“Well, then? What is on your mind?”
“I think you know the answer to that. I want to ask you to put on a nice dress tomorrow morning and your best shoes and hat and go with me for another ride. This time to Las Tunas, so that we might be married.” He took his mother’s wedding ring from his pocket and held itout. “This belongs on your hand. Put it on if you’ll take me as your husband. If not, fling it away, down the mountain. Fling my heart away too, and instead of taking a ride to Las Tunas tomorrow morning, I’ll catch the train back to Mexico City.”
“A wedding needs to be planned. There must be a guest list—” she said, and he was thrilled by the realization that she did not object to the idea of the wedding, merely its details. He spoke quickly, vehemently.
“Why? A wedding is a pledge, and I can pledge myself to you tomorrow. If you want a party, then throw it afterward. Invite the whole town, order a cake seven tiers tall. But I’m tired of being patient and slowly courting you. Perla, can’t you see? I won’t wait any longer.”
With that, he slid the ring upon her finger and kissed her. He thought about Inés’s mockery of his manhood as he embraced Perla and fumbled with her clothes, guiding her to the back seat of the car, which was, admittedly, not a terribly gallant spot for a lovers’ meeting, but he had wanted to avoid the danger of interruptions at the guesthouse. He also suspected that Perla, so used to knowing her place in town and the places of others, so used to being the proud, pristine Miss Inclán, wouldn’t mind an enthusiastic fuck in a vehicle. It would be proof of her irresistible charm and of his Byronic, rebellious allure.
Not that Ulises had a Byronic bone in his body. He was no tortured loner loitering upon barren hills and speaking of his lost beloved. But he’d adopted that part, between kisses, and she liked the angst-filled mixture he offered her.
It was too damn hot, and he would have preferred to be sitting in a bathtub, with a cool drink in hand, rather than unbuttoning Perla’s blouse, but he went through the motions with the ease of an actor playing a familiar role, never stuttering a line.
Afterward, lying in the back of the car, with Perla’s hand skimming over his chest in postcoital gratification and his brow damp with sweat, he remembered how Inés had laughed, and swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth.
10
It was clear that Perla’shurried nuptials were destined to become the talk of the season, and perhaps even town lore, which gave her a sense of colossal satisfaction.
Father Anselmo had been aghast when Perla and Ulises showed up at the church. The banns needed to be announced three times, the priest insisted, and wouldn’t Perla want a proper wedding with a white dress and a veil?
Ulises told Father Anselmo that the judge in Las Tunas had already married them in a civil ceremony and they could dispense with the religious one if the priest wouldn’t marry them. This shocked Father Anselmo so much that the altar boy lingering nearby almost had to splash holy water in his face to keep him from fainting.
This unorthodox arrangement pleased Perlabecause she had dreaded the thought of a wedding in white and a procession to the church. Spinsters like her were never spared mockery when they wed at her age, with the rabble making jokes about spoiled fruit. Besides, Perla knew to expect an extra amount of animosity from the lowest denizens of Puerco Ahogado, who disliked her because she’d extended them credit and then demanded repayment. As if she were supposed to function as a charity. There were also people like Brígida Pacheco, who looked down their noses at Perla because Osorio Inclán had lost his coffee business and she had to make ends meet any way she could.
The last time people had talked so ceaselessly about Perla had been more than twenty years before, when Encarnación ran away. Now the talk was different, full of surprised exclamations and a little envy. After all, the groom was handsome, and the ladies in town considered him charming.
A week after her wedding, Perla threw a reception, inviting the suitable families of Puerco Ahogado to her house. This served the purpose of a delayed wedding feast and allowed the household staff enough time to produce the culinary delights necessary for such an event. Inés had labored, sleeplessly, over the sewing machine and produced a chic, pale lavender dress that suited Perla much more than the mandatory bridal white of an ordinary wedding.
Although Perla had not asked for wedding gifts, the attendants brought presents—bottles of wine and brandy, boxes of bonbons—and Perla kissed everyone on the cheek, smiling as she told them they shouldn’t have bothered, although she would have been furious if they’d arrived empty-handed. A gift was de rigueur, in her opinion, when it came to matrimonial matters.
“Congratulations,” Cándido said coolly as he handed her a bottle of brandy. “I hope you’ll be very happy.”
“Thank you.”
“I suppose there will be changes around the house. Will you still be requiring my services?”
“Why would you think any different?”
“With a husband to assist you, I thought he might handle certain tasks.”
He was referring to the money collection. She could send Ulises to complete this errand, but he was a new face in town and unlikely to command much respect for this reason. People were always trying to come up with excuses about the state of their monetary affairs. But they feared Cándido. If he didn’t confound and terrify them with legal terms, the memory of the pistol he kept under his pillow served to facilitate their cooperation.
“I don’t see the need for that,” Perla said.
Therefore, the modifications to Perla’s life were minimal, though pleasant. Perla’s parents had not shared the same room, and she maintained that custom with her husband, so he remained in the bed he’d occupied since his arrival. It was a pleasant room, and Perla did not feel the need to transplant him from that location or alter his environment dramatically.
They did take the train to the port one morning, and came back with new shoes and perfume for her and a new bathrobe for him. Plus, she gave him some of her father’s old toiletries: the ivory comb, the silver-plated hairbrush. She’d kept those. The more expensive sellable items they’d owned she’d pawned in the city a long time ago, back when their world was coming apart. Not that there had been much to pawn. It was amazing how little money a pristine set of porcelain cups could command, especially in the horrid towns near Puerco Ahogado. The piano was not worth anything, of course, and her father had already secretly disposed of much of his wife’s jewelry by the time tragedy struck.
Her nights were the element that changed. Ulises slid into her bed and made quick work of her nightdress. He whispered against her skin, touching her until she moaned.
Although she found pleasure in bed, the pleasure of feeling the eyes of all the townspeople on her was even headier. The envy of the women,the respectful greetings of the men who now referred to her as “Mrs. Inclán Arnao de Linares”—she would not accept anything but the most formal address—filled her with pride. For a long time, she had been the spinster Inclán. They didn’t say it to her face, they didn’t dare. If she was within earshot, she was Miss Inclán, but she knew what they whispered.
Same as they had whispered about her ruined father, and about her sister and her bastard. And sometimes, one or two audacious people, they whispered that the salesman who used to stay at her guesthouse was more than a guest.
But she was now Perla Inclán Arnao de Linares, and she could erase the salesman and the other nameless nobodies, those dirty assignations when she was visiting the port.
Perla Inclán had been a respectful, dutiful daughter who wore her mourning clothes for two years, as custom dictated. And now she could be Perla Inclán Arnao de Linares, dressed in pink or blue or green, with her hand resting upon the arm of her good-looking husband as they circled the town square.
