Part 19 (1/2)
”Let's look on the bright side, right?... We're rid of this little s.l.u.t,” Teo said. ”Her snorting and her blackmailing. She was dangerous company, given the circ.u.mstances. And as for Patty, speaking of getting somebody out of the way, I wonder how things would have gone if...”
”Shut the f.u.c.k up,” said Teresa, ”or I swear you're a dead man.”
She was shocked by her own words. She saw herself speaking them, without thinking, spitting them out as they came into her mind: softly, without any reflection or calculation whatsoever.
”I just...” Teo started to say.
His smile seemed frozen, and he was looking at Teresa as if seeing her for the first time. Then he looked around disconcertedly, fearing that someone had overheard. He was pale.
”I was just kidding,” he finally said.
He was much less attractive like that-humiliated. Or scared. And Teresa didn't answer. He was the least of her concerns. She was concentrating on herself, digging deep, trying to bring up the face of the woman that had spoken in her place.
Fortunately, the police told Teo, Patty hadn't been at the wheel when the car went out of control on the curve, so that took care of the involuntary-homicide charge. The cocaine and the rest could be fixed with a little money, a great deal of tact, some timely telephone calls and visits, and the right judge, as long as the press didn't get wind of it. That last one was the vital detail. Because these things, the lawyer said-sometimes looking at Teresa out of the corner of his eye, pensively-begin with a story buried on page seventeen and wind up on page one. So be careful of that.
Later, when everything at the hospital and morgue had been seen to, Teo had stayed behind, making phone calls and taking care of the police-luckily, this was the munic.i.p.al police, under Tomas Pestana, not the Guardia Civil's traffic division-while Pote Galvez brought the Cherokee around to the door, and Teresa took Patty out very quietly, before anyone could make a call and some reporter started sniffing around. And in the car, leaning on Teresa, the window open so the cool night air might wake her up, Patty started talking.
”I'm sorry,” she kept repeating, almost in a whisper, the headlights of oncoming cars lighting her face in flashes. ”I'm sorry for her,” she said in a thick, muted voice, the words running together. ”I'm sorry for that little girl. And I'm sorry for you, too, Mexicana,” she added after a silence.
”Well, I don't give a f.u.c.k who or what you're sorry for,” Teresa replied, fed up and ill humored, looking down the highway over Pote Galvez' shoulder. ”You should feel sorry for your f.u.c.king life.”
Patty s.h.i.+fted position, leaning her head on the window behind her, and said nothing. Teresa squirmed uncomfortably. Chale, Chale, for the second time in an hour she'd said things she hadn't intended to say. Besides, she wasn't really irritated, not at Patty, anyway. In the end, it was she, Teresa, who was responsible for all this, or almost all of it. After a while, she took her friend's hand, which was as cold as the body they'd left in the hospital, under the blood-soaked sheet. for the second time in an hour she'd said things she hadn't intended to say. Besides, she wasn't really irritated, not at Patty, anyway. In the end, it was she, Teresa, who was responsible for all this, or almost all of it. After a while, she took her friend's hand, which was as cold as the body they'd left in the hospital, under the blood-soaked sheet.
”How are you?” Teresa asked softly.
”I'm ... all right.” Patty didn't lift her head from the window. She leaned on Teresa again only when she got out of the SUV.
The minute they got her into bed, still dressed, she fell into an uneasy half-sleep, full of s.h.i.+vering and starts and moans. Teresa sat with her, in an armchair next to the bed, for a long time-the time it took to smoke three cigarettes and drink a big gla.s.s of tequila. Thinking. The room was almost dark, the curtains pulled back to reveal a starry sky and tiny, distant lights moving out at sea, beyond the shadows of the garden and the beach. Finally she stood up, to go to her own room, but at the door she thought better of it. She went and lay down on the edge of the bed, beside her friend, very quietly, trying not to wake her, and stayed there for hours. Listening to Patty's tormented breathing. And thinking.
”Are you awake, Mexicana?” .
”Yes.”
After the whispered answer, Patty had moved closer. Their bodies touched. ”I'm sorry.”
”It's all right. Go to sleep.”
Another silence. It had been an eternity since the two of them had shared a moment like this, Teresa recalled. Almost since prison, in El Puerto de Santa Maria. Scratch the ”almost.” She lay motionless, her eyes open, listening to her friend's irregular breathing. Now she, too, couldn't sleep.
”Got a cigarette?” Patty asked after a while.
”Just mine.”
”I'll take one.”
Teresa got up, went over to the dresser, and took out two Bisontes laced with has.h.i.+sh from her purse. The flame from her lighter illuminated Patty's face, the purple bruise on her forehead. Her lips were dry and swollen, her eyes, with bags under them from fatigue, were fixed on Teresa.
”I thought we could do it, Mexicana.”
Teresa lay faceup on the edge of the bed. She picked the ashtray up off the night table and put it on her stomach. Slowly, giving herself time. ”We did,” she said at last. ”We came a long way.” ”That's not what I meant.” ”Then I don't know what you're talking about.”
Patty stirred beside her, changing positions. She's turned toward me, thought Teresa. She's looking at me in the darkness. Or remembering me.
”I thought I could take it,” Patty said. ”You and I this way. I thought it would work.”
How strange everything was, Teresa meditated. Lieutenant O'Farrell. Herself. How strange and how far away, and how many bodies behind them, on the road. People we accidentally killed while we lived.
”n.o.body deceived anybody. n.o.body lied to anybody. n.o.body twisted anybody's arm.” As Teresa talked, she brought the cigarette to her mouth and saw the ember flare briefly between her fingers. ”I'm where I always was.” She exhaled the smoke after holding it in awhile. ”I never tried-”
Patty interrupted. ”Do you really think that? That you haven't changed?”
Teresa, irritated, shook her head. ”And as for Teo ...” she started to say.
”Good G.o.d!” Patty's laugh was scornful. Teresa felt her moving beside her as though she were shaking with laughter. ”f.u.c.k Teo.”
There was another silence, this time very long. Then Patty began to talk again, very softly.
”He screws other women.... Did you know that?”
Teresa shrugged, inside and outside, knowing that her friend couldn't see or feel the gesture. She didn't know, she concluded. Maybe she'd suspected, but that wasn't the issue. It never had been.
”I never expected anything,” Patty went on, her tone pensive, self-absorbed. ”Just you and me. Like before.”
Teresa suddenly had the urge to be cruel. Because of what Patty had said about Teo.
”The good times back in El Puerto de Santa Maria, right?” she sneered. ”You and your dream. Abbe Faria's treasure.”
She had never been sarcastic about that before. Never in this way. Patty didn't say anything.
”You were in that dream, Mexicana,” she said at last.
It sounded like justification and reproach. But I'm not getting into that, Teresa told herself. It's not my game, and never was. So f.u.c.k it.
”Yeah, well, I didn't ask to be in it,” she said. ”It was your decision, not mine.”
”That's true. And sometimes life comes around and bites you on the a.s.s just by giving you what you want, you know?”
That doesn't apply to me, either, thought Teresa. I didn't want anything. And that's the biggest paradox of my whole pinche pinche life. She stubbed out the cigarette and put the ashtray back on the night table. life. She stubbed out the cigarette and put the ashtray back on the night table.
”I never made the decision,” she said aloud. ”Never. It came and I stepped up. Period.”
”So what happened with me?” asked Patty.
That was the question. Really, Teresa reflected, it all came down to that. ”I don't know ... At some point you dropped out, started drifting away.”
”And at some point you turned into an hija de puta.” hija de puta.”
There was a long pause. They were motionless. If I heard the sound of metal bars, thought Teresa, or the footsteps of a guard in the corridor, I'd think I was in El Puerto. The old nightly ritual of friends.h.i.+p. Edmond Dantes and Abbe Faria making plans for freedom and the future.
”I thought you had everything you needed,” Teresa said. ”I took care of your business, I made a lot of money for you.... I took the risks and did the work. Isn't that enough?”