She tosses her hair again. “Perhaps they think you won’t return.”
“I always come home.”
“Yes, but —”
“Nothing is different, Lucia.”
“We are different, Manuel.”
He feels heat flood his face. “Our separation has nothing to do with my profession.”
She shrugs. “Perhaps it’s easier now for you to leave us.”
“Is that what you think?”
She says nothing.
“Have you been putting ideas in the heads of certain employees of the state?” he asks.
“Why should they listen to me?”
She always does this, answers a question with another question.
“I have no life without my connection to the musical world,” he says, staring into a face so familiar that he could map out each crease and freckle by heart. She’s changed in twenty-two years, become leaner, and those violet-flecked eyes seem duller. Life wears them all down, even the privileged few.
“My parents are coming over soon,” she says.
Manuel takes a step backward and nearly falls down the stone staircase. Lucia smiles, and he can’t help himself. He smiles, too. It’s no secret that her parents believe he’s Lucia’s big mistake. She even reaches out a hand to rescue him, and they touch, her skin still soft after all these years.
No, that’s a lie. Her skin is rough and dry, like his.
A baby giggles in the arms of a passing girl. The street is lively this time of the evening, last of the workers coming home, some toting packages, many with nothing. A few old-timers hang out on the sea wall drinking rum from bottles in paper bags. There is music, of course, but not the kind tourists crave, no picturesque ancients singing son or strumming homemade guitars: this is Mexican pop music blasting from someone’s radio. Señora Castilla, who lives in the flat next door, comes out with her watering can to freshen up her window boxes. Seeing Manuel and Lucia, she waters quickly and hurriedly withdraws. She is a sensitive woman, a teacher of post-colonial studies at the university.
Lucia lets go of his hand, then steps out onto the porch with him. Her expression has changed. She looks afraid, and when she speaks, it is in a whisper.
“Eric is in trouble.”
This is the helpful nephew, a brilliant boy who already manages kitchen operations at one of the sprawling beach resorts.
“How?” Manuel asks. He sees the vein in her neck pulse. She is wearing a cotton sweater and jeans rolled up mid-calf. The tiny stud earrings were a present he brought back from Italy.
He touches her thin shoulder. This is like old times, when he would comfort her through her nervous episodes.
“He’s been apprehended,” she says.
“Yes?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yes?”
She tosses her hands into the air. “A total squalid mess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We’re all sorry, Manuel.”
“Can your parents help?”
“Of course, they’re making submissions to certain people. They’re coming over tonight to discuss tactics.” She checks her watch, the fake Bulova he bought off a street vendor in Paris. “But because the hotel is owned by Spain, our government ...” She doesn’t need to fill in the rest of the sentence. Manuel understands perfectly: the state must show itself to have no patience with illegalities or the resorts might disappear, leaving the island even more destitute.
“What has Eric been accused of?” he asks. The list of possibilities is long: diverting kitchen supplies being the most obvious. Manuel has sampled its offerings many times. But it could be something nastier, procuring women for conventioneers, or robbing suppliers.
“I can’t say,” Lucia tells him.
That is how he leaves her, a small-framed woman, no longer young, standing in the doorway of the house they once shared.
Guillermo is no help. Manuel’s colleague at the Foundation for Filmic Arts stares at the computer screen, hand on mouse, editing his latest masterpiece. “I need two more minutes of music,” he says. “Ending’s reshot and your score doesn’t work.”
“Write me a letter I can take to the Department of Immigration,” Manuel urges, while his friend presses a key, and swoosh, the figure on the monitor disappears.
Mónica saunters in, holding two mugs of coffee. “You look terrible,” she says, giving Manuel a quick once-over. Then to Guillermo: “Delete the reaction shot. No, next one.” She leans over his shoulder, sipping one coffee and recklessly setting the other next to the precious keyboard. She points at the screen. “Too obvious. Flash back to the kid instead.” She straightens and says to Manuel, “Have you brought us the final two minutes?”
Guillermo, without lifting his gaze from his work, says, “I just told him about it.”
Manuel leans against the concrete block wall — this building was built during the Soviet era — pressing his shoulder blades against a poster advertising Neptuna’s most recent triumph, a documentary about the revival of certain antique grain cultivation processes. He moans. “No one is listening to me!”
“You’re in a state,” Mónica observes.
“My flight for Montreal takes off on Monday, but they’ve denied me a visa.”
Guillermo finally twists around on his stool and glances at his colleague. “Tough luck, brother.” He uses the resigned tone that is much in fashion.
They work in a converted elementary school classroom that used to be open air on one side but has long since been boxed in. Guillermo and Manuel rigged up the trestle table that the computer rests on.
“Tough luck?” Manuel snorts. “It’s a catastrophe!” He hovers over his friends, smelling the coffee no one has offered. “I could be blacklisted, never able to leave. The only reason I can survive in this backwater is because I get out whenever I please.”
“Lucky you,” Mónica says.
Guillermo is silent.
“You two are used to being stuck here,” Manuel rails on. “But I’m not. They might as well haul me off in a straitjacket.” He knows how this sounds, but he’s too upset to care. They’re jealous of his privileges, but he’s earned them, and through his travels he brings honour to the country.
Guillermo taps on the keyboard, slurps coffee, and peers at the screen, which is fast-forwarding through the garden scene: Papa and the boy find the bleating goat, look up to see a man with knife in hand. This is where Manuel composed a sprightly arrangement of the children’s song “Señora Santana, Why Does the Boy Cry?”
“I’ve been invited to attend festivals in Madrid, Seville, Lyon, and Zurich next year,” he says. “It’s inconceivable that they can hold me prisoner here.”
He waits for reassurance.
Mónica, without glancing up, repeats, “Inconceivable.”
Her tone, inflected with irony, enrages Manuel. “Lucia is gouging me. She must have her trips to the massage therapist and special shoes for arch support. I can’t possibly survive on the pittance of my conservatory salary.” Realizing that his colleagues are forced to survive on a similar pittance, he quickly adds, “When I go abroad, don’t I bring you domestic items and computer software and —” He searches for an item that made Guillermo shout with joy. “This external hard drive,