— Not the whole story, I said.
— If you want to know more, if that’s why you came to see me, I can tell you Li loves you, and she was happy with you.
— So why did she vanish?
— Because Carmen came back. I don’t know if you know who she is. She’s the woman Li was with before you.
— You think it’s that simple. Li goes back to her old habits and just like that forgets what happened between us.
— Yes and no. You’re strange; Li’s even stranger.
— Why go to Carmen now? Hadn’t they split up?
— They’ve known each other for years, from back when Li started college. Carmen influenced her a lot, apart from helping her in more than one sense. Among other things, she ended up paying Li’s tuition. You should know that Li doesn’t have a penny to her name, and the Chinese, especially the guy that owns the restaurant, are slave drivers. Me, they pay minimum wage, but the Chinese don’t even get that much.
— What you’re telling me is, Li is extremely grateful, and she has debts.
— Right, both those things, and of course more than that. It’s not so easy, like you say.
— Why did she leave, then?
— You want me to tell you the truth? asked Glenda.
— That’s why I came.
— Because she was scared.
— Scared of me?
— I don’t know, maybe that too. But mainly scared of the Chinese.
— I don’t understand.
— Li doesn’t have anybody, Glenda explained, and the Chinese are her world.
— But you said they fired her.
— Yeah, but that was just the other day. There were problems, and the boss’s wife never liked her much. She couldn’t understand why she wanted to study and be different. Besides, after she left your house, she missed work, and that’s something the bastards never forgive. They’re mules, and they think the rest of us should work like them.
— Well, there’s no reason now for her to be as scared as you say.
— Just the opposite. Now’s when she’ll be running to the bathroom.
— Why?
— I already told you. Because she’s alone, she’s got no home, no money.
— Where is she?
— With the professor, Carmen Lindo.
— Why with her and not me?
— That I don’t know. You’d have to ask her yourself.
— But why do you think, given all you know?
Glenda thought it over for a while, straightening her necklaces, playing with the pages of the book she had set on the bench.
— I think, let’s see how I can put it for you, she wanted to escape.
Something flew over our heads and settled in the trees. Glenda grew anxious and wanted to leave.
— Don’t worry. It was a bird, I said, trying to calm her.
— No, they’re bats. They’re going to get tangled in my hair. I should be leaving now.
— Where do you live?
— On Roosevelt. I share a room with a friend.
— I’ll walk you if you’d like.
We went up a street that was a long, perfectly straight line. I thought it was the most unnatural thing that could exist. Maybe that was also why the city seemed so disagreeable. It was constructed along a model that didn’t correspond to life.
— Have you been here long? I asked while we walked.
— Six years since I came on a yawl.
— Have you ever been back?
— I can’t. I couldn’t ever go there and sail back here on a yawl again, no way.
— Do you at least have some family in Puerto Rico?
— Aunts and uncles, but I left my little boy in Santo Domingo. Look, here he is.
Glenda took out a photo. Her son was posing in the very center of a vacant lot. The image appalled me.
— What’s his name? I asked.
— Jean Michael.
Glenda put the photo away and added,
— This is no sort of life.
— I guess you understand the Chinese, then, I said.
— Of course I do, even if they’re assholes. They got it worse than us because they come from the other side of the world, and there’s no way of getting back there. God willing I’ll get to go to Santo Domingo next year and come back here with my boy. Them, forget about it. What I say is, we don’t work so much for ourselves as we work for Western Union.
— Do you think I could see Li again? I’d like to talk to her. I don’t mean to screw up her life.
Glenda thought about it for a moment.
— I didn’t tell you this, but this Saturday night, there’s a party at Carmen Lindo’s place. That’s 31 Calle Canals, third floor. I’ll be there, but you never met me. OK? Don’t even think of saying hi to me. If I was you, I’d show up and introduce myself, they aren’t going to kick you out.
We stopped in front of a garage door.
— Here it is. The little place in back, she explained.
— What are you reading? I asked.
Glenda displayed the front of the book.
— I borrowed it from one of the cooks. It’s good.
The wrinkled, dog-eared cover showed a landscape of skyscrapers in flames and, in large letters, the title: Predator.
Saturday afternoon came around, and I still hadn’t decided whether to go to the party. I wasn’t in the habit of showing up unexpectedly at places where I hadn’t been invited. I spent hours doing nothing but struggle with the question. I was afraid of causing a scene that would give Li an excuse for leaving me once and for all. Most of all, the thought of letting outsiders see the pain I was living through genuinely horrified me. As the sun set, I tried to convince myself, telling myself Li had spent weeks hunting me and I could let myself use a similar strategy with her. I tried to believe I’d find the courage to enter the elevator and knock on the door. In my anxious state, that was the biggest stumbling block, and I didn’t know whether I would be able to overcome it.
I stalled for time by driving around the block. At around eight, I parked and walked to Calle Canals. Number 31 was a five-story building with a rooftop terrace shaded by panels of corrugated iron. At street level, there was a dry cleaner’s and a small supermarket, still open at this hour. My head felt light and my heart was pounding.
On the third floor balcony, two doors stood open. Reddish light and a hint of Arabic music filtered out through them. Shadows moved across the bit of ceiling that could be seen in the apartment. The shadows were far apart, so I supposed that most guests hadn’t arrived yet.
I noticed three people coming in my direction on the opposite sidewalk. I took a few steps back and hid among the bags of garbage from a clinical laboratory. When the man and the two women drew near, I recognized them as professors at the university. The bald, chubby man with very white skin was an economist, and he could have once been called an acquaintance. More than ten years had passed since we last talked, however. One of the women must have been his wife; the other was a psychologist who had vanished into administrative positions and who liked doing academic tourism to assert, in select cities, that a better world was possible. This must, unfortunately, be Carmen Lindo’s social circle. The established and slothful professoriate, with short and dubious lists of published works, prone to attacks of gout, intellectual paranoia, and menopausal hot flashes.
From my hiding place, I saw others arriving who were cut from the same cloth. Not all of them lived and worked in the country. The arrival of summer allowed people to attend the party who hadn’t found work in the country and had emigrated to institutions in the United States. The incestuous and complicitous atmosphere they would bring to the party was completely inappropriate for my meeting with Li.