just like her old self, but at others it was like talking to a small child.
The first thing they should do after this was over was to get help for her. But how and where? On Providencia all the girls had dreamt of going home, but once off the island, once away from him, Placida had found that the thought of returning to Cartagena, to the familiar streets and familiar faces of family and friends, seemed not only unreal but also, in some strange way, the ultimate surrender. It was as if the past could only be buried as a single entity; if she was ever to be happy again the slate had to be wiped completely clean.
She wondered if they would receive the money they had been promised. The man had been angry last night, and she supposed he would be again if nothing had happened, but what else could she do? If he refused to pay them then who could they complain to?
She grimaced, and felt another knot tightening in her gut.
It was almost dark now, and maybe the air was cooler, but the thought of trying to open the window was too daunting. Victoria could do it when she came back. If she came back.
Where the hell had she got to? Surely the obviousness of her condition would have saved her from being hassled in the street.
Placida thought about the baby growing inside her own belly. For the child’s sake she knew she should go back to Cartagena, where her family could certainly offer him or her a better start in life than she could manage on her own. She herself had been happy enough in the house in La Matuna, and the garden with its sweet-smelling hibiscus flowers. Maybe it had been different at the time but she found it hard to remember having a care in the world as she grew up, at least not until Rogelio came into her life, and her father’s discovery, not that much later, that she was no longer a virgin.
She laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all, and felt something shift inside her. It wasn’t a cramp like the others and for one delightful moment she thought it must be the baby’s first kick, but then a hot white light seemed to explode inside her, so sweet and so painful, and her heart seemed to thunder in her head. Her back arched once, and as she slumped back down on to the bed the darkness fell across her brain like a swirling black sheet.
A couple of blocks down Miami Beach’s Washington Avenue, Victoria Marín was looking in vain for a street sign. It had taken her much longer than she’d expected to find a drugstore and now, clasping the bag containing the new supply of laxatives, she couldn’t seem to find the hotel again. The pavements had seemed to suddenly fill up once the sun went down, and with all the non-stop motion and incessant noise she was finding it hard to think.
It had to be that way, she thought, staring hopefully down the neon-drenched street. That building in the distance might be the hotel. It looked white, and its shape seemed familiar.
As she started to walk a hand suddenly grasped her around the waist. ‘And how much would you be?’ the man asked in Cuban-accented Spanish, his hand working its way up her T-shirt towards a breast.
She stopped and looked at him, tears erupting from her eyes.
His leer gave way to surprise, and then the hand was gone, and she had a fleeting glimpse of his angry face as he turned away. Why was he angry? she wondered. What had she done?
Several people were staring at her, she realized. She hurried on, passing through the aromatic clouds which hung like advertising hoardings outside the restaurants. She was hungry, she thought, and there was only forty cents left in her pocket. They would have to ask the man for some money when he returned that evening.
She reached the building she thought she’d recognized, but even up close she couldn’t be sure – they all looked alike, and she hadn’t thought to check the name when she went out. But the fat woman behind the reception desk was familiar, and so was the look of contempt she threw Victoria’s way.
She thinks we’re whores, Victoria thought, and remembered, clear as if it had been yesterday, Marysa shouting at Placida that ‘whores got paid’, that the five of them were slaves, not whores. ‘Slaves have no choice!’ she had yelled, eyes glittering with angry tears. ‘None of this is our fault! None of it!’
It had been a comforting thought then, and it still was. Victoria started to climb the stairs, taking it slowly. Even though the pellets had all come safely through, her body still felt strange. It was like a country after invaders had been expelled, she thought – it would take time to get back to normal.
She remembered sifting through her shit for the condom-wrapped pellets and shuddered involuntarily, even as her mind thought how strange it was, getting upset about something like that after all they’d been through.
She stopped on a landing, and tried to remember how many flights she’d climbed. Through a window she could see a fat crescent moon setting behind the city, and she stood there for several minutes staring at it, lost in a thoughtless reverie.
Eventually she turned away, and again there were tears in her eyes – these days she couldn’t seem to stop crying. But at least she was on the right floor, and it took only a few moments to reach the door with the badly painted number 314.
‘I’m back,’ she said cheerfully as she walked in, and it was several seconds before her mind accepted the information her eyes were passing on. Placida was lying on her back, one leg raised, its foot twisted inwards. Her eyes were wide open and seemed full of surprise.
Her skin was still warm to the touch, but there was no doubting that she was dead. Victoria sank to her knees, her arms on the bed, like a child about to say her bedtime prayers. This time the tears didn’t come, just a soft mewling sound, which seemed to be seeping out of some crack in the night, but which she knew was emanating from her own mouth.
She would never know how long she stayed in that position. The next thing she remembered she was gathering her few things together and, on a sudden impulse, taking Placida’s passport as well as her own. She crossed her friend’s arms, closed her eyes and mouth, straightened her legs and covered her to the neck with one of the hotel’s grimy sheets. Then, after one long and despairing look back from the doorway, she fled the hotel.
Jesús Barbosa walked jauntily across Washington Avenue and through the front door of the Grant Hotel. He was carrying a calfskin briefcase and wearing an open-necked white shirt, freshly pressed cream chinos and a new pair of alligator-skin shoes. A large gold earring in the shape of a fire-breathing dragon hung from one ear, and the smile he offered the fat lady behind the desk reflected, literally, the fifteen hundred dollars he’d just spent on cosmetic dental work. In the words of the last detective who’d found reason to question him, he gave the impression of someone who’d seen one too many Miami Vice reruns.
He took the stairs two at a time, hoping that the bitch had finally got herself on the pot. He didn’t like making unnecessary journeys, not in heat like this. It was days like these which made him nostalgic for the mountains he had grown up in, where the heat was dry, there was always a breeze and in the evening the temperature dropped more than a couple of degrees. The trouble was, there was nothing to do in those mountains – no music, no cars, not enough women.
Barbosa reached the third floor and walked down the short corridor to the women’s room. Normally he would treat himself to the female mules, but this pair were too obviously pregnant for his taste, though he could see that they’d both been lookers before. He didn’t bother to knock on the door, just turned the handle and stepped inside to find the body laid out beneath its shroud.
‘Shit!’ he muttered angrily, ripping the sheet aside. ‘Shit,’ he repeated with rather less vehemence, and looked at his watch. He was meeting the gringa in an hour
