she asked him if he wanted
coffee too and Amalfitano said yes without taking his eyes off the stranger.
When
Rosa
appeared with a tray, three cups of
coffee, a little pitcher of milk, and the sugar bowl, her father asked her what
was going on. Nothing right now, I think, said
Rosa
,
but some strange things happened earlier. Amalfitano looked down then and
studied his bare feet. He added milk and sugar to his coffee and asked his
daughter to explain everything.
Rosa
looked at
Fate and translated what her father had just said. Fate smiled and sat down
again in his chair. He took a cup of coffee and began to sip it as
Rosa
proceeded to tell her father, in Spanish, what had
happened that night, from the boxing match to the moment when she had to leave
the American's motel. When Rosa finished her story the sun was beginning to
come up, and Amalfitano, who had interrupted his daughter only a very few times
asking questions and pressing for explanations, suggested that they call the
motel and ask the
c
lerk
whether the police had shown up or not.
Rosa
translated her father's suggestion, and more out of politeness than because he
thought it would do any good, Fate called the number of the motel. No one
answered. Oscar Amalfitano got up from his chair and went over to the window.
The street was silent. You'd both better go, he said.
Rosa
looked at him without saying a word.

"Can
you get her to the
United States
and then take her to an airport and put her on a plane to
Barcelona
?"

Fate
said he could. Oscar Amalfitano left the window and disappeared into his room.
When he came back he handed
Rosa
a roll of
bills. It isn't much but it'll be enough for your ticket and the first few days
in
Barcelona
. I
don't want to go, Papa, said
Rosa
. Yes, yes, I
know that, said Amalfitano, and he made her take the money. Where's your
passport? Go get it. Pack a suitcase. But hurry, he said, and then he went back
to his post at the window. Behind the Spirit that belonged to the neighbors
across the street, he saw the black Peregrino he was looking for. He sighed.
Fate set his coffee on a table and went over to the window.

"I'd
like to know what's going on," said Fate. His voice was hoarse.

"Get
my daughter out of this city and then forget everything. Or no, don't forget
anything, just take her away."

At
that moment Fate remembered his appointment with Guadalupe Roncal.

"Does
it have to do with the killings?" he asked. "Do you think this Chucho
Flores is mixed up in that?"

"They're
all mixed up in it," said Amalfitano.

A
tall young man in jeans and a denim jacket got out of the Peregrino and lit a
cigarette.
Rosa
looked over her father's
shoulder.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"Haven't
you ever seen him before?"

"No,
I don't think so."

"He's
a cop," said Amalfitano.

Then
he took his daughter by the hand and pulled her into her room. They closed the
door. Fate guessed they were saying their goodbyes and he looked out the window
again. The man in the Peregrino was smoking, leaning on the hood of his car.
Every so often he looked up at the sky, which was gradually growing brighter.
He seemed relaxed, in no hurry, at ease, happy to be watching another sunrise
in Santa Teresa. A man came out of one of the neighboring houses and started
his car. The man in the

Peregrine
tossed the end of his cigarette on the sidewalk and got in his car. He never
once looked toward the house. When
Rosa
came
out of her room she was carrying a small suitcase.

"How
will we leave?" Fate wanted to know.

"By
the door," said Amalfitano.

Then Fate saw, as if it were a movie he didn't entirely understand
but that in a strange way took him back to his mother's death, how Amalfitano
kissed and hugged his daughter and then strode purposefully outside. First Fate
watched him walk through the front yard, then he watched him open the peeling
wooden gate, then he watched him cross the street, barefoot, his hair uncombed,
to the black Peregrino. When he got there the man rolled down the window and
they talked for a while, Amalfitano in the street and the man in his car. They
know each other, thought Fate, this isn't the first time they've talked.