“I know who those bastards are,” Libardo told somebody over the telephone. “I know their names and their faces. I know where they live and how they work, but there’s nobody left to wage war against them, man—everybody’s turned chicken.”
It was a matter of surrendering or holding firm. The country was in the grip of a moralistic fervor, and overnight we became the target of the same people who used to cheer us on. Even at school, where we were supposedly beyond the reach of society’s prejudices. And then, to top it all off, Fernanda threw gas on the flames.
“Your dad has a mistress,” she told us.
That day, she’d been clutching a glass of white wine ever since we got home from school. She walked through the backyard and paced around the pool, staring into its depths as if she were searching for something under the water. She saw us watching her from the living room and didn’t even lift her hand to wave, didn’t even smile. She took a long swig and then lay back on a deck chair to stare up at the sky. She stayed like that till it grew dark and then came into the study, where Julio and I were doing our homework. She’d refilled her wineglass, and that was when, leaning against the doorjamb, she told us about Libardo’s mistress.
“How did you find out?” Julio asked.
“You already knew?” she asked him.
“I don’t know shit.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“I just want to know how you found out, who told you, to see if it’s true.”
“Of course it’s true,” Fernanda said. “I’ve seen her. I know who she is.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“A tramp,” she said, and her voice splintered.
I looked down, and I think Julio did too. Fernanda dropped into an armchair, let her body sag, and wailed, “She’s a twenty-two-year-old little twerp, and he’s already given her an apartment and a car.”
Her sentences tangled together, her eyeliner was smeared, and she was sniffling.
“He’s twenty-five years older than her—she could be his daughter,” she continued. “I can’t believe he’s not embarrassed to go out with her.”
“They’ve been seen out together?” Julio asked.
Fernanda nodded, then said, “At least with the others he didn’t take them out—he just wanted to sleep with them.”
“Others?” I broke in.
Fernanda straightened up and stared at us as she took another sip of wine. “Oh, sweeties.” She slid forward and fell to her knees on the rug, and shuffled toward us with her arms held wide, still gripping the wineglass. I wanted to get up and run, to flee the pathetic sight of an intoxicated mother seeking her children’s compassion. But I was paralyzed, and she hauled us into her embrace, squeezed us tight, and burst out sobbing. I looked at Julio out of the corner of my eye, pressed against her other shoulder, while Fernanda, unawares, spilled cold wine down my back.
13
A bald guy with a long beard, wearing flip-flops and a loose shirt, a prophet of the new era, gives La Murciélaga a long hug. She comes back to the car giving jubilant little skips. She’s finally got that hydroponic weed she was after. We’ve had to come all the way from Las Palmas to Belén to make this woman happy.
“All right, kids, let’s blow this place,” she says as she clambers into the front seat next to Pedro the Dictator. And she adds: “The world can end now.”
The noise of the fireworks is relentless. Some of the explosions are sharp and booming, like a slamming door, like a set of cookpots clattering from a cupboard to the floor. Others announce themselves with a whistle before they detonate, an exhalation in the night before bursting out in lights. There are high ones and low ones, near ones and far ones. No matter what they look like, they’re all money that burns up in seconds, giving boundless pleasure to the person setting them off. The same euphoria that people feel from firing their guns in the air.
I often saw Libardo and his friends riddle the sky with bullets in celebration of something. A successful shipment, a lucrative business deal, a law passed in Congress for their benefit, or the death of somebody who’d been in their way.
“Where to now?” Julieth asks.
“Let’s go back to Las Palmas,” says La Murciélaga.
“It’s nine fifteen p.m.,” says Pedro, as if he were an announcer on Radio Reloj.
“Can you drop me off at my place?” I ask, but they all look at me as if they didn’t understand a word.
“Your mom hasn’t called yet,” Pedro tells me.
“I don’t care. If she’s not there, I’ll wait for her in the foyer. If she isn’t ready to see me, I’ll stay downstairs till she opens the door.”
“All right, whatever you say,” Pedro tells me.
For the first time all night, I feel relief. And also a chill in my abdomen and eddies in my guts. A freefalling void. Fear? Fear, anxiety, joy, respite. Though I know there won’t be silence tonight, at least I won’t be in this SUV anymore with the music blasting, in a smoky haze that smells of fireworks. Pedro’s cell phone rings again, and I try to catch a glimpse of the screen.
“Inga!” yells Pedro.
He’s no longer talking normally but shouting and laughing insults and mockery. He slaps the steering wheel in excitement.
“Can you turn the music down, Murci?” I ask, but she doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t want to.
We’re gonna get down, get down, get down, we’re gonna get down, oh, oh, oh. La Murciélaga sings, and Julieth sways haltingly to the beat. I stretch forward and lower the volume. La Murciélaga slaps my arm.
“What’s your problem?” she scolds me. “Don’t crush my groove.”
“My head’s going to explode,” I tell her.
Julieth ruffles my hair. La Murciélaga turns the volume back up, Pedro keeps yelling like he’s standing next to a waterfall.
“Hang on, I’ve got something for you,” La Murciélaga tells me and rummages in her purse. “Pull over, man,” she says to Pedro. “Let’s stop a minute.”
I thought she was looking for an aspirin, but she pulls out the bag of hydroponic marijuana and starts rolling a joint with impressive skill.
“No, Murci,” I say. “I thought . . .”
But before I can think, the SUV has filled up with smoke and the smell of weed. And when Pedro tells the person he’s talking to, we’re coming to get you, my relief evaporates, and once again my prospects dim.