CHAPTER EIGHT
In bed, on the night she discovered that Javier and La Lechuza were the same person, Lydia turned off the lamp but did not close her eyes. She and Sebastián had always agreed that married people were entitled to a certain measure of privacy, that they needn’t tell each other everything. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him; he didn’t press her on personal matters, he was seldom jealous, and he had no interest in annexing or directing her friendships with other men.
‘You’re a person, an adult,’ he said to her before they were engaged. ‘And I am your lover. If we get married, you choose me. I hope you’ll continue to choose me every day.’ Lydia had laughed at his unfashionable use of the word lover, but the sentiment thrilled her. Before Sebastián, she’d always presumed that marriage would entail a sacrifice of her liberty. That it had not, delighted her. They were both trustworthy, and they fancied themselves quite modern. They kept nothing of import from each other, but Lydia liked having a sacred cupboard within herself, to which only she was allowed access.
So there’d been nothing untoward in her failure to mention the name Javier to her husband before, but, of course, that night, everything changed. When Sebastián got up in the morning and kissed her forehead on his way to the bathroom, she was still awake. She sat up in bed, her stomach lurching with the movement.
‘Sebastián,’ she said. She thought about not telling him, about asking questions instead. She knew that once the words were out of her mouth, her friendship with Javier would come to an end, and beneath everything else, there was a foundation of grief to that impending loss. She wanted her discovery to be untrue, a misunderstanding.
Her husband turned toward her in the gray light of the bedroom. ‘What’s wrong?’ He knew instantly, from the pitch of her voice. He crossed the space between them and sat beside her on the bed.
‘He’s my friend,’ she confessed.
Sebastián didn’t go to work that morning. He called his editor and left a message that he was following a lead and wouldn’t be in until later. He and Lydia sat together on the unmade bed and talked for hours, while outside the light shifted from gray to pink to broad, sunny yellow. When it was time to wake Luca and take him to school, they managed the routine in a distracted haze.
‘I’ll take him today,’ Sebastián insisted. ‘You wait here.’
Lydia cried in the shower.
When Sebastián returned they continued their discussion at the kitchen table. Lydia’s wet hair was knotted on top of her head and her face felt blotchy.
‘Is there any chance you’re mistaken?’ she asked, her arms folded in front of her. She already knew the answer, but it made no sense. She was floundering.
Sebastian locked his eyes on her and answered in the most deliberate possible tone. ‘No.’
She nodded. ‘The piece you’re working on about Los Jardineros – does it specifically mention him?’
‘Yes, it’s all about him, his big debut. The whole Hello, World, I’m a Major Kingpin exposé.’
Lydia tilted her head to one side, placed her hand against her forehead. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered. ‘It seems impossible.’
‘There’s nothing to do, Lydia.’
‘But I just can’t understand it. I know him.’
‘I know, Lydia, I know. How charming he can be, how erudite. But he’s also incredibly dangerous.’
She pictured Javier’s eyes, how exposed they looked whenever he removed his glasses. That word dangerous seemed so incompatible.
‘I know it’s difficult to get your head around it,’ Sebastián said. ‘I can see you’re struggling, and I’m sorry.’ He paused before he shifted gears. ‘But he’s a murderer, Lydia. Many times over. This guy is made of blood.’
This guy. She shook her head again. Sebastián stood up and placed his hands on the back of his chair. He pushed it under the table. ‘He’s not who you thought he was.’
‘But you said yourself, just last night, that he, that Los Jardineros, they aren’t as violent as the other cartels.’
He had said that, dammit. Lydia opened the kitchen window to the noise of traffic below.
‘Lydia, I love you. I love your loyalty and your goodness. But we are talking degrees of murderers here. Less violent or not, he’s still a major narco. And when you’ve killed that many people, killing becomes conventional. Does it matter that he’s killed fewer children than other murderers have? It’s not a moderation born of virtue. It’s a pinche business decision. That guy would kill anyone if he thought it was the smart thing to do.’
‘Not anyone.’ Her voice was a weakening plea. ‘He has a daughter.’
Sebastián dropped his head between his outstretched arms.
‘Sebastián, listen,’ she said. ‘I know it all sounds absurd but I’m not naïve. I’m not an idiot, right?’
‘You’re the smartest woman I know.’
‘So I’m just, I’m trying to take it all in, to reconcile everything you’re telling me, and to make it match up with the person I know Javier to be.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘It’s difficult.’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘Because I do, Sebastián, I know him. And like you say, he is smart. In a different life he could’ve been someone good—’
‘But it’s not a different life, Lydia. He’s not someone good.’
‘But maybe he still could be. That’s what I’m telling you. Because people are complex and whatever you say he is, he’s also this other person. This tortured, poetic soul, full of remorse. He’s funny. He’s kind. Maybe things could still be different.’
‘Wait.’ Sebastian surveyed his wife, who was now leaning against the kitchen windowsill. Outside a horn blared, and a breeze moved past a drying tendril of her hair. ‘Wait a second, Lydia. Are you in love with him?’
‘What?’
‘Are you?’
‘Sebastián, don’t be ridiculous. This is no time for histrionics.’
He shook his head. ‘But do you have feelings for him?’
‘No, not like that. I do love him—’
‘You love him?’
‘He’s my friend! A real friend, someone who’s become very important to me!’ She leaned her hands on her knees and looked up at him. The coffeemaker gurgled and sighed. ‘His father died of cancer, too.’
Her husband pulled the chair back out and sat down again. ‘Oh, Lydia.’
Sebastián had never met Lydia’s father, but his death was such a defining loss in Lydia’s life, and indeed in Sebastián and Lydia’s early courtship, that he felt a strong kinship to his deceased father-in-law, nonetheless. He knew all the stories. How, when Lydia was twelve years old (slightly too old for teddy bears), her lifelong favorite developed a gash in its nose. Lydia was heartbroken and embarrassed. The bear hemorrhaged his stuffing all over the house. Lydia’s father went quietly to the pharmacy and returned with a bag that he placed on their kitchen table beneath a swing-arm lamp. He instructed her to bring the bear from her room. She transported the bear with great care, and when she returned to the kitchen, it had been transformed into an operating room. There was a sheet of plastic spread out across the table. Her father wore a mask and rubber gloves. His surgical tools were spread out beneath the lamp: needle, thread, a gleaming swatch of new leather. Lydia’s father crafted an entirely new leather nose for her bear. Sebastián knew, too, that the only green vegetable his father-in-law ate was lima beans, that he had a three-inch scar on his leg from a childhood boating accident, that he sang loudly at concerts and sometimes in mortifying harmony with whatever act was onstage. Sebastián knew that the only time Lydia had ever seen her father cry was when Oscar De La Hoya won the gold medal round at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Sebastián felt such a fondness for his father-in-law that he wondered if he knew the man better in death than he would have in life. They’d been dating only eight weeks, and were at the Estadio Azul in Mexico City attending a fútbol match when Lydia got that terrible phone call. Though the cancer had been slow, the end had been fast, unexpected. It was October 24, 2003, exactly one week before el Día de los Muertos. Reportedly his last words had been, ‘There’s a party. I have to prepare.’