Bella Page 8

  “Pablo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, he is nothing but an old hobo, always wandering round and scaring everyone. You are not the first girl to be frightened by him, I am sure.”

  “Was an old hobo,” Lucie muttered.

  “What?”

  “He was a hobo. You killed him, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did. He tried to hurt you.”

  “I don’t think he –”

  “Now, Lucie. I did what I did to keep you safe – that is all. You will tell no one about this.” He grinned again. “But then, even if you did – who would care? No one cares for Pablo the hobo.”

  “He talked about you,” Lucie said.

  Something of César’s smile seemed to fade; and some of the brown seemed to go out of his face, which appeared all of a sudden blanched white.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t tell,” Lucie said, half-truthfully.

  César sighed. “Well – that is the end of it, then.”

  But Lucie didn’t feel as if it were over. She had many questions – questions that she didn’t think César would answer. So who to answer them?

  13

  The Quarrel

  When they returned to Little Tortuga Street, they found the family long done with a late meal, and sitting together in the parlor round the television. All but Alejandra looked up when the new arrivals came in. Mrs. Vicente called that there was some supper left on the stove, and her husband offered a brief opinion concerning its particular tastiness.

  “Very juicy tonight,” he said. “Very good chicken, Miss Lucie, indeed.”

  Lucie would have answered, that Mrs. Vicente’s chicken was always very juicy and good indeed; but she could only stumble across the kitchen, and fall down into a chair at the table.

  An assortment of voices called out her name, and the bodies to which they belonged came swarming into the kitchen, as César was examining the gash on her head.

  “Fuera del camino!” cried Josefína. “No sabes lo que está haciendo. Muevete!”

  César moved aside as he was bidden, and fell grumbling into a chair. It seemed he didn’t appreciate the usurpation of his medical duties.

  Despite the small throng around Lucie, Clara had found a way to come to her side. She watched with fixed eyes, as her mother tended to the wound on Lucie’s head, and took hold of her hand when she began especially to wince.

  “What happened?” she asked. Her question came sharp, and acrid; and was directed not to Lucie, but to César.

  “It was only –”

  “Where were you?”

  “We were only –”

  “Speak!”

  “Ay Dios mio, Clara! You will not let me!”

  So Clara fell silent, and leaned back in her chair, with her eyes trained mercilessly on her brother’s face. She watched him as a tiger would do a weak and flailing animal, while waiting for its expiration. Her fury was palpable. She would not relinquish Lucie’s hand.

  César looked helplessly to Lucie, apparently to supplicate her assistance; but she was too much distracted by the incessant poking and prodding of Josefína. It seemed her head would not stop bleeding – that, indeed, it had only become worse after being touched, and was now quite practically dripping the thick, warm liquid down into her eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand, and it came away red and sticky. She groaned, and let her head fall back; and had no attention to spare for the unhappy César.

  “I took her with me,” he said finally. “I had business, and I thought she would –”

  “You had business?” echoed Clara. We know, of course, how very intimately acquainted she was with said business; and for that reason, her voice only grew harsher as she asked: “And you took Lucie – to help you conduct your business?”

  “No! I only thought she would like the drive.”

  “It seems she didn’t.”

  “The drive was actually very nice,” Lucie said, in an attempt at intercession, having revived a little after she received a cold compress from Josefína.

  “You see?” said César. “It was very nice.”

  Clara’s eyes flashed hot as flaring embers; and César shivered violently.

  “There was only –” he began; but he was forced to pause, and to think, before he went on. “There was only a little – altercación – between Lucie and . . .”

  “Lucie and whom?” Clara persisted. Lucie, however, was again not free enough to assist; for she was just in the middle of crying out, as Josefína laid a pack of ice over a great lump that was swelling out of her arm, where old Pablo had grasped her.

  “Only an old hobo,” said César. “He was confused, he must have thought Lucie was someone else – and he became a little rough.”

  “What could you have been thinking, taking her to that place?”

  César spread his hands, and began a feeble attempt at an explanation; but was silenced by the expression on his sister’s face.

  “It is not as bad as you think, Clara,” he endeavored.

  “Not as bad as I think? Not –”

  She only threw up her hands, and then gestured to Lucie, whose head was tilted back into the cradle of Maríbel’s palms, and whose arm was being held out stiffly, while Josefína exclaimed that her shoulder had been very nearly dislocated.

  “Idiota!” Clara cried, flinging a salt shaker at César’s head. “Idiota desalmada!”

  “I am an idiot?” repeated César, obviously flabbergasted. “I am heartless? I, heartless? See yourself, and how you speak to your brother, who has done nothing wrong! Ay, yo soy desalmado! Soy tan desalmado como tú!”

  Clara sucked in a breath; and then launched the pepper shaker.

  This was all that César’s pride could endure. He brought his fist down hard on the tabletop, and jumped out of his chair. All eyes which had been on Lucie, turned to him; and he seethed silently at his dumbfounded audience, for some long moments before storming from the room.

  Alejandra had long ago fled the scene in indifference; but of those who remained, old Mateo and Eduardo slipped away with a last kind word to Lucie, the latter after having righted the shakers that his sister had displaced. Maríbel helped her mother to clean the gory debris from the table, and then both women (clearly uncomfortable in the wake of such uncommon disorder in their family unit) disappeared, too.

  Lucie, however, hardly noticed the order in which her kind nurses vanished. She only observed the moment that Clara finally let go of her hand.

  “Clara?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” answered Clara. In truth, her voice was not much sweeter for Lucie, than it had been for her brother.

  “You don’t have to be so angry,” Lucie said; not quite as a suggestion, although she would have been glad to have the words taken seriously. “Nothing so terrible happened. My head hurts, but –”

  She paused, unable to keep the image of old Pablo’s lifeless body from her mind. How long would he lie in that alley? Would he be buried, or tossed into a dumpster? She sighed, and passed a hand over her eyes.

  “I asked César what he was thinking of,” said Clara. “But what could you have been thinking? You – who knows just as well as I do, the reason why César goes where he goes? What is the matter with you?”

  Her voice was loud, and bitter. Lucie was stung. But she only leaned a little away, and pretended to see to the lump on her arm, which had thus far changed colors from red, to blue, to purple, to black. She feigned great interest in the positioning of her sleeve over its ugly head, and kept her face turned from Clara.

  “Are you going to answer me?” Clara asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Lucie said softly. She pushed back her chair, and hurried from the room, leaving Clara to stare at the wall, and shortly thereafter to go to bed – though she never strayed much, even in the quiet solitude, from what ill humor had been hers since Lucie and César returned.

  Meanwhile, Lucie lay sil
ently in her little bedroom, looking out at the dark, soft sky. Her eyes pierced the veil of the stars, just as they always did, and ascended up, up, into the mysteries of the heavens. But there was one particular star which arrested her attention, and brought her careering down from the heights of the galaxy, to hover there beside that particularly bright spot of light. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew just the same, that she was looking at the very same star she had studied all those days ago, in César’s car, on her way to the Vicentes’ for the first time. She couldn’t think at the time what she should wish for; but now she had more of an idea.

  She rolled onto her side, and looked towards the wall past which Clara’s room lay. She tried to picture her there, lying in her bed; and wondered if she was still angry. She wondered why she was angry. She wondered, was she angry with her?

  Again she turned towards the heavens, and beseeched them their benison upon Clara’s strangely hardened heart. She prayed that it might be softened by morning, so that she would not have to look again into her cold and unhappy eyes.

  14

  Robert’s Return

  Lucie rose late next morning, for her head was terribly sore, and her spirits were in an even worse state. So she closed her eyes repeatedly against the intrusion of the bright sunshine, and finally drew the blanket up over her head, feeling determined not to come out from under it all day long. But finally it grew stuffy, and she cast the blanket aside. She slipped her head under the pillow instead, but found that the position was not much better for breathing. So she suffered a fit of temper, and soon all of the bedclothes were lying on the floor. It was only a knock at the door that saved her from her frustrations, and perhaps from beginning a tearing number on the sheets with her fingernails.

  “Lucie?” said César.

  Lucie answered nothing; but he went on just the same.

  “Your brother is here. He wants to speak to you.”

  He said no more. Lucie heard his footsteps tramping off back down the hall.

  And so, she forgot for the moment her own misery, and took to wondering what could have occasioned her brother’s return to Little Tortuga Street. But she spent only a little while in the wondering, and dressed quickly, so as to go out and see Robert. She had been away from him for a goodly number of days, and she wasn’t used to it. She was so eager to catch a glimpse of him, that she forgot all about what circumstances had parted them; and she didn’t think once of the way he had abandoned her at the quarry, as she was making her hurried way out into the kitchen.

  As she emerged from the hall, her gaze gravitated directly to Robert, who was sitting neat and handsome as ever at the table. He showed no sign at all of having been riddled with bullets only a short time previous, though it must be admitted that his sister still limped a good deal, as she made her ways towards him.

  He looked up at her, and even smiled. He stood on his feet, and his eyes went to the places where he knew her wounds to be; and it could be said that a thing resembling remorse was painted across his face. He pulled out a chair for Lucie, and then sat down right beside her.

  “Hello, Lucie,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Very well, Robert, thank you.”

  “I’m very glad.”

  He looked it, too.

  It was getting on towards noon on Sunday morning, and all the apartment was empty, save for those who sat together in the kitchen. There were Lucie and Robert on one side of the table, and César and Alejandra on the other; with the former sporting rather a displeased countenance, and the latter looking upon Mr. Benoit with melting eyes and a foolish smile.

  “Why are you here today, Robert?” Lucie asked. She hoped he would say that he had come to fetch her.

  “He was invited by my sister,” César said through clenched teeth. “It seems she asked him to lunch.”

  “That’s so,” said Robert. “But I hope you were informed beforehand, César?”

  “I was not,” César hissed.

  “Oh! My apologies.”

  “Never mind it, César,” Alejandra said flippantly. “He would have had to come here, anyway, to collect his –” (and here she looked towards Lucie with an expression of the most severe distaste) “– sister.”

  “If it were up to me,” said César, “he would never have come for her at all.”

  “A very good thing it is not up to you, then! Would you have her stay here?”

  César lowered his eyes for a moment, and flushed crimson. It was all the affirmation anyone needed, who happened to be looking at him; but Lucie was not. She was still fully occupied with the happiness of her brother’s arrival, and was holding the hand he had offered her with a most ecstatic heart.

  “Come on, now,” Robert said to César, while pressing Lucie’s hand affectionately. “We had to talk sometime. Better sooner than later, am I right? Can we let bygones be bygones? I wish we could.”

  Here, even César seemed captivated for a moment by the intensity of Robert’s radiant smile; but he shook his head quickly, and adopted again his gloomy countenance. “Business is business,” he said. “But I do not see why you would accept an invitation to share a meal with my family.”

  “Because your sister asked me to, ever so kindly,” said Robert; and his smile did not falter. “And because my sister has been sharing meals with you for over a week. Would you keep me from her?”

  César said nothing; but it was perfectly clear that his sentiments hadn’t changed.

  ~

  Come noontime, the Vicentes trickled slowly back home. Mateo and Josefína arrived first, arm in arm, having journeyed directly from the little church they attended. Next came Eduardo, and a pretty young woman named Cristina, who was obviously his sweetheart, and whom he had escorted from her own church to have lunch with him. Maríbel was with them, and was chatting in a very friendly fashion with Cristina.

  Everyone was packed already round the table, when the door opened yet again, and Clara came in with Tomás. Lucie could not but be surprised at the way her good humor flew directly out the window, as her eyes left her brother, and lighted on Clara’s beau. Her smile was replaced with a deep, dark frown, and she fell to looking absently across the room, with her arms crossed tight over her chest.

  “Well!” exclaimed Maríbel. “This simply will not do. Venga, Eduardo. Ayúdame con la otra mesa.”

  This extra table was extracted from the little space between the wall and the counter, and proved to be only a flimsy card table once unfolded, with wobbling legs and a cracked plastic top. But Eduardo set it up beside the big table, and hurried off to fetch a few chairs from his mother’s work-room.

  Once this scene was all put together, the two young couples transposed themselves from the large table to the small one, with one person tucked up against each of its four sides. Eduardo waited to seat himself, till Cristina had done so; and Tomás did the same for Clara. Lucie tried very hard to find pride enough not to glance in their direction, but she was undone by a second’s too-strong curiosity. Yet, when finally she looked to the place where Clara sat with Tomás, she found sufficient cause for gladness: and this was that Clara had already been looking towards her. So she fell to lunching with renewed cheerfulness, and started a conversation with her brother that lasted fifteen long minutes – perhaps longer than the two of them had ever spoken to one another.

  Tomás and Cristina stayed for some time after lunch; but Robert, on account of the darkish glances being continually thrown him by César, cleared out about immediately. Yet he thanked Mrs. Vicente very politely for a “lovely meal,” and called Lucie after him with the same show of brotherly love as he had displayed thus far that day. Lucie was perfectly willing to follow him, but she was unfortunate enough to suffer an untimely stab of pain in her poor tender head, and an inconvenient surge of dizziness which made her stumble.

  She was stopped by Mrs. Vicente’s hand. The old woman pointed to her forehead, where there now lay an unsightly bruise of blue and green that spread abo
ut a quarter of the way down her cheek. (All the two hours or more that Robert had sat beside her, it should perhaps be mentioned, he never once noticed this new injury of his sister’s.)

  “It’s nothing, really – but thank you,” said Lucie. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  But Mrs. Vicente only frowned, and shook her head. Then she looked, very slightly, towards Robert, and her thoughts were clear enough. They were most clear, perhaps, to Maríbel, who turned to Lucie with a smile, and articulated as her mother was not able:

  “You will stay here with us, Lucie, until you are a little more well. Yes?”

  “I would rather –”

  “Of course you will.”

  Josefína nodded approvingly, for she deemed her daughter’s judgment most satisfactory.

  “Have I no say in the matter?” asked Robert, whose prodigious patience was seeming finally to wear thin – as surely it must have done, given his natural lack of the virtue.

  “I would rather –” Lucie repeated; but she got no farther than the last time, for again she was interrupted.

  Clara had been listening to this conversation from the parlor, and when it began to seem as if Lucie would continue to argue (or, rather, attempt to argue) in her brother’s favor, she rose from her place beside Tomás, and interjected. But she came very near to Lucie, and spoke softly, so that her words were audible only to that single ear.

  “You never remember to take your medicine,” she whispered. “Do you think your brother will remind you, like I do?”

  This last bit, Lucie could tell well enough, was not really a question at all, but rather only a furtherance of Clara’s already well-established dislike for Robert.

  Lucie was annoyed, and scowled at her. “What do you care?” she returned sharply. “It’s none of your business, anyway.”

  Clara stepped back, looking stung. Yet Lucie reveled for a moment in her triumph, and then looked to Robert, ready to follow him out.

  “What were you jabbering about?” he demanded. “I suppose you think you should stay here, too?”