THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS
467
-Pero mira que tio tan turco-turco!
-Cuidao, chica: es el nuevo
steady
de la Vidal.
Paco suffered from the strain of the relationship-and from a
feeling that he was being watched all the time, everywhere. He had
stopped writing to Mary. The contract with the night clubs still had
three months to go.
One hot afternoon he was wrutmg for the senora in her living
room: she was out but was expected. He had drawn the curtains
against the sun, for his head ached with the heat; and as he lay in
the darkened room, sprawled on his face upon the piled cushions of
a sofa, he suddenly had the feeling, more sharply than usual, of being
watched. Looking up, he saw a girl standing in the doorway. He knew
instantly that she was the daughter. As he rose she came into the room
and said that she was Connie Escovar. She announced that her mother
would probably not be coming home that afternoon: a dreadful thing
had happened. Some friends of hers, ladies of great social importance,
had been murdered by bandits in the provinces. Their bodies had just
arrived, horribly mutilated, and her mother had been called to the
morgue to help identify them.
While she talked Paco watched her face-they were standing very
close in the dark room-and a smile appeared on the corners of his
mouth. He was feeling more and more sure that it was this
girl
he
had felt watching-not only just now but all the time before. He saw
her coolly remarking his twitching mouth, his narrowed eyes. She asked
if he were ill. Scooping the sweat off his brow, he swore at the heat.
She offered to drive him out to the country where it might be cooler.
Her car was a yellow convertible. She drove while Paco smoked;
they did not converse. They fled the broiling suburbs and emerged into
open country. She jumped the car off the road and they rustled over
grass till they came to a grove of bamboos and a river. The moment
she stopped the car, at the river's edge, he shoved his arms around
her and a wave of unspeakable relief convulsed his taut frame. He saw
her eyelids swooning, her mouth soundlessly sighing open, as his face
swooped down, as their bodies collided, gravitated. The shock of her
mouth stunned his mind with such impact, abrupt tears scalded his
eyes. But as, moaning, he moved his mouth over her chin, her ears, her
tight throat, and felt the long-knotted ache in him sweetly easing,
sweetly uncoiling at last, she opened her eyes and, groaning, pushed
him
away. He hovered in hunger, not quite conscious, blurrily baffled–
the tears in his eyes and the moan in his
throat~but
she had sat up
