“You know? In the United States they call women a ‘number.’ What’s my number, do you think?”
“I don’t know, Lucha.”
It seemed useless to talk. She, dressed as an aviator, looked very tired, very disillusioned, like Dorothy Malone in 1950s films.
“I don’t know how to reason anymore.”
“Easy, Lucha, take it easy.”
From Calzada Ignacio Zaragoza we drove onto the long avenue that leads to the airport.
“I don’t want to end up a fly in a bar.”
“A what?”
“A barfly, Savior,” she said in English.
The driver whistled, “Let them say I’m sleeping and have them bring me here…”
We arrived. The lines of taxis and private cars made me think that heaven was far too small for so many passengers.
I helped her out.
She adjusted her helmet and goggles.
“Where shall I take you?”
“With women you never know.” She smiled.
“Shall I wait for you to come back?” I said as if I hadn’t heard her.
“Aviation teaches you to be fatalistic,” she concluded, and began walking away alone, hugging herself, and she staggered a little. I moved forward to help her. She turned to look at me with a negative gesture and moved her fingers tenderly, saying goodbye.
She became lost in the crowd at the airport.
And once again, as in one of those dreams that recur and dissolve into oblivion only to be sketched out in the second repetition, my eyes met those of a woman walking behind a young porter whose movements were gallant, as if transporting luggage inside the airport were the ultimate glamorous theatrical act. This woman, modern, young, swift, elegant, with the movements of a panther, an animal of prey, worriedly followed the porter.
I looked at her just as before. Except this time I recognized her.
It was the new Senora Esparza. La Sarape. The hostess at the wake of Nazario Esparza’s first wife. The successor to the mother of our old buddy Errol. But now, when I saw her again, I knew something thanks to the prisoner in San Juan de Aragon, Miguel Aparecido.
The woman was a killer.
It’s possible I vacillated for an instant. It’s possible that when I “vacillated” I lingered too long on the word that among Mexicans acquires the meaning of rowdiness, anarchy, mockery, disorder:
“Do you see that woman going into the bar? Well, in the old days she couldn’t get enough of my dick.”
“Listen, that’s my wife.”
“Ay, how she’s grown…”
I’ve said all this so survivors can understand why I wasted precious minutes after seeing Nazario Esparza’s second wife following a porter, knowing she had killed Errol’s mother according to the more than reliable version of Miguel Aparecido in the San Juan de Aragon pen and being immediately obliged to stop her by force, drive out any fear the porter would defend his customer (why did something so improbable occur to me?), confront her, if not with facts then with my sheer physical strength (would it be superior to hers?), and take her to the security office in the airport, denounce her, bring justice to my pal Bald Errol and his dear deceased mama, all this crossed my mind at the same time that a mariachi band interposed itself between my vacillation and my haste, six characters dressed as charros, striped trousers and black jacket, silver buttons and six roof-size hats embroidered in waves of gold, hiding faces I didn’t have the slightest desire to see, perhaps fearing I’d recognize the famous Maximiliano Batalla escaped or freed unjustly from the previously mentioned prison and the presumptive killer of the similarly cited Dona Estrella de Esparza…
The criminal Sara P. disappeared among the mariachis who advanced (as if their outfits and hats were not enough) with the resonant outrage of their instruments, far from their historical origins as wedding bands,
to welcome the slim man, smiling though melancholy, with a fresh scar on his cheek, his hair plastered with gum tragacanth, lifted high by the mob of admirers who carried him shouting “torero, torero” while the above- mentioned bullfighter seemed to doubt his own fame, scattering it with an airy wave of his hand as if he were prepared to die the next time, as if he were laughing sadly at the glory given him by the aficionados who carried him and the mariachis who now attempted to play an out-of-tune pasodoble while the bullfighter reluctantly waved and rather than celebrating a victory seemed to be bidding farewell to the world at the opportune time to the uncomprehending astonishment of the flocks of tourists, Gringo, Canadian, German, Scandinavian? tanned, immune to climate changes, who formed into groups of young people and old people who wanted to be young, in beach sandals, T-shirts with the names of hotels, clubs, places of origin, colleges, first, second, third, and no ages confused in the forced gaiety of having enjoyed vacations, coming from a country, the USA, miserly in granting them, fatiguing its workers with the challenge of crossing an interminable continent that extends from sea to shining sea, while the Europeans formed a line as if they were receiving a well-deserved prize and a summer consolation won, without their knowing it, by the French government of the Popular Front and Leon Blum (who was Leon Blum?) in 1936, when paid vacations were first granted.
I made my way through mariachis, tourists, fans and the torero, in an intuitive search for an oasis of peace, since the object of my persecution had disappeared forever in the cloud of rank food and tepid drinks emanating from the transient dining rooms like foul air that had never seen the sun: The immense tunnel of an airport identical to all the other airports on earth exuded sweat, grease, flatulence, evacuations from the strategically placed WCs, but everything made sanitary thanks to large, intermittent gusts of manufactured air with subtle fragrances of mint, camomile, and violet to receive and support the next stampede of schoolgirls going on a collective vacation, not yet identified by their diminutive bikinis but still by their navy blue jumpers, flat shoes, heavy stockings, straw hats with a ribbon, the emblem of the school recorded on their cardigans. They smelled of sweet childish perspiration, of mouths irrigated by bean soup, of teeth tempered by Adams gum. They made an infernal racket because of the clear obligation to show their joy at the prospect of a European vacation, for all their faces said “Paris” and none said “Cacahuamilpa.”
This wave was followed by one of boys in soccer shirts who sang at the top of their lungs incomprehensible slogans, partisan codas older than they were, sicketybooms, bimbombams, rahrahrahs, reminding me of secondary school, the start of my life of connection to Father Filopater, Bald Errol Esparza, and my soul brother Jerico with no last name: The tumult of young people brought me closer to the past but I was established in the
