“I still feel I should have done somethingmore. Those pictures meant so much to you.”
“Maite, you matter more than the pictures. They could have killed you if you didn’t turn them over.”
He looked at her with such tenderness that Maite let out a sigh. “Is there anyone I should phone for you? Any family members?” she asked, determined to assist him any way she could. She’d failed him once, but it would never happen again.
“God, no. Jackie already asked the same thing, but I don’t want my mother to know. She’s all the way in Guerrero, anyway. I don’t want to worry her. I’ll tell her later. Besides, I’m doing okay.”
“It must be dreadful. The pain,” she said and brushed the hair away from his forehead. But he smiled and simply raised a hand to touch her cheek.
“You don’t look too hot, either.”
“I know. I have to go to work tomorrow, they’re all going to stare…but I’ll come and see you after work. Do you need anything?”
“It’s fine, Maite. I’m fine. Well…maybe you can get me a newspaper. I’m bored.”
“I’ll bring you half a dozen.”
He chuckled. Although Maite had always hated hospitals, she lingered at his side even when the other patient sharing Rubén’s room shot her a poisonous glance because she’d come to visit rather late in the evening and the old coot wanted to sleep.
Just as Maite had thought, her return to the office was odd. All the other secretaries wanted to know what had happened, and Maite lied, saying she’d been in her boyfriend’s car when the accident took place. Her boss was merciful and told her if she didn’t feel up to it, she could stay home for a week or two, though he was not so generous as to give her time off with pay.
So she took off early from work, bought a couple of newspapers for Rubén, and headed back to the hospital. She pulled up a chair and sat next to him as he turned the pages.
“Look,” he said, pointing to a short news story with a small black-and-white picture.
Leonardo Trejo, the story said, had passed away peacefully in his sleep. The retired colonel had been sixty-four years old. His wake would be celebrated at Funeraria Gayosso. A time and address were provided.
“That’s not how it really happened,” she said.
“It’s never how it really happened.”
“I wonder how Emilio explained the corpse to the police. Unless he moved the body. But even then, the man was stabbed.”
The last time she’d seen Emilio, the coward had been pissing himself, and she hadn’t bothered asking how he was after that. He hadn’t bothered phoning her, either. She didn’t think he would drag a body out of his home.
“Maybe Emilio is involved with the Hawks, in which case he simply called another one of them. Or he phoned someone else with enough pull to get the whole thing sorted,” Rubén said as he folded the newspaper.
“They won’t come after us, will they?”
“Why would they? We didn’t kill him and the pictures are gone.”
“I can’t sleep well,” she admitted.
“It’s over,” he assured her, clasping her hand. “We have nothing they want.”
Maite brought more newspapers the next day, but although they looked everywhere, there were no more stories about the dead colonel. She wondered who the two men had been who had walked into Emilio’s house. She especially wondered about the man who killed the colonel and who saved her life.
He looked familiar. She tried to remember where she’d seen him before. She remembered his eyes, very dark, but little else.
“I feel like I’ve met him before.”
“There’s not much point in thinking about that,” Rubén told her, and kissed her as if to erase any bad memories with that gesture.
She wondered if he’d move in with her. It was senseless to keep two places. Maite’s mother would deem it all very inappropriate, to be living with a man, and a younger one at that, but Maite was frankly tired of listening to her mother.
Maite’s bruises changed color. The one on her face, near her eye, was green and could now be covered with a sensible amount of makeup and wouldn’t stand out. She spent endless minutes in front of the mirror, applying mascara and doing her hair. Then, in a fit of inspiration, she decided to buy Rubén flowers.
She realized it was unusual for a woman to get a man flowers, but his room was small and drab. She wanted to cheer him up, and since he still needed to spend a few more days in that sterile, cold hospital, she figured flowers couldn’t hurt.
