We merge with the line of cars, like everybody else. The music on the radio and the fireworks fill the silence that descends after Pedro’s fit of rage. Maybe Julieth and La Murciélaga are thinking the same thing I am, that those people deserve to get their asses kicked. Pedro’s cell phone rings and we all jump. Our defenses are still low. I still don’t understand why I can’t go home yet. Why’s Fernanda punishing me with exile my very first day back? The Dictator could turn down the music to talk more comfortably, but instead he’s shouting at the top of his lungs. He curses, insults, roars with laughter, getting worked up, tells the person on the other end of the line what happened: a crappy little dark blue Mazda, he says, yeah, a 323 with three twats on board, if you see them let me know. Who are you talking to?, La Murciélaga asks, but he doesn’t answer, instead telling the other person, just think, if that bottle rocket had come through the window it would have ruined this handsome mug. He laughs again and curses again. La Murciélaga stubs out the joint in the ashtray. Julieth looks at me, and I tell her, I don’t know what I’m doing here. La Murciélaga turns around and says enthusiastically, it’s La Alborada, sweetie.
Outside I see the orange sky and, down below us, the glow. The noise and euphoria summon Dylan Thomas once more to the tip of my tongue—“wise men at their end know dark is right”—and Thomas summons her once more to my memory. Are you sure you don’t know a Charlie who lives in London?, I ask Julieth and La Murciélaga. Male or female?, Julieth asks. Oh, so tedious, La Murciélaga says. Female, I tell Julieth. Pedro ends his conversation, and La Murciélaga asks again, who were you talking to? That was Ro, he replies, they’re already up there, at the overlook past El Peñasco. Who is she, what does she look like?, Julieth asks me. Some woman he met on the plane, La Murciélaga answers. She’s got black hair down to like here, I tell Julieth, gesturing to just below my shoulder. Her dad died day before yesterday, I say. Hers too?, Julieth says. Mine died a long time ago, I point out. At this rate, Pedro says, the fireworks will be over by the time we get there. She’s got a small nose and a pale complexion, I continue, but Julieth isn’t listening, nor anybody else. They start belting out the reggaeton song that comes on the radio.
Boom boom, let it go boom, pump up the room, if things are feeling hot, make her zoom-zoom.
But I’m overcome with sleepiness. I rest my head on the back of the seat and once again look out and down, toward the smoking crater that’s about to erupt.
20
Out of nowhere, as if they were old friends, Charlie asked him to tell her a secret.
“What kind of secret?” Larry asked, and she said, “One that no more than two people know.”
“A secret . . .” said Larry, pretending to think, and she laughed. She had him trapped.
There was no way out, no possible excuse: everybody’s got a secret, or lots of them. A sin, a hidden desire, a loathing that nobody else knows, an aberration.
“Tell you what,” Charlie said. “Hand me your glass, and while you’re thinking I’ll go get us some more gin.”
“On one condition: you tell me one too.”
They shook on the deal, and she went to fetch the drinks. Larry still felt cornered. When she returned, he tried to throw her off: “I have several varieties of secrets. Which kind do you want? Level C is little secrets, level B is regular secrets, and level A is big secrets.”
“Level A, of course.”
“I need more time for that kind of secret,” he said. “But I’ve got some real high-quality level C ones.”
“I’m willing to negotiate. Tell me a level B secret.”
They clinked their glasses and drank. Larry cleared his throat.
“A few years back, not long after I arrived in London, having decided it was where I was going to live, I did my first grocery run and spotted these bags of lentils and tossed one in my cart because I was craving a home-cooked meal. I called my mom for the recipe; she doesn’t cook, but she asked around and found out for me. Since I didn’t have a pressure cooker, it was going to be a slow process, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I just left the lentils cooking and would occasionally go in and stir them with a wooden spoon. I started watching a movie on TV, and by the time I got back to the kitchen, the spoon wasn’t there anymore.”
Larry fell silent. Charlie prodded him. “And?”
“It disappeared. Maybe it dissolved in the soup.”
Charlie looked at him mockingly. Crossing her arms, she asked, “So what’s the secret?”
“Well, nobody else knows that story.”
“No, that doesn’t count.”
“What about if I tell you that I once, in a fit of love-induced spite, drank two bottles of whiskey all by myself, sitting on a wall beside the Thames?”
“That doesn’t either.”
“Aha,” Larry said. He leaned his head back and pondered. She watched him. Feeling awkward under the pressure, he said, “Once, when I left school, instead of going home I told the driver to take us to Éxito. I was with two friends, and we knew exactly why we were going: to shoplift.”
“Hang on,” Charlie broke in. “That doesn’t count either.”
“Let me finish,” Larry said. “The secret isn’t the shoplifting. So yeah, we were going to steal things, stupid crap we could stick in our pockets and down our pants. We’d done it once before. We each got our own stash and then bought something cheap to explain the alarm. We’d showed the guard our receipt and walked through. The alarm went off, and they let us through. That’s how it worked the first time, and we thought it would be exactly the same.”
“Did you get caught?”
“Hold your horses. We waited in line at different cash registers, and before we’d paid, a man in a suit and tie came up to one of my friends. He took him off to get my other friend, and finally they came for me. The man asked us to go with him. He led us to this little room, like an office supply storeroom. He asked us to empty our pockets. We refused, and he threatened to call the police. At that, very slowly, we started putting the items we’d stolen on a table.”
“What did you steal?”
“A bunch of crap, like I said. I’d nicked some dental floss, a lipstick . . .”
“A lipstick?”
“I wanted to give it to my mother.” Larry took a sip and cleared his throat. Something changed in his voice. “The man ordered us to pull down our pants. We refused again, and again he threatened to turn us over to the police. Reluctantly, we unbuttoned our pants and pulled them halfway down our thighs. A few more small things fell out. He told us to put them on the table, next to the others. Then he felt around my friends’ underwear, and when he got to me, he didn’t just feel around outside.”