“You really are not much for knocking, are you?”
“Cándido and Lulú have left town. They’ll be away for three weeks.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
He sprang up from the bed and laughed. “You brilliant creature,” he said, and he spun her around as if they were dancing, so that she also laughed, infected with his delight.
“We’ll have to be quick. Three weeks is an awfully short time to accomplish anything,” she told him, resting her palms against his shoulders.
“I can do it.”
She looked up at him, into his eyes. He had pretty eyes, the kind more poetic girls might tumble into without a second thought. Maybe, for a brief while, when she’d loved Salvador, she had been such a girl, a bit too soft and naïve. But life had taught her lessons, had tempered herlike finely honed steel. Like the professor had said, you developed a callus.
She had a sudden, sharp pang of fear that Ulises would disappoint her like Salvador had disappointed her, that beneath that handsome exterior he was hollow and useless. She slid her hands down and turned away from him.
He clasped her hand, and she looked again at him. “I can do it,” he assured her.
Her pulse quickened at the touch. “Yes, I know,” she said, and pulled away from him, rubbing her wrist as if he’d scalded it.
9
“That’s the problem.She doesn’t want you to woo her, not like that. Flowers and chocolates won’t work. Cándido has brought my aunt chocolates and flowers and played at polite words for a long time. She’s used to it,” Inés said.
“Should I throw her over my shoulder like a caveman? Is that what a girl like you craves?”
It was late at night. She’d slipped into his room so they could talk without anyone else around. Speaking in the darkness, with moonlight filtering through the window, it felt like a parody of a lovers’ midnight rendezvous, him sitting on the bed and smoking a cigarette while she pulled up a chair and lounged close by.
“It’s not about what I enjoy. I’m saying Cándido has done that, it’s an old routine.When you go after women, it’s not always chocolates and silly lines, is it?”
He was startled by her words, his pride needled. Silly lines! She hadn’t been there to hear him speak, and he had not given Perla a box of chocolates. He’d been a gentleman. It wasn’t his fault the woman was odd and seemed to think a kiss on the hand was an insult.
“I got the impression from her letters that might be the way to behave.”
She scoffed. “You’re wrong.”
“Then again, we didn’t correspond long enough. And she is guarded.”
A second scoff, and he couldn’t see her face clearly in the dark, but he could bet she was smiling a wide, mean smile. “Fine, then, tell me more. What kind of man does she like? Draw me a simple picture, like you would for a child.”
There was a brief silence as Inés considered his words.
“She had a longtime lover a few years ago.”
“Did she? I’m surprised.”
“Nobody knows about him.”
“Except you. How did you find out? Did you rummage through his luggage and find naughty love notes?”
“I do the laundry. I took a look at the bedsheets,” she said simply.
He muffled a laugh at that straightforward answer, and now he knew for certain she was smiling. He was skeptical about this alliance, but he was discovering a certain giddy joy in their whispered conspiracies. It was almost like a game; there was a heedless lightness he hadn’t felt in years.
“What was he like?”
“Plutarco? He was a salesman who stayed with us regularly. I don’t think he’s the kind of man she likes, he was simply the kind of man she could find in a pinch. She likes people with class, and he didn’t have any.”