Inés gripped her broom and shook her head. “I was wondering if you wanted a cup of coffee, Aunt Perla.”
“No. Go clean Nepomuceno’s room. The new tenant is coming in a couple of weeks and that room is in disarray.”
Inés hurried away and continued with her chores. She didn’t wish to spend time in the room that had belonged to Professor Nepomuceno, which now housed nothing but dust and memories. She left Rita to clean that and helped in the kitchen instead. Fito had just been informed her aunt was letting him go, and he sat at the table while Estrella cooked and Inés washed a pan, looking forlorn.
“It’s not as if she paid me much,” he said. “Barely anything. But she did promise me a bottle of sherry for Christmas this year, and a turkey. My mother is going to be sad about the turkey.”
“Better to go now than wait years and years and discover you’re an old man,” Estrella said.
Inés looked at Estrella as she stirred a pot, her silver hairs glinting under the rays of the sun that crept through the window and into the kitchen. She wondered how many years she’d spent in this house, working for the Incláns.
Late that night, when she was about to fall asleep, Ulises came into her room. She sat up in bed, feeling the mattress dip with his weight as he slid next to her.
“I’m taking off,” he said.
“What?” she replied, groggy with sleep.
“I’m taking off.”
In the darkness of the room, she could not see his face clearly, but she sensed his grimace all the same, and in response she clutched the bedsheets before shifting and turning in his direction. She was quiet and he spoke again.
“You heard what she told me today. She expects me to be her new houseboy and chauffeur her around. She’ll never give me access to her accounts.”
She was awake all at once, rushing to speak, the words tangled in her throat. “We knew that. It’s my grandfather’s will that matters. She needs to die, that’s what we said, and then we’d divvy everything up.”
“I know what we said, but things are different now.”
“Why, because you don’t want to play at being houseboy for a little while? How long do you think I’ve been her parlormaid? Ages and ages, and I can do it for a few more months if there’ll be profit in it. A bit of humiliation won’t destroy you.”
“We’re not good at murder, you and me. If we try to kill her, we’ll make a mess of things again.”
“We haven’t been caught. Nobody suspects a thing. I don’t know how you can say we’re no good—”
“It’s a mess and you know it. I don’t want to be here anymore. I hate this damn place.”
Her lips twitched into a wry smile. “You think I love it? It’s like being embalmed alive, that’s what it is. And now, because you’re scared of going to hell—”
“I’m not afraid of hell. I’m afraid of jail and war and of being a bumwithout two pesos to rub between his fingers, but I’m not afraid of hell. I want out of here, that’s all,” he said gruffly, and he stood up quick, pulling the curtains aside to look at the moon.
“You want out? It’s that easy, huh? All for nothing. All this planning and talking for nothing.”
Her heart was beating fast and furious. She wanted to claw his eyes out, but she was afraid if she got her hands on him she’d start doing something entirely different. That she’d rip his shirt off and his trousers and rake her nails down his chest. She clamped her mouth shut and stared at the ceiling, the silence in the room piercing her ears.
“I’m taking off Sunday. Everyone will be out Sunday, they always are. Perla goes to church in the morning, and in the afternoon, she’s out visiting friends. The servants have the day off. The Zorrilla sisters won’t be around. No one will know I’m gone until late in the evening.”
She said nothing, straightening up, waiting, because although he had stopped speaking it was obvious this was but a pause. More words lingered in the air between them, heavy and sharp, yet he seemed to hold his breath and did not continue, and the uncomfortable silence settled around them once more. She wished to speak to him in violence, to blurt out nasty and awful curses, but she reined in her shivering heart.
“Moving on. Just like that,” she said at last.
“It’s too bad it ended this way,” he said, and by the way he spoke, which was almost a sigh, she knew this was the conclusion of it all.
He said nothing of her going with him, although if he’d asked, she would have said no. Down that road there were harder times and paltrier schemes. Still, it stung that he would detach himself from her with elegant indifference. She’d thought him, at times, her friend. How wrong she’d been.
“I wish you the best of luck,” she replied coolly, without meaning a single word.
“Thanks.”
She looked at the ceiling, pulled at the bedsheets, and bit her lip tokeep herself from crying. Then came the creak of the door as it closed, and she was alone. Tears pricked her eyes, but she would not let them fall onto her pillow, wiping them away with the palms of her hands.