“That cop. He’s got ideas about you. Why don’t you go off with him? It would save you the trouble of living here.”
Who knew? Maybe she’d even fall for the wretch. He wasn’t much to look at, but he seemed harmless.
She laughed without merriment, a low, rasping laugh. “I know how that would go. Maybe he’d take me for his mistress for a couple of years and pay my bills until he grew tired of me. That’s just a different cage.” She paused and looked at him. “I think you know about cages.”
“Maybe,” he whispered.
He held the cigarette still in midair, remembering moments he’d tried hard to scrub from his memories. A hundred tiny humiliations, like paper cuts lacerating the soul. It was a damn grim world, and he wasn’t going anywhere in it but down. Right now he was young, but give it a few years and a touch of middle age would begin to mar his features, and then what? More of the same? Tiny scores made smaller as his value diminished?
“Hypothetically, what kind of poison would you use?” he asked. Simply for the sake of asking it, because the question was stinging his throat. It was like having a damn fish bone lodged in there. He was going to choke if he didn’t ask.
“Hypothetically? The seeds of the haba de San Ignacio are toxic. If you crushed them…or a mixture of several herbs…yes, mix several things up, say in a bottle of sherry, then the person who drank it would die quick, with no fuss.”
As soon as she said it, he felt his resistance melting. Ahead of him, inthe hot, humid street, there was nothing. Maybe he would be able to thumb a ride back to Mexico City, back to a grimy guesthouse filled with lowlifes like him, to spend his days simmering in resentment. Or he could take a chance.
He looked at her. He knew, in that moment, that separately they would have never dared to commit a murder and would have probably spent their miserable lives filled with grudges and spite. But together, homicide became not only plausible but preordained.
“When should we do it?”
“Tonight. I have the necessary ingredients.”
“You knew I’d say yes.”
“I hoped you would.”
He dropped his cigarette and squashed it with a hard stomp of his shoe.
—
Later that evening he drew his wife’s bath. This had been Inés’s task until recently. Now he was the one who’d become a handmaiden. No matter, it gave them the opportunity they needed.
Perla went into the tub, and he hurried downstairs to the kitchen. Inés had the tray with the sherry ready. He grabbed it with careful fingers.
“Make sure she drinks a glass.”
“She always drinks two glasses, if not three. She gets roaring drunk in that bathtub,” Ulises said.
Indeed, he was certain his wife had already started drinking. He knew she kept a couple of bottles of tequila in the armoire.
Inés’s hand rested on his wrist for a moment, and they stared at each other. He was so nervous he feared he’d trip on the stairs, but he maneuvered into the bathroom without issues and set the tray down by the tub. Then he poured Perla a glass and handed it to her.
She held it up between her hands, her eyes fixed on him above the rim of the glass. There was a glint to them that heralded trouble, and atelltale flush that clearly indicated he was right and she’d started sipping booze already. He smiled blandly at his wife.
“Do you need anything else?” he asked with the utmost politeness.
“Why do you stare at my niece?”
“I what?” he asked, and though immediately he felt a flicker of fear, he spoke in a casual, easy way.
“Why do you stare at Inés? Today, when we had our reunion, you kept looking in her direction.”
“I’m not sure I did.”
“And later you stepped out of the room, and you were away for a while, chatting with her. I saw you from the window. You were by the front gate.”
Perla’s face was drawn and hard, and he realized he was standing in quicksand and must navigate this carefully. He’d been careless, that was for sure, gazing at the damn girl with the same expression as the idiot cop. Also, and this he hadn’t acknowledged until now, his wife was more observant than he’d thought.
He decided outrage was the correct response and spoke in an indignant tone. “I was smoking a cigarette, that’s what I was doing. I stepped out because I was bored, and my wife wouldn’t let me play dominoes. Am I supposed to sit next to your chair all night?”
