“Yes?” she asked.
“Hi,” Maite said. “We’re looking for a journalist. For Lara.”
“I’m Jessica Laramie,” the woman said. “Everyone calls me Lara. And you are?”
“I’m Maite. And this is Rubén. Emilio Lomelí gave us your address.” Maite felt his name alone was like the key to a magical kingdom, which would open any door, but the woman looked at them curiously. Maite’s fingers were still a bit dirty from the ink, and she felt like placing her hands behind her back, hiding them.
Her dress didn’t have pockets so she couldn’t slide her hands into them and tuck them out of sight. It was an ugly dress, too. The journalist’s clothes looked simple but chic. Maite’s dress was dark navy, the collar reached her chin. Her mother had gifted it to her the year before. She had no idea why she’d worn it, and now…ah…her horrid hands.
“Everything’s all right with Emilio?” Jessica asked.
“With him, yes. But we were wondering if you’d talk to us for a few minutes. It’s about a friend of ours, and he thinks you might be able to help us,” Rubén said. “Please, we’ve come all the way from Mexico City. Do you have five minutes?”
The woman tilted her head, probably trying to figure out what was up with them. The young man in a wrinkled t-shirt and blue jeans and the secretary who looked exactly like a secretary, wearing her prim dress. The journalist probably thought they didn’t seem like Emilio’s usual friends. No, Maite imagined Emilio’s friends as a crowd of glittering people, very fancy, very smooth.
“Come on in,” Jessica told them.
They followed the woman into a small living room with rattan furniture and a multitude of cacti. There was a bookcase with ceramic figurines and pots made of barro negro, and another bookcase with stacks of magazines and books. The woman sat in a low chair, and they took the rattan couch.
“So who’s your friend?” the woman asked, grabbing a box of cigarettes that was resting on a circular coffee table and taking one out.
“Leonora. She came to see you. Now she’s disappeared. We’re worried about her,” Rubén said.
The woman lit her cigarette and pressed it against her lips. “I see. I’m not sure why you’re here, though.”
“You’re one of the last persons who spoke to her, and maybe you know where she might be.”
“Aha. She didn’t leave me an itinerary, you know.”
“Perhaps if you told us what you talked about?”
The woman shook her head. On the circular table there was also a glass, half empty, and the woman raised it to her lips, the ice clinking against the rim. “We talked about a possible story. I can’t discuss the particulars with you. You’ve made a long trip for nothing.”
“We know about the photos,” Maite ventured, wondering if that might get them anywhere. She clutched her hands tight before her. No one would be able to see the stains on her hands if she maintained that pose.
The woman set the glass down again, then crossed her legs and rested her elbow on her knee, leaning forward. She had long fingers, a good manicure. The tips of her nails were white half-moons. “You’ve seen them?”
“No. But we have a good idea of what’s in them. Anyway, we need to know what you talked about,” Rubén said. “We’re Leonora’s friends, we swear to god. You can phone Emilio and ask him if he knows us.”
Jessica didn’t reply. She kept looking at them.
“We’re trying to find out what happened to her,” Maite added. Now she clutched her hands harder. Now she was a supplicant.
The journalist sighed. “I imagine the same thing that happens to everyone that goes missing these days. You want to know what Leonora and I talked about? Exactly that. The disappearance of activists, the wiretapping of phones, the massacre in San Cosme on Corpus Christi day.”
“You were there?” Rubén asked.
“No. But plenty of my colleagues were.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I’m a freelancer. I’ve got stuff inTimeand a bunch of other places. I’ve been covering Mexico for two years. Before that, I was in Peru.”
The woman took another sip of her drink, another puff of her cigarette. Practiced, elegant motions. She had little wrinkles around the eyes and her skin was dull, but the journalist was still attractive. Maite recalled what Rubén had said—Emilio slept with anything that moved—and she wondered if this was another one of his conquests. Maybe Emilio had a picture of her manicured pinkie in his house, or the eye, blown up, magnified, until it didn’t look like an eye.
“You talked about the attacks in San Cosme. What else?”
“Your newspapers are saying the students were armed, that they instigated this.El Sol de México, many other places, they’re taking the government line. They’re trying to wash the government clean. Leonora wanted to change that. She said she had access, through a family member, to pictures which proved the Hawks attacked the students and they were doing so with presidential orders. Not only that, the CIA helped train them.”
