Part 15 (1/2)
”Just to let you know, that's all.” Across the street a taxi driver blasted his horn at another driver who'd tried to cut him off. ”So you wouldn't be worried about me.”
”And now you want us to relax, knowing you ran off with two little old men?”
”We didn't plan it this way,” she said, then repeated herself over the traffic and the flush of heat she could feel spreading across her chest.
”You also never said anything about taking a trip,” her mother said. ”What you want is to go have your fun, leave us here, and then come back whenever you feel like it because here you always have a bed.”
”Are you saying not to come back?” The remaining minutes on her calling card were counting down on the digital screen above the keypad, and she was glad she bought only enough for a five-minute call.
”Not if you are going to act like a woman who any man can take to sleep wherever he decides you will lie down, and you run off with him.”
She rubbed the nape of her neck and could feel a feverish sweat soaking through her hair. ”Celestino is not just any man.”
”He is to me, he is to your tia. We only know him from looking through the window when he drops you off across the street. For us, he is any any man.” man.”
”Like bringing him to the house would change things, after the way the two of you talk about him.”
”At least then we would know who you ran away with.”
”Maybe later I will bring him to the house.”
”And when will that be, when you come to tell us that already you married him?”
”I never said we were getting married, that things were that serious.”
”Not serious for getting married, but serious for other things,” her mother said. ”And if he gets you in trouble?”
”Trouble how?”
”Trouble the way old men can get young women in trouble.”
”You know if that was even possible for me, it would have happened years ago.”
”With a little faith, it would have.”
”I had faith.”
”If you had waited.”
”I did wait,” she said. ”He was the one who didn't wait, remember?”
”You never stop blaming the poor man, dead so many years.” Her mother had more to say on this matter, but by now the automated voice had announced that only a few seconds remained on the calling card. Socorro thought about going back to the pharmacy to buy another card so they could finish their conversation, then realized they'd been having the same conversation for years and would probably continue to do so. Now she only had to wait for the seconds to tick away.
32.
The restaurant at Hotel de los Monteros overlooked the plaza and a corner of the church. Since it was barely five o'clock, the hour Don Fidencio normally ate his dinner, they were the only customers in the place. The waiter had sat them at a table near the large picture window, smudged from people stopping to peer through the tinted gla.s.s. The old man was sitting closest to the window and next to the new shopping bags that sat on the extra chair.
They were still looking out the window when the waiter came around to their table. His gaunt and slouched posture made him appear to be much shorter than he actually was. He was dressed in a white s.h.i.+rt, black pants and vest, and a faded bow tie that tilted upward like a broken weather vane.
”Would you care to order something to drink - coffee, maybe a drink from the bar?”
”A mineral water,” Socorro said.
”For me, a coffee,” Don Celestino answered.
”And something for the gentleman?”
Don Fidencio looked up from the menu and then turned around to make sure he was talking to him.
”Bring me a Carta Blanca.”
The waiter nodded and walked into the back.
”Are you sure you should be drinking?” Socorro asked.
”What's so wrong with drinking one beer?”
”Because of your medicines,” Don Celestino said. ”All the trouble of going to the pharmacy, and now you want to be drinking?”
The old man placed a hand on either corner of the table. ”In the first place, it was your idea to buy a bagful of medicines, not mine. And in the second place, it has been forty years that I've been taking medicines and it never stopped me from having a beer.”
”Before you weren't ninety-one or living in a nursing home.”
”So far you've told me all the reasons that I should be drinking.”
”Say what you want, Fidencio, but you need to take care of yourself, at least for this trip.”
”What you want is for me to stop living,” he responded. ”If I keep taking the medicines that you bought me, what does it matter? Just let me take care of the rest.”
The waiter returned with the order and made a display of pouring the beer into the small gla.s.s. He set a tiny bowl of limes to one side of the drink.
When the waiter left, Socorro reached over to the extra chair and set the three shopping bags on the table. ”Don't you want to open them?”
”You found everything?” the old man asked.
”Almost,” she said. ”We had to go to two different stores for the toothbrushes and the deodorant and the shavers.”
Don Fidencio glanced again at the three medium-size shopping bags propped up in front of him. ”And the other thing?”
”Look inside the bag,” his brother replied.
”Unless you bought one for a baby, I don't know where you could have put it.”
Socorro opened one of the bags and handed him a clear plastic package, a little bigger than a manila envelope. He turned it over several times. ”And this?”
”Open it.”