The Summer of Dead Toys (14 page)

Leire held the spoon in mid-air before attacking the mousse. “It’s not what I gain or don’t gain. It’s that he’s the father. I think he has a right to know there’s a child with his genes in the world.”

“So, where is this child now? Who’s carrying it in their womb for nine months? Who is going to give birth to it, screaming like a madwoman? He just dropped four swimmers and went off travelling, for fuck’s sake! And if he hadn’t been left with no plans for the weekend, you’d never have heard from him again.”

Leire smiled.
“Say what you want, but he wrote me a message.” “One second, what do you mean by that? No, don’t blush—

answer me.”
“Nothing.” She put a spoonful of mousse in her mouth. It
was delicious. “Leave it. Maybe you’re right. When I see him,
I’ll decide.”
“When I see him, I’ll decide,” repeated María in a mocking
tone. “Eh, earth calling Leire Castro. Houston, we have a problem. Anyone know where Leire ‘One-Date-Only’ Castro is? Is
this the person who always tells me love is a perverse invention of Hollywood’s to subjugate the women of the world?” “All right. Give me a break, please.” Leire snorted. “It’s the
first time in my life I’ve been pregnant. Excuse me if I don’t
know how to behave.”
María looked at her affectionately.
“Listen, one more thing and we’ll change the subject. I have
things to tell you as well.” She stopped before asking, “Are you
sure you want to have it?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “No. Well . . . I’m sure it’s in there,”
pointing to her stomach, “and that it’s going to be born in less
than seven months.” She finished the mousse and licked the
spoon. “What about you? What’s happening with Santi?” “We’re going on holiday!” exclaimed María, radiant. “But wasn’t he going to work for an NGO? To build a clinic
in Africa?”
“Yes. And I’m going with him.”
Leire could barely suppress a snort. The vision of María
building anything, let alone a clinic in an African village,
seemed even more ludicrous than her getting baby clothes
ready.
“I’m only going for a few days.”
“How many?”
“Twelve,” she lied. “Well, maybe more, I don’t know yet. But
it will be nice: we’ll be doing something together. Look, I’m
sick of boys who only talk about football, their bosses, and
how their last girlfriend hurt them; sick of metrosexuals who
steal your moisturizer and sick of separated guys who want
you to entertain the kids at the weekend. Santi is different.” “Yeah.” Their taste in men was an inexhaustible source of
disagreement, but a fundamental part of their friendship.
They had never liked the same type of man. To Leire, Santi
was a boring pedant who needed a good stick of deodorant.
And María, she was sure, would have thought Tomás was
cocky, thinking he was George Clooney by wearing a suit with
a white shirt and having perfect teeth. She raised her glass of
water and said out loud: “A toast to sexual tourist solidarity!” María imitated her with her glass of red wine.
“To sexual tourist solidarity! And to the little swimmers
that make their mark!”
“Bitch!”

The sheet was wrinkled from so much tossing and turning. Leire closed her eyes and tried to relax in the darkness. A warm darkness, because there wasn’t the slightest breeze: the open window just inundated the room with the wailings of the cat. She’d only been in that apartment for a few months and during the first few weeks she’d been startled awake by those squeals, which sounded like a baby crying; she’d ventured out on to the tiny terrace in search of the source of the pitiful sob, not able to ascertain where it came from until one night she met the eyes of that insomniac cat, as immobile as a statue, watching her impassively to the beat of the feline yowl. Now she was used to it, although deep down that animal scream still bothered her, that pure instinct demanding sex without the least decency. At this moment, however, she thought closing the window would only muffle the wails and on the other hand increase the heat.

She lit a cigarette, although she’d already consumed her usual five that day, and went out on to the diminutive terrace, barely a metre square, with two window boxes hanging from the railing and a little round wooden table. She looked around for the cat and there she was, suddenly quiet now, watching her like a small buddha with whiskers. The first drags calmed her a little—a false peace, she knew, but peace all the same. As if wishing to remind her of her existence, the animal wailed again from the opposite roof and Leire looked at her with more affection than before. She finished her cigarette and threw it to the ground, reproaching herself but lacking the will to go searching for the ashtray. The cat watched her and cocked her head, with a gesture of frank disapproval. “Hungry?” Leire asked her in a low voice, and for the first time since she’d lived there the idea of putting a little milk in a bowl occurred to her. She did so and returned inside, sure the animal wouldn’t approach if she saw her outside. She waited by the door for a few minutes, with the light on inside, hoping the cat might overcome her fear and jump on to the terrace, but she didn’t make the slightest move. Suddenly Leire felt exhausted and decided to go back to bed: it was twenty past four in the morning, and with a bit of luck she might still sleep for at least two and a half hours. Once in bed, she stretched out her hand and picked up her mobile. Two new messages from Tomás. “Arriving tomorrow, Sants station, express, 17.00. Dying to see you. T.” “Oh, I’ve something to propose to you. Kisses.”

She rested her head against the already cool pillow and closed her eyes, determined to sleep. In that sweet moment before losing consciousness she thought of Tomás’s smile, her pregnancy test, solidarity for sexual tourists and the bowl of milk on the terrace, until abruptly a discordant detail, a note out of place, kept her from falling asleep. Suddenly alert, she sat up in bed and tried to remember. Yes, she was sure. She visualized the attic from which young Marc Castells fell, the window, the sill, the body on the ground. And she knew something didn’t fit, that the sequence of events couldn’t have been as it was reconstructed. Something jarred in that scene, something as simple as an ashtray in the wrong place.

Breakfast was one of Ruth’s favorite times. She had it in the kitchen, sitting on a high stool, and gave it the necessary time. She liked the ritual of preparing the toast and orange juice for herself, the combination of the aroma of coffee and that of warm bread. It was a pleasure she’d never managed to share with either of her partners: Héctor could barely touch a piece of toast in the morning, and it seemed the same was happening with Carol. What’s more, given that they usually looked surprised or incredulous at the attention she paid to every detail, she enjoyed it much more when she was alone.

Sometimes she wondered if this solitary morning pleasure was a sign of what awaited her in the future; ever more frequently she saw herself as a person inclined to independence— strange for someone who had actually never been without company. Her parents, her husband, her son and now Carol . . . She frowned, thinking she hadn’t succeeded in giving her a title other than her own: lover sounded vulgar, girlfriend was something she hadn’t yet managed to say, companion seemed false, a prudish euphemism to disguise the truth. While she smeared butter on the toast with exquisite care, and spread a thin layer of homemade apricot jam over it, she asked herself what Carol really was. It was the same question put to her by that same person the night before, after the argument with Héctor, and Ruth hadn’t been able to give a satisfactory answer, so the dinner for two had gone uneaten and Carol, her lover, her girlfriend, her companion or whatever she was, had left for her flat enveloped in a sullen silence without Ruth making the least attempt to stop her. She knew one word would have been enough, a simple squeeze of her hand to dispel her fit of impatience or jealousy, but she simply lacked the will to do so. And although they’d then spoken on the phone for almost an hour—fifty-three long minutes to be exact—and though Carol had a change of heart and apologized for her brusque departure and reiterated her understanding and unconditional love, the feeling of fatigue hadn’t diminished in the slightest. On the contrary, the whole scene had awoken a mad longing in her to escape, to go away for a weekend, this weekend, no hanging around, to somewhere she could be calm: no pressure, no apologies, no promises of love.

What a damn night, Ruth said to herself. She’d arrived home in a good mood, ready to enjoy a lovely evening with Carol, and found her hysterical, shouting down the phone, insulting Héctor like a lunatic. Her expression demanded explanations and she’d finally managed to get her to hang up the phone and tell her how this surreal scene had come about. Carol only said: “Look at it yourself. This was inside the box your bastard of an ex gave you yesterday.” And after those words, she pressed a button on the remote. The screen had filled with images of her and Carol taken some days back: both of them on a nudist beach in Sant Pol, naked as night fell. Ruth remembered the day well, but seeing it in that way, seeing their kisses turned into a cheap and crude recording, generated a profound feeling of disgust in her. Their bodies caressing each other on that solitary beach aroused a sudden feeling of shame in her. From there, everything went from bad to worse. She’d tried to reason with Carol, tell her that Héctor was in Argentina when those images were recorded; and that, even if he had been here, he’d never have committed so . . . obscene an act. Carol had finally given up, although she kept arguing that there were private detectives to whom these things were entrusted, asking how that fucking DVD had arrived in that box of cakes that Héctor had given her, asking why she defended her ex-husband more than her, finally putting the key question to her: what the hell am I in your life? Questions with no answers, which had plunged Ruth into an exhausting vertigo. She just wanted to throw that film in the bin and forget all about it. But before she did so she thought she should call Héctor to speak to him, a short conversation to calm him, which of course Carol didn’t understand at all. When she hung up, she’d already gone, and all of a sudden Ruth felt relieved to be completely alone.

She kept going over the same idea, although she was fully aware that Carol wouldn’t be happy, and not without reason: they’d planned things to do that weekend, taking advantage of the fact that Guillermo wasn’t coming back until Sunday night. According to Carol, they needed to spend more time together. Waking up, eating, having dinner and sleeping together like a real couple. Ruth had been left staring at her, not knowing how to explain herself: she couldn’t tell her that that string of common actions, stated in a tone more imperious than affectionate, sounded more like a sentence than anything else. I should have more patience with Carol, she told herself, while she attacked the second piece of toast. She was young, fierce and tended to be demanding when she wanted to show affection. That attitude, the extreme frankness that had managed to break down Ruth’s defenses when they’d met the year before, turned out to be exhausting day to day. Carol had the blackest eyes Ruth had ever seen, and a perfect body, strong yet still feminine, sculpted through hours of Pilates and strict dieting. She was without question a beautiful woman: not just good-looking but gorgeous. And on the other hand, her insecurity, her fear of the possibility that Ruth might renege on this new sexuality discovered at the age of thirty-seven, gave her a fragile air which, combined with her extreme characteristics, was irresistible. Nothing was calm with Carol, reflected Ruth: she exploded and regretted; she went from cool jealousy to unbridled passion; she roared with laughter or sobbed like a little girl at any tearjerker. A delight, but a delight that could be overwhelming.

By her second coffee, she’d made a decision. She would call her parents, and if they weren’t going, she would spend the weekend at the apartment in Sitges. She didn’t usually go in summer because the crowds drove her crazy, but she needed a close, familiar refuge and this was better than nothing. All of a sudden the prospect of spending three days alone, doing whatever she felt like, sounded marvellous and in spite of it being early she rang her mother to find out if the apartment was free, crossing her fingers in the hope that the answer would be yes. It was, so without wasting a moment she sent Carol a message describing her plan—a short, succinct text that wouldn’t prompt a reply. However, she hesitated a moment before doing the same to Héctor: she didn’t have to inform him of her comings and goings, but the night before she’d noticed he was worried. His tone of voice was anxious and Héctor, for all his faults, wasn’t a man easily perturbed. She fiddled with her mobile until she finally decided to speak to him.

“Hello?” he answered, almost before the phone rang. “Everything all right?”
“Yes, yes,” she rushed to reassure him. “Listen, you had me worried last night. You have to tell me what’s going on.”
He took a deep breath.
“The truth is I have no idea.” Héctor told her more calmly what he’d said to her the previous night: that veiled threat that seemed to be hovering over him, and perhaps over his family. “I don’t think anything will happen, maybe they just want to make me nervous, create problems, but just in case . . . stay alert, OK? If you see anything strange or suspicious, tell me straight away.”
“Of course. In fact I was ringing to tell you I’m going to Sitges this weekend. To my parents’ place. I’ll come back via Calafell and pick Guillermo up on Sunday night.”
“Are you going alone?” He asked more for reasons of safety than anything else, but he immediately regretted it and Ruth’s tone confirmed it had been an ill-timed intrusion.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Sorry. I don’t . . . didn’t want to interfere in your life.”
“Yeah.” Ruth bit her tongue so as not to be unpleasant. “Well, it sounded like it. Good-bye, Héctor, speak to you Monday.”
“Yes, enjoy yourself. And Ruth . . .” He realized he didn’t know how to say it. “Like I said, if you see anything strange, call me immediately, OK?”
“Bye, Héctor.” Ruth hung up straight away, and saw that she had two missed calls from Carol. The last thing she felt like doing was arguing, so she opted to ignore them and began to prepare the couple of things she wanted to take with her.