The sun was already blazing and the dry wind abraded her skin. It would be another hot, dry, windy day – a day like every other day in El Paso. Nora was glad she slept through most of them. She thought about North Carolina, where she had gone to college, reflecting wistfully that up there the leaves would be starting to turn now. As she walked back to her apartment with the bag of groceries in her arms, Nora thought about moving east to North Carolina.
The telephone was ringing as Nora walked in.
‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for the past three days!’
It was her husband, Larry.
‘I’ve been out a lot.’ She began to peel the cellophane wrapping off the doughnuts.
‘Do tell. Look, Nora, I’ve got some papers for you to sign.’
‘Aw, and I thought maybe you’d called to say “Happy anniversary”.’
He was silent. One side of Nora’s mouth twitched upwards: she’d scored.
Then he sighed. ‘What do you want, Nora? Am I supposed to think that today means something to you? That you still care? That you want me back?’
‘God forbid.’
‘Then cut the crap, all right? So we didn’t make it to our wedding anniversary – all right, so legally we’re still married – but what’s the big deal?’
‘I was joking, Larry. You never could recognise a joke.’
‘I didn’t call to fight with you, Nora. Or to joke. I’d just like you to sign these papers so we can get this whole thing over with. You won’t even have to show up in court.’
Nora bit into a doughnut and brushed off the spray of sugar that powdered her shirt.
‘Nora? When should I bring the papers by?’
She set the half-eaten doughnut down on the counter and reflected. ‘Um, come this evening, if you want. Not too early, or I’ll still be asleep. Say . . . seven-thirty?’
‘Seven-thirty.’
‘That won’t cut into your dinner plans with what’s-her-name?’
‘Seven-thirty will be fine, Nora. I’ll see you then. Just be there.’ And he hung up before she could get in another dig.
Nora grimaced, then shrugged as she hung up. She finished the doughnut, feeling depressed. Despite herself, she’d started thinking about Larry again, and their marriage which had seemed to go bad before it had properly started. She thought about their brief honeymoon. She remembered Mexico.
It had been Larry’s idea to drive down to Mexico – Nora had always thought of Mexico as a poor and dirty place filled with undesirables who were always sneaking into the United States. But Larry had wanted to go, and Nora had wanted to make Larry happy.
It was their luna de miel, moon of honey, Larry said, and the Spanish words sounded almost sweet to her, coming from his mouth. Even Mexico, in his company, had seemed freshly promising, especially after they escaped the dusty borderlands and reached the ocean.
One afternoon they had parked on an empty beach and made love. Larry had fallen asleep, and Nora had left him to walk up the beach and explore.
She walked along in a daze of happiness, her body tingling, climbing over rocks and searching for shells to bring back to her husband. She didn’t realise how far she had travelled until she was shocked out of her pleasant haze by a sharp cry, whether human or animal she could not be certain. She heard some indistinct words, then, tossed to her by the wind.
Nora was frightened. She didn’t want to know what the sounds meant or where they came from. She turned around immediately, and began to weave her way back among the white boulders. But she must have mistaken her way, for as she clambered back over a rock she was certain she had just climbed, she saw them below her, posed like some sacrificial tableau.
At the centre was a girl, spread out on a low, flat rock. The victim. Crouching over her, doing something, was a young man. Another young man stared at them greedily. Nora gazed at the girl’s face, which was contorted in pain. She heard her whimper. It was only then that she realised, with a cold flash of dread, what she was seeing. The girl was being raped.
Nora was frozen with fear and indecision, and then the girl opened her eyes, and gazed straight up at Nora. Her brown eyes were eloquent with agony. Was there a glimmer of hope there at the sight of Nora? Nora couldn’t be sure. She stared into those eyes for what seemed like a very long time, trying desperately to think of what to do. She wanted to help this girl, to chase away the men. But there were two men, and she, Nora, had no particular strengths. They would probably be pleased to have two victims. And at any time one of them might look up and see her watching.
Trying to make no noise, Nora slipped backwards off the rock. The scene vanished from her sight; the pleading brown eyes could no longer accuse her. Nora began to run as best she could over the uneven ground. She hoped she was running in the right direction, and that she would soon come upon Larry. Larry would help her – she would tell him what she had seen, and he would know what to do. He might be able to frighten away the men, or, speaking Spanish, he could at least tell the police what she had seen. She would be safe with Larry.
The minutes passed and Nora still, blindly, ran. She couldn’t see their car, and knew the horrifying possibility that she was running in the wrong direction – but she didn’t dare go back. A cramp in her side and ragged pains when she drew breath forced her to walk: she felt the moment when she might have been of some help, when she could have reached Larry in time, drain inexorably away. She never knew how long she had walked and run before she finally caught sight of their car, but, even allowing for her panic, Nora judged it had been at the very least a half an hour. She felt as if she had been running desperately all day. And she was too late. Much too late. By now, they would have finished with the girl. They might have killed her, they might have let her go. In either case, Nora and Larry would be too late to help her.
‘There you are! Where’d you go! I was worried,’ Larry said, slipping off the bonnet of the car and coming to embrace her. He sounded not worried but lazily contented.
It was too late. She did not tell him, after all, what she had witnessed. She never told him.
Nora became deathly ill that night in a clean, American-style hotel near Acapulco. Two days later, still shaking and unable to keep anything in her stomach, Nora flew back to her mother and the family doctor in Dallas, leaving Larry to drive back by himself.
It was the stench that woke her. Nora lurched out of her sleep, sitting up on the bed, gagging and clutching the sheet to her mouth, trying not to breathe in the smell. It was the smell of something dead.
Groggy with sleep, she needed another moment to realise something much more frightening than the smelclass="underline" there was someone else in the room.
A tall figure stood, motionless, not far from the foot of her bed. The immediate fear Nora felt at the sight was quickly pushed out of the way by a coldly rational, self-preserving consciousness. In the dim light Nora could not tell much about the intruder except that he was oddly dressed in some sort of cloak, and that his features were masked by some sort of head mask. The most important thing she noticed was that he did not block her path to the door, and if she moved quickly . . .
Nora bolted, running through the apartment like a rabbit, and bursting out through the front door into the courtyard.
It was late afternoon, the sun low in the sky but not yet gone. One of her neighbours, a Mexican, was grilling hamburgers on a little hibachi. He stared at her sudden appearance, then grinned. Nora realised she was wearing only an old T-shirt of Larry’s and a pair of brightly coloured bikini pants, and she scowled at the man.
‘Somebody broke into my apartment,’ she said sharply, cutting into his grin.
‘Want to use our phone? Call the police?’
Nora thought of Larry and felt a sudden fierce hatred of him: he had left her to this, abandoned her to the mercy of burglars, potential rapists, and the leers of this Mexican.