“I don’t blame him either for my falling for him. He never claimed that he loved me. Never hid his other lovers from me, the ladies he lured with his charm and forgot as soon as they loved him, for it was his gift that they would love him, his curse that he could not love them back, after they fell for him.”
“He played with them, and with you. Why did you let him?”
Federico shook his head. “He didn’t play with me. I knew he didn’t love me. He couldn’t, nor the way I wanted: Bécquer is not gay. He took me as his lover to heal my broken soul when he realized I did not want to live. I had lost my will to live that summer of 1936 when I witnessed my friends betray me and saw the void of undiluted hate in the eyes of my killers.
“Bécquer cured me of my despair. He took me as his lover and healed my soul with his passion and words of love he reinvented for me. I fell in love with him, how could I not? But he never guessed it. He had not planned or expected this to happen. Until he met me, he thought immortals could not love.
“When I told him, when he realized how much he meant to me, how much I hurt when I saw him with others, he left me, making clear that, from then on, I was allowed to see him only once a year for a week. He thought, that way, I would forget him.”
“But you did not.”
Federico stared at me. “Don’t let his charm blind you, Carla. Do not fall for him.”
I laughed, too eagerly perhaps. “I won’t, don’t worry. Bécquer’s only my agent.”
“Of course.”
Turning his head away from me, Federico looked through the window to the road ahead. “Matt is coming,” he said. “Good. I was starting to suspect Bécquer had forgotten to pass him my message.”
I followed his stare, and saw nothing but a wall of darkness beyond the halo of our headlights.
“Don’t worry. He’ll be here soon. I feel his mind.”
“You feel his mind? So Matt is an immortal too?”
“Not at all. Matt is quite human.”
“But … then. Are you saying you can read minds? Human minds?”
“No. I don’t read minds. I sense them when they are close enough.”
He said it casually as if unaware of the magnitude of what he had just revealed to me.
“You tricked me, didn’t you? Right now. When you asked me about Bécquer, you forced me to think of him so you could read my feelings for him.”
“Yes.”
“How dare you?”
“I needed to know to warn you that Bécquer … ” He stopped and with a sudden movement of his hand flashed the headlights. As if conjured by his signal, a beam of light glowed in the distance. “Matt is almost here. I’ll explain later, I promise, after we change cars.”
He was still speaking when a car drew near and, leaving the road, came to a stop facing us. It was not the blue convertible Bécquer had driven in the morning, but a white limousine. Somehow, the idea that Bécquer owned still another car — Federico had told me the silver Mercedes was Bécquer’s also — irked me in an irrational way I found most disturbing.
“Carla?”
I turned toward Federico’s voice and found him standing outside the car, holding the door open.
Too startled to speak, as I had no recollection of him leaving my side, I took his hand and stepped outside. Beyond the halo of the limousine, I saw a man emerge from the driver’s seat.
With easy strides, Federico walked toward him. “Hi, Matt,” he greeted him, as he got closer. “So nice of you to come.”
“My pleasure, as always,” the man said, in a formal way that belied his age. For he was young, I realized once I moved into the beam’s halo and the light stopped blinding me. His youth made even more evident because, instead of the standard suit I had expected, he was wearing a leather jacket and tight black jeans with metal chains hanging from his belt.
“Nice costume.”
Matt sulked. “I thought all the guests had arrived so I had already changed when Mr. Bécquer asked me to come at once. Please, Don Federico, don’t tell my mother I came like this.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t mention your costume to her, you have my word.”
Matt smiled a crooked smile that lit his face with pride. “It’s not a costume. I’m playing later.”
Federico raised an eyebrow in mock admiration. “A paying gig?”
Matt nodded.
“My congratulations,” Federico said, taking the boy’s hand in both of his and shaking it firmly.
Matt shivered at the contact, and when Federico moved toward the car, Matt’s eyes followed him. If Federico noticed the boy’s reaction — how could he not when he could sense feelings? — he said nothing.
I didn’t mention it either when we were sitting side by side in the back of the car, although the window to the front seat was closed and Matt could not hear us. The boy’s feelings for Federico were none of my business, and I was still upset at Federico for intruding on the privacy of my mind.
“How many cars does Bécquer have?” I asked him instead.
Federico frowned. “Two that I know of. This limo is not his. He rented it for the party. But why do you care?”
“I don’t.”
“Yes. Bécquer is quite wealthy.” Federico answered the question I had not asked. “When you can manipulate minds to do your bidding, it is not surprising the books you represent end up on the bestseller list. Money follows.”
“Manipulate minds? Is that what you are doing with me?”
“No. I have never manipulated anybody’s mind.” I glowered at him. “I’m afraid you’d have to take my word for it,” he insisted. “I cannot prove it to you.”
“But Bécquer does — manipulate minds, I mean?”
Federico shrugged. “I don’t think he does it on purpose. Every time I have confronted him about it, he has denied it. Yet things seem always to go his way. In business and in love.”
“Is that what you wanted to warn me about?”
Federico stared ahead, crossing and uncrossing his fingers as if trying to clarify his thoughts.
“Bécquer has a new love interest,” he said at last. “I thought she might be you.”
“Me? That’s absurd. I only met him twice.”
“But he has read your books, liked them enough to sign you as a client. And Bécquer is quite impulsive when falling in love. Childish you may say. He falls not so much for the person but for his own idealized image of her. Seeing you twice would be more than enough for him to think himself fully in love, especially when he has glimpsed your soul in your stories. Yes, you could have been his new beloved. I’m glad to see that you’re not.”
“And you know that by reading my mind?”
“In a way. For if Bécquer were in love with you, he’d have charmed you already and you’d be blindly in love with him.”
“But I wouldn’t be really in love with him. My feelings would be an illusion.”
“Exactly my point. You wouldn’t be yourself anymore, just a puppet to his will. Yet Bécquer doesn’t seem to realize that distinction. He insists he does not change the feelings for a first attraction must be there. He just pushes the victim slightly in that direction.
“Victim being my chosen word, of course. The so-called victims would call themselves fortunate, because to be chosen, to be loved by Bécquer, is an exhilarating experience. Nobody, not a single one of them has complained yet and, trust me, he has had many.”
“What happens when he tires of them?”
“They still love him for a while, I guess. But when he stops charming them, their love eventually wanes and they forget him, and thus forgive him for leaving them.
“In fact, most of them remain friends with him until he moves on. For, of course, like all immortals, he can’t stay more than twenty years in a place before his not aging becomes obvious. Then he has to go somewhere else and reinvent himself.”