After supper, Inés offered to help take away the dishes and bent down next to him.
“I told you to give it a try,” she whispered.
He stared at the girl as she straightened up and walked around the table, taking the other plates to the kitchen. Bold indeed! She was challenging him, practically waving a red flag before a bull. Her smile, as she walked out of the dining room, was dazzling.
If she thought she was going to intimidate him or force him to accept her as a partner in this scheme, she was wrong. He’d show her. One date with Perla and she’d be head over heels, and then no amount of poison this girl might try to pour into her ear would have an effect. Besides, she was probably one of those people who pretend to have guts rather than someone with true audacity. If he dragged her in front of Perla, the girl would crumble.
Anyway, he might as well give it a try, as she said. Put his plans in motion.
“Miss Inclán, I’m wondering if we might go for a ride?” he asked. “We could look at the mountainside. Nepomuceno was talking about a waterfall nearby that I have a thought to photograph.”
He hadn’t had a chance to be alone with her. They’d walked around the town square the day before, and they’d had meals together, but except for that one brief conversation when she’d welcomed him to the house, there had always been others around them.
“I suppose we could, although it will probably rain later,” Perla said, as she reached for a cigarette. “It would be best if we stayed home.”
He quickly lit it for her, fingers nimble upon his lighter. “But the sky looks lovely outside.”
“The rains shall come.”
“Nevertheless, I’d love to drive up to the mountains. I promise I’ll be careful with your car.”
Perla seemed to consider his proposition as she gazed at him and blew a plume of smoke. “Fito will take us there. You don’t know the area, Mr. Linares. The mountains can be treacherous.”
“Are you going to the Devil?” the girl asked loudly. Like a treacherous imp, she seemed to emerge from the blackest of shadows and smiled as she snatched his dirty glass.
“What?” he replied.
“The Devil’s Chair. You get a view of the trees and the mountains from there. Although if you want to photograph the waterfall, you must go higher.”
“Interjecting yourself into conversations when you haven’t been invited to contribute is impolite,” Perla chided her.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Perla. Will you be having coffee?” the girl asked, lowering her eyes with a demureness that was patently false.
She brought his coffee and it was so hot it scalded Ulises’s tongue, and he fumed in mute fury. Shortly after that, Perla and Ulises were in the car, with Fito serving as their chauffeur, which meant they were not alone, which further irritated him. The driver whistled a tune as he turned the wheel. Ulises found the noise annoying, but Perla did not seem bothered by it and he clapped his mouth shut, not wanting to be rude.
As the car moved toward the outskirts of town, he began to see orange trees, then banana trees and coffee trees, which thrived on the rugged mountain range. Mandarin and lime trees were also sprinkled here and there.
Then the surroundings changed, and they abandoned the farmable lands, heading into the humid pin oak and hickory forests. The trunksof trees were encrusted with orchids and bromeliads, and the soil was blanketed with ferns. The lower slopes had long been turned into farmland, the old-growth forests chopped down, but in the highlands the ancient trees enshrouded the mountains.
He quickly realized why Perla had asked Fito to drive them. The road that led up the mountain was a collection of sinuous turns and potholes.
“This is Paso de Valientes,” Perla said.
The ravine below gave him vertigo. “It’s a wonder people use this road with any regularity.”
“During the Revolution soldiers used this path. And before that, Santa Anna’s forces marched through here,” Perla explained. “Perhaps one day someone might come to grow coffee, perhaps not.”
At last, Fito stopped the car and pointed at a waterfall that thundered down a rocky cliff. Ulises stepped out of the car, pulled out his camera—he hadn’t had the heart to sell this one, and anyway, it wasn’t expensive—and took a few pictures. Perla and Ulises looked at the waterfall with its perpetual veil of mist while Fito stayed in the car.
Against this backdrop of natural beauty, he planned to make his advance. It was a pity that Fito was close by, but Ulises was ready to recite a few lines of poetry for the sake of Perla, with or without the driver in earshot. Yet before he could utter a single word, the rain began to fall.
“We must go,” Perla said.
“It’s a drizzle,” he protested.
Perla rushed back to the car. He followed her. The rain fell lightly over their heads until they reached the area with the fruit trees. At that point, it poured down from the sky with abandon. Water sluiced down the mountain. Cactus fields were turned into mud pits. Fito whistled more songs as he drove. When Ulises looked at the driver in the rearview mirror, he thought there was a mocking tinge to his face. Perla seemed remote, looking at the droplets that slid down the car’s windows.
At last, they were back in the town and the guesthouse came intoview. The distance from the vehicle to the front of the house was but a few paces, and yet by the time he opened the car door for Perla, offered her his arm, crossed the patio, and walked inside, his clothes were drenched.