The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (50 page)

Menardo had given her two hours to rid herself of the filth from the plane ride. When he rang up to her room, she had recovered herself and took a businesslike tone. When she stepped out of the elevator,
leather folio in hand, she looked as cool as the icy white silk. She had slipped on her big sunglasses before she stepped outside. Tacho was holding the car door. She stepped around the chauffeur, leaning as far away from him as she could. All the way to the building site she sat with a shoulder slightly turned to him, only nodding when Menardo pointed out the court building, the police station, the entrance to the country club, and the Governor’s Palace. Menardo had offered her a hand as she stepped out of the car, but she had not taken it. She walked ahead of him to survey the clearing. Menardo had lost all hope then and was about to join Tacho, who was leaning against the hood of the car, when Alegría suddenly turned and called out. Menardo had jumped, fearing a poisonous snake or a drunken Indian. But Tacho did not move, and Menardo was embarrassed to see Alegría laughing. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she said. “I was only calling you over to see this.” Menardo hurried to the place she was standing.

“Look,” she said, but when Menardo looked he saw only the ragged edge of the jungle where the bulldozers had stopped.

“What do you think?” Alegría had been pointing up into the fringe of wide, waxy leaves. Menardo looked vainly for a bird or a green tree frog or a lizard or snake. All he saw were branches, leaves, and vines in a tangle and dappled by a few shafts of sunlight. “If it’s a flower of some kind,” Menardo said, laughing nervously, “don’t expect me to see it! I leave that to the florists.”

“The light,” Alegría said with a lovely tone to her voice, as if she were in love with the light. “See?”

“Oh!” Menardo said quickly. “Yes, yes, I do!”

“There is nothing more lovely than the veiled sunlight the jungle gives. We will let this light be the theme of the entire house.”

“Yes,” Menardo said, squinting up at the tops of the jungle trees, wondering how Iliana would ever agree to have her dream home built so close to the jungle.

Alegría had grown more and more excited about the light and the ways in which the special qualities of the softly filtered sun could be enhanced by the design of the building and the placement of windows. She had talked nonstop all the way to the hotel. Menardo could only watch her breathlessly, because when Alegría was talking about her vision of what the new house could be, her face and her hands—her whole body—were vibrant. Suddenly Menardo felt sweat rolling down his sides, sliding over his ribs and soaking the top of his shorts and trousers.

In the hotel room Menardo stood in a daze as Alegría unrolled rolls of buff tracing paper and made broad sweeps with her felt pen, quickly sketching walls of glass, a central stairway in front of the glass, and a wall that partially enclosed the jungle rather than shutting it out. When she stood back and looked at him for some words, some response, Menardo felt his desire choking him. He tried to speak but the effort made his eyes water. All he could do was move his head rapidly, and the sight of him, short, stocky, eyes wide, and head nodding, was almost more than Alegría could bear.

Later Menardo would see it again and again. Alegría had turned away from him, and when she turned back, suddenly the white silk blouse had been unbuttoned so he could see her pink brassiere and her navel. He regretted he was not a polished, finished man because he knew she must be used to that sort. The two steps he took toward her he remembered were uneven. The last step he might have stumbled. He blamed Alegría’s sudden move. Just as he reached her and put his hands on her shoulders (she was as tall as he), she had stepped back, deliberately falling backward onto the hotel bed. Menardo had never experienced a seduction of this kind before. The whores had never wasted a single motion. Their moves were methodical. They left nothing to surprise. A few of the small-town girls had hoped to catch him for a husband and had made lavish displays of themselves, spreading their legs wide, hitching skirts and dresses high, slipping panties to their ankles for him. But Menardo had not been surprised; that had been the sort of behavior he had come to expect as a rising star, a man bound for wealth.

Menardo squeezed his hand down to unzip his trousers, and Alegría had moaned and pushed against him as the back of his hand pressed against the mound between her legs. She was holding him by the shoulders, pulling him down so it was difficult to get the trouser’s zipper all the way open. He felt her raise her hips high and felt her peel off her panties beneath him. At that instant, a warm, perfumed scent enveloped them, the zipper opened, but Menardo knew he would never be able to get the trousers off. He settled for an open zipper. He was barely able to push his cock inside her before he had the sensation of a runaway horse leaping from under him, leaving him, falling far far behind, then spiraling up to the explosions of light, and at last deep, soft darkness.

Alegría listened to herself. When she was of two minds about anything, she created an internal debate. She was surprised she had even considered an affair with this provincial businessman. If word ever got back to Portillo and the rest of the old men at the firm, her future in
the profession would be ruined. She would immediately be fired, and she would never work again unless she went far from Mexico City. Alegría could imagine Portillo saying, “There is a fine line, a fine balance between keeping the client happy and satisfied, and absolute surrender of good taste and moral values.” Portillo had of course been referring to the problem of clients’ demands for Roman columns and Gothic vaulted ceilings. Alegría could feel the sticky wetness leaking out between her thighs and running under her buttocks soaking the bed. With each breath Menardo’s weight on her chest was suffocating her. When she tried to shift the weight, Menardo rolled off her quickly, apologizing, asking her if she was all right. Alegría wanted to laugh at Menardo’s awkwardness and his fear that he might have caused her discomfort. Instead she rolled over with her back to him and looked at the sky out the window. It was nearing sundown. The light was a rich chrome-yellow on the white walls of the hotel. Even as she was watching, a pink tint was beginning to wash into the yellow-gold. Alegría felt her chest and throat thicken, and tears began rolling down her cheeks. She was remembering what one of the Basque students had said to her in the smoky coffeehouse near the campus in Madrid. The Basque had been the only one who had really tried to persuade her. The other communists had never taken her seriously, especially not the women. But the little Basque had shaken his head at her and warned that class defined sex for your family and you. She had laughed gaily and he had said, “Someday you’ll know. You’ll feel it. How men use you. Treat you like a thing. The rich man. The powerful men. You feel how they fuck.”

THE LITTLE BASQUE had died in the riots. She had been taking final examinations in the school of architecture, so Alegría had not cried. She could not afford to be upset during examinations. The Basques had been all they had talked about at the coffeehouse. Dying for the cause. It was what he wanted, Alegría would say when the others brought it up. But now ten years later she was lying on a hotel bed in the capital city of one of the poorest states in Mexico, crying for the Basque who
had been so short none of them had ever known his real name. “Shorty.” Was she crying for the Basque? The proletarian women would have said she was crying for herself, who else? Because they said she would always be looking out just for herself. Alegría wished she could tell the Basque:

“You are right. Menardo here thinks I am out of his class, and so he fumbles and apologizes.” Alegría had not had sex before with a man so anxious to please her. She had not had sex with a man who sensed so quickly her moods. She had been blunt with Menardo. She had told him she was risking not just her position at the firm but her entire career as an architect for him.

Menardo had listened to her discuss the dangers. But he did not share the anxiety or fear Alegría felt because he was so certain he could take care of her in the event anything happened. He had just concluded negotiations with an arms dealer in Tucson. If plans were successful, Menardo knew he would in a few more years be one of the wealthiest men in the south of Mexico. Menardo wanted to take her hand and lean close so he could get the full effect of her lovely hazel eyes. But Alegría had insisted they go downstairs quickly afterward. They had both carried rolls of blueprints when they entered the hotel dining room. Alegría was still discussing the ruin of her career and her life in low, calm tones lest any of the busboys or waiters sense urgency and eavesdrop. “You have nothing to worry about,” Menardo said expansively. “Believe me. Arrangements would be made.” Alegría had looked at the brown moon face and flat nose and the shining dark eyes and thought how little he knew or understood, despite the wealth he had begun to accumulate.

“I would hate doing nothing,” Alegría had warned him. “I would go crazy.” Menardo began to outline what he would do for Alegría in the unlikely event of dismissal, but she had cut him short. She had refused to discuss it further. It was upsetting her. There was no need to talk because nothing was going to happen.

For a long time, as Alegría and Iliana worked together closely on the interior designs for the house, Menardo was convinced their arrangement was safe. Of course he longed to have Alegría come down from Mexico City more often than twice a month, but the policies of her firm did not allow that even during the construction phase. Menardo obeyed Alegría’s dictates. If she felt that a visit to her hotel room was not wise, then Menardo was a gentleman and met her only in the hotel bar. Sometimes Alegría restricted him to visits only when Iliana was present. Iliana liked to dine at the country club when Alegría was in
town, because then Iliana could show off in front of the women from her club. Iliana would carry a roll of blueprints to dinner with her although they never discussed the plans there. The factor of Iliana and her friends at the women’s club had fooled both Alegría and Menardo. They had been so careful to watch out for Iliana and to include her in every phase, they had forgotten the trouble might come from Iliana’s so-called friends.

The other women could tell by the way Iliana talked about the female architect that she suspected nothing between that woman and her husband. None of them thought twice about the casual encounters their husbands might have. There was no worry because, if anything, casual activity kept their husbands in line at home. What they all feared was a woman who would settle for a house, maid, and money for herself and the bastards she would bear. It became a matter of sheer economics. None of them wanted their husbands’ money spent anywhere except in their households.

Like the other wives, Iliana seldom interfered with Menardo’s affairs of the heart unless it appeared a great deal of money was pouring into the other woman. In a town the size of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a phone call or two and the woman in question would be warned that her job, if she had one, and her family members, if they lived nearby, were all in jeopardy. There was an understanding among all the women in the club that there was no need to discuss such matters except perhaps in a discreet conversation between two or three club members. Certainly it was considered bad taste to bring up the subject of a husband’s escapades unless the wife herself raised the issue. All the rules were thrown to the side this time. The women in the club could not maintain the silence. Iliana’s behavior—her talk about the blueprints, color schemes, and then all those color photographs—had been more than the others could tolerate. They would have been forced to tolerate Iliana’s airs had she been invulnerable. But Iliana had been so caught up in her pretensions of reading blueprints that she had missed a fundamental fact: her husband was fucking the architect. The judge’s wife spent three days making discreet midmorning calls on all the members of the club, speaking in whispers about the duty and obligation they had to inform Iliana of the seriousness of her position. Iliana had her reputation to think of. After all, Menardo wasn’t simply fucking the company receptionist or the teenage mail clerk. Iliana had mentioned Alegría’s name more often than Menardo’s.

“The foolishness of it. The irony,” as the former ambassador’s wife
had put it. The other women were not as irritated with “Mrs. Former Ambassador” as they usually were. The former ambassador’s wife did not say so, but she also happened to know Menardo was very busy then with a business deal that, if it went as planned, would give Iliana so much money the club women would never ever be able to cut her down to size. The former ambassador’s wife knew they had to move fast. It was this: if Iliana had not talked so much about Alegría. If Iliana had not acted as if Alegría were her best friend, the other women would not have done what they did.

Alegría had guessed what had happened the instant she saw the Indian chauffeur’s face. Workmen were finishing the interior—the plastering and painting, and final cleaning of the white marble staircase.