Delirium (14 page)

The telephone rings and my mother puts down the hair dryer to go answer it, maybe it’s my father calling to remind her that they’re going out tonight, my mother turns down the radio so she can hear him clearly and runs to tell him that she won’t be much longer, that she’s practically ready now, from the bathroom Agustina hears that they’re arguing on the phone and she knows that they’re fighting. Aren’t they going out after all, and won’t her mother wear the green dress? What was the point of the pearls, the curls, or the perfume that she put on for nothing, for no one? Her mother is still in the bedroom and the hair dryer is within Agustina’s reach on the bathroom cabinet, she turns it on and lets the warm air blow on her face. I curl a wet lock of hair, like my mother, then I dry it and turn off the hair dryer because the noise prevents me from hearing the angry words that are being spoken, my mother’s tearful voice, I look into the tube where the air comes from and I see that inside there’s a coil of wire. I turn it on again and I watch the coil turn bright red, like candy. I feel the urge to touch that red wire with the tip of my tongue. My tongue wants to touch it, so red, so red, my tongue comes closer, my tongue touches it.

THE FRIDAY OF THE BET
arrived at last, Agustina sweetheart, the day the coin would be tossed to see whether it came up erection or defeat, well, actually this would be the first attempt of three, and since Spider had made it clear that if anything in this world could touch his heart it was a pretty twosome, nice white girls with dirty minds, virginal dykes, bad kids from good families, I had set everything up according to his instructions, and I called him that morning, overcome by laughter, Everything’s ready for tonight, you old rascal, and Spider at the other end of the line, stuttering in embarrassment because his wife must have been nearby, said, What’s the story, Midas my boy, how’s that business of ours, and I was fooling around, singing the song that goes Lady, lady of high birth and low bed; you can’t imagine, Agustina darling, how worked up the man was. His manhood would be on the line that night, his pride or his humiliation in plain view of everyone, and still he was bragging on the phone, Put that deal through and don’t you worry, Midas my boy, because lately I’ve been raring to go, and cheering him on, I said, Excellent, Spider my man, you keep your cool, because the two investors I found for you will get that business up and running in a jiffy.

Nine at night was the time set for the performance, and the place was the Aerobics Center, closed and empty by then; upstairs in my office were Rony Silver, your brother Joaco, Ayerbe, and I, hidden behind the two-way mirror in the best seats in the house, while below us the circus began with the two ballerinas doing their little number on the platform and the clown in his wheelchair, Spider all nervous laughter and prayers to God like a boy at his first Communion, and before him the pair of stark-naked girls weaving and making out to disco music under spotlights, pretty little things, giving their all, you might say, because the deal I made with them was for triple or nothing, triple if they got the client excited, nothing if they failed.

Everything was just right, five star, top ten, but the truth is, Agustina pet, that from the start you could tell the thing was a bust. Spider was writhing from the waist up, but downstairs there was still no one home, and seeing that what they were doing wasn’t working, the two girls stepped up the swaying and exaggerated the touching, but nothing; they’d already taken off all their clothes, and nothing; they’d shown everything, down to their tonsils, and nothing; and somehow, back there behind the mirror, even the three of us fully functioning males lost interest after the thrill of the first fifteen minutes and began to talk politics, and Silver, who was good company that night, told us that at the American embassy, where he works, they have a machine that detects explosions and that just last Tuesday in Bogotá sixty-three bombs had gone off, Fucking stupid gringos, I said, they need machines to pick up blasts that slam us all against the ceiling, Pablo Escobar is in a bad mood, said your brother Joaco, all those bombs are because the Liberal Party has just expelled him from its slate for being a druglord, The man doesn’t like being called the King of Coca, said Silver, he prefers Father of the Nation, Of course he does, it sounds more democratic, It may sound that way, but it means the same thing, Come on, Silver, man, tell us what else you pick up with that bomb-detecting machine at the embassy, your goddamn spy box must be able to let the Pentagon know each time the president of Colombia farts.

So there we were in full swing, Agustina doll, laughing at the gruesome national farce, when someone rings the bell outside, Who can it be at this time of night?, No one, I said, we won’t let them in, that’s all, but whoever it was had ideas of his own; tired of ringing he leaned on his car horn like he was trying to wake up the whole neighborhood, imagine, Agustina, a residential neighborhood and right there in front of the center some idiot decides to make a commotion like that, not caring who he disturbs, and Spider, who up until that moment had been a good sport, lost his temper, Tell that son of a bitch to cut the music, he shouted, because even God couldn’t get it up with that racket going on, but the guy on the horn was at the door again and he was kicking it like he wanted to break it down, I’ll be right back, I told the others, and high on adrenaline I took the stairs in two bounds, determined to tell the rude bastard off, and when I opened the door, Agustina doll, the blood froze in my veins; it was none other than Mystery, the bandit who was my contact with Pablo Escobar, and whom I would never in a million years meet at the Aerobics Center but rather on the outskirts of Bogotá, in the parking lot of Memory Gardens, what better place than a cemetery to meet Mystery, the walking corpse.

It’s a good thing you opened the door, McAlister, he said in his eternal tone of veiled threat, I have orders from Don Pablo to give you a message, Mystery, my man, old buddy, I’m sorry about the wait, my friends and I were just having a little private party here and it never occurred to me it would be you, Shut up and listen, because I’ve got some big news for you, or I should say the Boss wants to do you a favor, Of course, Mystery, we can talk right here if you want, or even better in your Mazda so we’re out of the cold, I suggested, doing my best to keep the wretch out of the Aerobics Center so that my esteemed partners wouldn’t get a look at the kind of thugs I dealt with, it was best if they only saw the miracle and steered clear of the saint, because I’ll tell you this much, Agustina princess, Mystery wasn’t pretty, nothing holy about him, that’s for sure, with his eyes bloodshot from crack, that skeletal look, foul breath, and greasy hair.

Mystery, my man, what brings you here, I said to him as we got in his car, but it gave me the creeps, Agustina darling, I swear, I got into that Mazda like I was headed for the electric chair, and I only did it to avoid a disastrous encounter between Mystery the sewer rat and my high-class Bogotá rat friends. Give me the news, then, Mystery, man, Nothing big, just a word from the Boss, And what is it?, Don Pablo wants you to get him two hundred million in cash by the day after tomorrow, Two hundred million?, You heard me, two hundred, and he’ll return it to you in fifteen days at five to one, Five to one?, I repeated, Do I hear an echo?, Mystery retorted, with the nervous irritation of a desperate crackhead, Well, well, how generous of Pablo, I said soothingly, while mentally I calculated that a return that big would more than compensate for this god-awful little interval I was enduring, And why is that?, I asked Mystery, to conceal my eagerness, Could the great Pablo possibly have cash-flow problems? You know how things are, these are times of persecution. I imagined that Pablo, who had the Search Bloc, the DEA, and the Cali cartel on his heels lately, must not be hanging out with samba girls at his Naples property, but hunkered down in some hiding place, eyeball to eyeball with the grim reaper, And how will Pablo return it to me, if I may inquire, I asked Mystery, He’ll pay it in
monitos
, that was what he said to tell you,
Monitos
are money orders, Agustina sweetheart, that’s what they’re called in money-laundering lingo, It’ll be a great pleasure, my dear Mystery, but the tricky thing is that I can’t come up with two hundred million in cash overnight, Well you see, McAlister, this is a take it or leave it kind of deal, I’ll be back in fifteen days with the
monitos
in my pocket and it’s up to you whether you come up with the pesos or not, oh, and one last thing, the Boss only wants you, the Informer, and the Cripple in on this, said Mystery and he vanished into the night, his tires squealing and his unhealthy aura lingering in the air behind him.

I stood there for a while feeling queasy, how the hell could I get that much money if I could only go to Spider and Silverstein, because you must realize by now, Agustina love, that it was those two Pablo Escobar meant when he referred to the Cripple and the Informer. Did Pablo know that Rony Silver worked for the DEA? well of course he did, that was why he licked his lips each time he could grease Silver’s palm, and why it was Pablo himself who told me, when we started to do business together, that I should go after the gringo and get him involved, Those DEA guys are working both ends, Escobar had said, laughing, which is why when they fall, they go down twice as hard.

I DON’T KNOW,
I think to myself, this tragedy is starting to take on shades of melodrama. Even Aunt Sofi, so calm and collected, sometimes talks as if she’s in a soap opera. And what about Agustina, who seems plucked straight from the pages of
Jane Eyre
, and what about me, living with this anguish and these outbursts and this lack of understanding and selfhood, especially that, I feel as if my wife’s illness has subjugated my identity, as if I’m a man who’s been emptied out inside in order to be stuffed, like a cushion, with concern for Agustina, love for Agustina, anxiety about Agustina, resentment of Agustina. Madness is a compendium of unpleasant things: for example, it’s pedantic, it’s hateful, and it’s tortuous. It contains a large component of unreality and maybe that’s why it’s theatrical, and I’m also on the verge of believing that it’s defined by an absence of humor, and that’s why it’s so melodramatic.

Today I was bringing Agustina a cheese sandwich. I made it for her with butter, toasting it in the waffle iron the way she likes it, and I was about to go into the bedroom when I heard Aunt Sofi ask to be forgiven, she was saying something like, Can you forgive me, Agustina?, and again, Will you ever be able to forgive me for what I did? So Aunt Sofi has a past and sins of her own. At last I’m going to find something out, I thought, and unnoticed, I waited outside the door for the conversation to begin, but the minutes went by and Agustina was still silent, neither granting forgiveness nor denying it, and then Aunt Sofi gave up, the sandwich got cold, and I went back to the kitchen to heat it up again.

Upon returning to the bedroom I found Agustina dozing and Sofi watching the news, and watching was the right word for it, because she had turned down the volume and was making do with the picture, and I shook my wife a little by the shoulder to make her eat but I only managed to get her to say, without looking at me, that she hated cheese sandwiches, and at that Aunt Sofi felt obliged to intervene, as she always does, Forgive your wife, dear, her problem is that she’s suffering and she has disguised her pain as indifference, and as I chewed the rejected sandwich, I replied, Yes, I forgive my wife, Aunt Sofi, but tell me, what about you? who’s supposed to forgive you?, Were you listening?, she said, then she asked whether I really wanted her to tell me and went on without waiting for an answer, I’ll tell you for poor Agustina’s sake, because it has to do with the involuntary role I played in this tragedy, and it involves something I did that hurt her badly, It would be better if we went downstairs, Aunt Sofi, I said, taking her by the arm, let’s leave Agustina here asleep and talk in the living room, If I don’t put my feet up for a while they’ll explode, she said, sitting on the sofa, and I helped her settle her feet on a pile of pillows. Then I got out a bottle of Ron Viejo de Caldas, thinking it might smooth the way for a conversation that promised not to be easy, and there we were, each of us with a drink in one hand, I in the cane rocker and Aunt Sofi on the sofa with her feet up, A little music?, I asked to lighten the mood, and I put on Celina and Reutilio.