For a moment he was seized with the mad desire to run across the street, into the restaurant, and yell her name at the top of his lungs. If they threw him out, it wouldn’t matter.
The rain now half concealed the lights of the restaurant and the neon curves of its name, making it seem terribly distant, almost a mirage in a desert.
The many evenings he had spent with his head filled with thoughts of Inés; the tertulias when he watched her move around the room, analyzing every motion of her head and tucking away the memory of her smiles. These moments returned to him, urging Bartolo to act, to seek the girl and seek answers.
He took a tentative step, but a car that came roaring down the street spooked him and made him take three steps back. He almost collided with a woman carrying packages.
“How rude!” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, clutching his hat tight, and maneuvered back under the awning. Embarrassed, he walked away from the restaurant, his eyes firmly on the ground, remembering that he needed to buy the chocolates.
—
A man in a gray suit leaned a shoulder against a wall and lit a cigarette, watching with interest the young fellow who desperately clutched a hat between his hands and walked quickly away. He waited, shielded at the entrance of an apartment building, until he was certain the man would not return, then strolled into the restaurant.
He handed his coat and his hat to a checkroom girl, then made his way to the back of the venue, where, tucked in a cozy booth with a grand mirror behind it, there sat a woman in a red dress drinking a martini. She was attired as if heading to a party, and her dark eyes, heavy with mascara, had an air of authority, a sureness, that made her irresistible. He turned to a server and asked him to send another martini to the table and sat down.
“I hope you didn’t order dinner without me.”
“I was about to. You took your time.”
“I had to wait. You had a tail. You picked him up when you were coming out of Rincón de Goya. You won’t guess who it was,” he said, and took out a cigarette.
“Bartolo,” she replied smoothly.
He was surprised. His fingers faltered and no flame sprang from the lighter.
She smiled.
“You know me better than to think I wouldn’t notice someone was tailing me. I saw his reflection in a shop window. I could have shaken him off three blocks away from here.”
“Then why didn’t you?” he replied. He’d taught her how to ensure she was not being followed, just as he’d taught her how to identify a mark, how to reel them in, and a myriad of tricks.
“I wanted to see what he’d do.”
“He stood across the street staring in this direction before rushing away.”
The server returned and placed the martini before him. He rested his elbows on the table for a moment before carefully taking a sip.
“How long did he stand there?”
“Five good minutes. I couldn’t come in because he might see me, so I hid for a bit and watched him. If you recognized him and you really could have shaken him off, then you should have done that. It was irritating to stand out there in the rain.”
“You didn’t have to follow him. I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“I’m your business partner, and if I notice someone’s tailing you, I’m going to try to figure out what’s happening. I bet you couldn’t get rid of him,” he said, almost angrily, because he felt a little jealous, a little upset, suspecting that she wanted Bartolo to see her.
“That shows how much you know,” she said with a petulant shake of the head. She bit her lip, almost shyly, glancing down, her voice low. “I thought that my aunt had sent him to find me. But he did not speak a word to me, he did not try to detain me.”
He finally lit his cigarette. “It’s not as if he would have any grounds to do that.”
“No. Yet for a moment I thought he’d drag me back to Puerco Ahogado, to that house. That horrid house with its iron gates where I was meant to die.”
She had nightmares sometimes. Dreams that had her shaking in fear until she snapped her eyes open and touched the scar where the bullet went in, as if to reassure herself it was indeed an old scar that had healed and not a fresh wound. But those were nothing but bad dreams, old fears; they could not pay them heed.
“We ought to leave for a while,” she said nevertheless.
“Why? It’s probably nothing more than an awful coincidence, and we’ll never see the man again.”
