The Boys (9 page)

“Until nine? Don't you need to have lunch? You eat here, too? What is this, the Middle Ages?”

The girl lowered her gaze and shook her head.

It wasn't possible that she ate lunch at the club. She was lying to him. And she had made it clear they wouldn't see each other after work either. She hadn't given any excuse; she hadn't said she was sorry about it. Then Miqui noticed the
little man by the register. A short, badly-shaven guy around sixty who turned his back when he saw Miqui looking at him. Fucking old bastard, he must be screwing Cindy. That's why she was so nice and sweet yesterday: the boss wasn't around, he was at the funeral like everyone, except her. Miqui slugged down the rest of his beer and glanced around the place again. Folks from Vidreres having an aperitif and some olives or potato chips. All in the know about when the girl behind the bar had arrived, and why. He could imagine the jokes at first, jokes between men. The owner of the hardware store in Sils, a lifelong bachelor, had a girlfriend from Eastern Europe behind the counter too, blonde and sturdy with green eyes. She didn't even speak Spanish, but waited on you just fine, and it was a pleasure to shop there, because the blonde belonged to all the men in town, in a way. It must have been the same thing with Cindy: these girls had infiltrated like parasites, you saw them everywhere if you looked, the ones who hadn't left despite the recession, wearing rings more effective than wedding bands, invisible rings that everyone knew about.

Cindy's boss looked at her out of the corner of his eye, he was controlling her like that pimp in the van. What a letdown, after I dragged the boat all the way here. First the little whore and now this one. It wasn't his day. Then the banker came into the club and sat down at a table near the door.

What should I do? Wait for him to leave? How long will that take? Can the banker risk coming home late again—what is he thinking? What does he want? To scare me? Provoke me? Please. I can't even be bothered. He greeted him with a nod of the head. He ordered another beer. Patience. Fucking
Cindy. Who does that banker think he is? Who does he think he's messing with? He lifted his beer mug slightly, as if toasting him. It had been a good idea, the day before, taking that idiot for lunch. He couldn't afford what Marga and Cloe charged, and they didn't want to work alone—either you hired them both or you brought someone with you. The idiot paid for both of them. What a loser. What do you want, for this to come to blows outside, with that potbelly? Should we meet up at the tree, now that I've cleared the whores away? Should I show you what I've got in the truck? You could use a little exercise. It cleans you out from the inside. It's not in your best interest to report me. You'd be watching your back for a long time.

But there was someone else in the club. He saw her in a corner, almost hidden. Was the town so small that everyone gathered here? The daughter from the house where he had unloaded his truck the day before—the grieving widow. . . He might have left without noticing her, if it weren't for the fact that his eyes were automatically drawn to wherever there was a girl; even before seeing her, oh, yeah, she was already out of her black clothes but her skin was still milky white, she was sitting with a boy her own age, a really weird-looking guy, with two ponytails and a ring in his ear, not hanging from it but
inside
the earlobe. They were having a couple of beers; she had dark bags under her eyes from crying, perhaps all night long, the grief she carried was printed on the skin beneath her eyes, but she was already at the club with another guy. Her father—the man who had gone into the house and quickly come back out in different clothes to help him unload the bales; a strong man, a farmer, coming from the funeral of
his future son-in-law as if it were the most normal thing in the world, or maybe even relieved to have gotten rid of the suitor who was stealing away his daughter; a man who rolled up his sleeves and got down to work: let's not waste time, let's get this unloaded, and you, girl, tomorrow start fresh, no use crying over something that can't be helped—and her mother must have said: go out, distract yourself, so the girl was already back to normal life, already had a friend consoling her. If they were out like that, so soon after, it meant they were friends. She hadn't been waiting for her fiancé to die so she could move to the next one on the list. No, she was still single. Helpless and in free fall, waiting for someone to put out their arms and save her.

He ordered a third beer. His vision improved with a hint of alcohol in his blood, like glasses that sharpened reality, making his visual impressions slightly tactile. A strong tramontane inside him. The girl's dress fit her body so well. She wasn't exactly a model, he had to admit, but she still exuded the same desolation she'd had when he'd seen her yesterday, a morbid attractiveness, a helplessness that made her passivity irresistible. Because that was what made a woman: passivity, the very earth from which men spring. They were amphorae, maternal vessels, it wasn't their fault, it was their nature. He had taped up a photo of a porn star next to the stereo in the truck; he chose it with Ahmed on a public computer at a roadside bar—the Virgin Mary, that was what Ahmed called her—truckers keep photos like that, all with the same puffy lips and bell-shaped breasts, amulets of fertility, an antidote to the CD of love songs. Sometimes, Miqui accepted that this obsession—his schlong growing like a snake under tables,
sniffing around, searching on its own, without him—was an attempt to find the river in which to let himself be carried off on the current of a relationship that would make him lose sight of the world. That happened to everyone, didn't it? So, if he was looking for a girlfriend, someone to disappear into, was this flitting from one to the next just because he hadn't found a woman ample enough to take him in whole? Was he that overwhelming?

The checkered floor made him think of a chessboard. Let's play a game: he has Cindy behind the bar, an already captured piece, a bishop retired from the game; he has the old man at the register, the supervisor, a fucking pawn with a nasty face that could turn into a queen by calling the police or kicking him out of the place if things got rowdy with the banker; he has the banker, a castle controlling one corner of the board near the door, with little room for movement, who doesn't want him to go near the girl at the bar, a girl who Miqui was no longer the least bit interested in; and, next to another puny pawn—the bootlicker who happens to be buying her drinks at the moment, the freak with the perforated ear—there is the piece he wants, the piece that rules over the playing board, his white queen.

He would approach her in two moves. First, he would go to the bathroom. That would be the excuse. There he would have a look in the mirror. He was plenty attractive, his work kept him in shape, and it was a pleasure to have the mirror remind him of that. On the way out he would walk past her table.

The checkered floor continued inside the bathroom. There was no one in there. Half a dozen urinals on the wall, whose white tiles came together in moldy stripes. Bits of
blue soap on the urinals' screens. The door opened again and closed behind him. He saw the bank clerk's red boots in the mirror.

“Tell me something,” said the banker as he opened the tap and dampened his inflamed face. “Are you trying to provoke me?”

“Relax, I'm not here because of you. But tell me something. Were you born yesterday, or are you the only one in Vidreres who doesn't know why that girl works here?”

“I already told you I'm not from Vidreres. If I were twenty years younger, I'd tell it to you in a different way.”

“I bet you would. What's wrong, you didn't have a good time yesterday? Isn't Marga hot? Did she do that bit with the wings?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you're crazy?”

The banker turned tail and fled the bathroom. He had performed. He could rest easy now, go home to his wife and kids, wherever they were. He had assuaged his conscience. Miqui splashed a little water on his hair, smoothed it out. He gave the banker a few seconds to leave the club, to save himself from having to see him again.

He left the bathroom and went straight over to the girl's table, following the diagonal line of black tiles to the table. The couple was very attentively looking at the screen of a cell phone the young man held in his hand. They had brought their chairs closer together and were both watching something. It didn't seem like something funny exactly, but it did seem very interesting. They were quiet. Photographs of the dead guy, probably. The day right after the funeral? She didn't lift her head and Miqui had to slow down. He
pretended to be looking at his watch. The young man was doing something with the phone as he stepped in front of her. Finally, she looked up.

“Excuse me,” said Miqui. “I saw you, and I just wanted to say that I'm so sorry.”

“Who are you?”

“Oh . . . I'm Miquel, Miqui, I was at your house yesterday, I came with my truck to bring seventy-five bales, you must not have even seen me. I'm very sorry. I saw you and I wanted to say. . . I'm so sorry. That's all.”

She gave a polite half-smile. If she stood up, Miqui had won the game. Maybe she wouldn't get up. The weird guy next to her was waiting. Miqui imagined her in Cindy's place, on the cruiser. He imagined her sailing with him. In a bikini. That white skin getting toasted. Tan, hot. But no. Don't even think it. It wouldn't work with her. She was older than Cindy. And he had seen her house, surrounded by fields, with animals and tractors, with dogs and horses. Those people were loaded. If they didn't have a mooring in Port d'Aro it was because they didn't want one. A cruiser? Why are you even telling me this? We have a yacht. We sail to Majorca. Once we went to the Baltics. Her father had called Miqui
sir
. Not everyone was a sand jockey like Ahmed or a whore like Goldilocks or a spic like Cindy. There were still normal people around. There were young people with futures. That's where her white coloring came from, from the fat in a healthy diet. She should be feeling sorry for him, a fucking trucker.

Maybe she did. For two seconds she kept her eyes lowered, until she made up her mind. She got up from her chair. A kiss on each cheek and her name.

“Iona.” And Miqui finished it in his head: Iona Sureda. Checkmate. Her father had signed the receipt.

“If you ever need a truck . . .” He handed them each a business card and went back to the bar.

Cindy hadn't missed the scene. She gave him his change for the beers with a furious expression. Miqui sat down with his back to the bar, staring at Iona. He could look her up and down with no problem: they were busy with the cell phone.

There was a large blue anchor painted on the entrance to the warehouse in Palamós. Outside, behind a wall, there was a ship graveyard. You could see it perfectly from the truck, injured boats, faded and dirty from being left out in the elements, with flaking paint, dented metal, broken glass, and amputated pieces that had been used as replacement parts for newer boats. A raspberry patch had slowly invaded one area of the cemetery, the brambles growing and taking over some of the ships, hugging them, tangling around and covering them like a slow green wave, a thorny wave that a bow, a submerged berth, or a bit of railing occasionally peeked through. Here a propeller blade emerged, over there floated a piece of rudder or a faded orange life vest—like a pot filled with weeds. A bit of chain sparkled between some boats, a hull, busted by some underwater slab, revealed a yacht's abdomen, stuffed with green viscera. To one side, a dozen boat trailers were piled up, their iron rusty and their wheels flat.

He drove the truck into the storehouse. They signaled for him to put it beneath a bridge crane. They unloaded the cruiser, placed it on a forklift, and stored it in a niche of the large metal shelving unit among other boats. Light traveled
down to the warehouse floor from some big blue windows near the ceiling. The sun's rays reached the ground, falling on the sunken fleet, intact shipwrecks in the belly of the Palamós storehouse, gathered from sport marinas all up and down the Costa Brava: yachts, outboard boats, pleasure cruisers, sailboats, and catamarans resting on the shelves like a collection of defeated trophies. The sailboats had no masts, and they'd taken the motors out of the ships, lining them up against a wall. There were boats like his, motorboats in all sizes, shapes, and colors. You could look up at the higher ones, they had names like Grace, Sirenamar, Lola, and Xaloc. If he had any savings, he probably could have bought one cheap, their original owners must already have boats twice as long on the other side of the planet.

Returning to Sils, he left the road and drove the truck into a forest at the foot of the Gavarres mountains to dump the tires. The sharp north wind was stripping the trees of their leaves. It had rained recently, but he wasn't worried about the puddles on the road, the Atego's weight allowed him to go anywhere. The low branches of the holm oaks and pine trees grazed the top of the cab, and the forest gradually swallowed it up, as if it were a submarine. He followed the dirt road until he reached a clearing where it would be easy to maneuver the truck around.

He turned off the engine and remained in the cab, watching how the north wind moved the branches, making them seem somewhat hysterical. The birds came to rest in the trees. He lowered the window. He pulled down the shotgun, rested its barrel on the glass, and took aim at a sparrow perched in a pine. There was one cartridge left in the chamber. The
sparrow flew off. He followed it with the barrel. He had to practice a lot if he wanted to be a good shot. What would have happened if he'd killed that little whore? Nothing. The pimp in the van wouldn't have wanted any problems. He would have just left it at that. Miqui would have gone straight to Palamós to drop off the boat. He would be right where he was. But he wouldn't know the name of the widow.

“Has anyone ever told you that you're crazy?”