Luquin. As he made his way through the foyer, the television threw a pale, flickering light through the opened doorway. There were no other lights on. Lucky again.
He saw through the room's glass walls to the lighted deck outside where he had just been standing a few minutes before. Making sure there were no lights behind him, he eased forward and saw Luquin lounging on the sofa, facing the television. He was nodding off, hardly awake. Another step forward, but no Roque.
Suddenly he heard a toilet flush down the hall and turned just in time to see Roque coming around the corner at the other end of the hallway, fumbling at the zipper of his pants. He was hardly on his guard and probably had been nodding off in front of the television too before he got up to go to the bathroom. The man straightened his arm out horizontally in the dark hallway, and Roque walked right into its muzzle.
The cat sneezed, and Roque's head flew back as if he'd been hit with a mallet, and his feet shot out from under him. He hit the floor with a sloppy whump, half a second after most of his brain hit the hallway wall.
The man wheeled around and was standing in front of the huge entertainment screen facing Luquin while Luquin was still trying to get to his feet. When he finally righted and steadied himself, the man was holding the remote control on the screen. The sound went off.
They stood facing each other in the silence, the coffee table between them.
“Sientese, ” the man said. Luquin's expression was slack, and the pale light from the screen was jumping all over his face, heightening his expression of shock. “Sit down, ”the man repeated in English.
Luquin dumbly complied, collapsing into the exact spot from where he'd struggled so hard to get up a moment before. The man walked to the coffee table. Then he stepped around it, looming over Luquin, his camouflaged genitals dangling an arm's reach away from Luquin's face. The man sat down slowly on top of the coffee table, his knees almost touching Luquin's knees.
“Take off your shirt.”
A couple of beats passed before Luquin began unbuttoning his guayabera. When he had it off, the man reached out and took it from him. Slowly he began wiping his face with it, smearing away the paint, his eyes latched on to Luquin's eyes as firmly as if they had been little hands holding him. Luquin stared, watching as the color of the man's flesh emerged from underneath the paint. His eyes narrowed a couple of times involuntarily as he tried instinctively to recognize the man underneath the paint.
Suddenly he realized who it was.
Luquin went limp and sank back on the sofa. The odor of feces filled the room as Luquin's mouth sagged in stupefaction. Some men have a sixth sense about their last moments, something that tells them that this time it will not be a close call. Often such an intuitive certainty is dumbfounding, and that moment of realization sucks everything out of them. That's the way it was for Cayetano Luquin. Now there were only two things left: death, and the fear of death.
The man was surprised by this sudden collapse. He had always anticipated that Luquin would fight insanely, like a rabid coyote. This was unanticipated. But it meant nothing, one way or the other.
“Get on the floor.”
Luquin looked at him blankly, without comprehension.
The man stood. “Get on the floor.”
Luquin hesitated, then slid sideways off the sofa and onto the floor. He didn't know what position to take on the floor, so he kind of knelt there, almost on his side, eyes rolled at his adversary.
“On your back, ”the man said. Then, standing over Luquin, he bent and unbuckled Luquin's belt and then the waistband of his trousers. Then he flipped off Luquin's expensive alligator loafers. He grabbed the bottom of his silk trousers and pulled them off. He stood back, looking at him.
“Pull off your underwear.”
Luquin rolled around on the floor, squirming out of his feces-soaked underwear.
“Stuff them in your mouth.”
Luquin did, without hesitation.
Then the man went back to the coffee table and sat down again. He looked at Luquin, studying him. His body was surprisingly well kept for a man his age. Almost athletic.
“What do you think, Tano, ”the man asked, “is fear different for different people? Is there only ‘fear,’a single thing that is the same for everyone? Or are there fears? ”He thought a moment. “A child's fear. Do you think it's different from a man's fear? ”He paused as if he were letting Luquin contemplate that. And then he said: “How could it not be?
“And how long can a human being be afraid, Tano? ”the man asked in a quiet, conversational tone. He waited for an answer, as though he actually expected Luquin to respond. “A few days? Weeks? Months? ”Pause. “To me, it seems that after a time, and that time is probably different for different people, fear turns into something else. For you, a person so experienced in such things, who knows, that period of time might be… endless.”
He pondered this a moment.
“What do you think? ”he asked Luquin again. “You're something of a philosopher on the subject.”
Luquin lay on the floor transfixed, his fecal-drenched underwear hanging out of his mouth, his forearms raised, wrists cocked back in a posture of benumbed disbelief.
“Here's what I think, Tano, ”the man continued. “I think that after a lengthy time, if that thing which causes fear continues and does not go away, then fear itself is transformed, almost like a chemical reaction. It turns to horror. And that, I think, is a more intense experience. Horror is miedo profundo.”
The man noted that Luquin's eyes were beginning to acquire the glassy look of disassociation. A film covered the eyes in such moments, like a cataract, though not milky in that way, but rather glittery, reflective, so that the film caught the light and obscured the eye behind the reflection.
The man studied Luquin in the pale, flickering light of the television, the perfect aura for what was about to happen. It was just the right shade of pale. And its jerky light was just the right modulation for horror.
Luquin was motionless, his forearms still raised, wrists still cocked back.
“Let us explore together these philosophical questions, Cayetano, you and I. You, el maestro del horrible. And I the novicio. Between us, surely, we can come to some deep and secret understanding of this timeless subject.”
Chapter 52
Jorge Macias produced his own cell phone and pushed a button. “Bring the car around, ”he said, his eyes never leaving Titus.
In an instant Titus felt everything shifting. His own stupidity had triggered something here, and he had the sickening feeling that he had turned a very serious corner.
Speaking carefully, Macias said, “You're going to go with me now. At this moment someone is pointing a gun at you, so please cooperate. No problems. Let's go.”
Titus's options were few. If nothing else, Burden had hammered into his head the downside of making a scene. A scene had an aftermath, it had ramifications. They didn't want ramifications. Doing as Macias wanted seemed the prudent course. If it wasn't too damn late to be prudent.
With a sure and casual air, Macias guided Titus through the courtyard and into the waiting area just outside the bar. A Mexican man was waiting there for them.
“Luis isn't answering, ”the man said. “What's going on?”
“I don't know, ”Macias said.
Titus's phone rang.
Macias's head snapped around as he took Titus's arm. “Answer it, ”he said. “And be very careful.”
As Titus answered the phone, Macias and his man walked him toward the men's room.
“Yes, ”Titus said.
“There's been a glitch, ”Kal said.
“Yeah, I know.”
They were inside the men's room now, and Macias's guard put his foot against the door as Macias grabbed the phone from Titus.
