“Yes?” he asked.
“It’s Pablo, Mr de la Vega’s assistant. I need you to come tomorrow to the apartment and bring your insect again. He wants to have a second look at it.”
Pablo’s voice had a hint of metal as it poured from the phone, crisp and sharp and bright. Gerardo swallowed and leant forwards.
“I’m sorry?”
“Tomorrow at five. You got that?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“See you then.”
Gerardo punched another key and sat back. The maquech took a step with each tick of the black minute hand of the clock on the wall. The heavy jewels on its back made it slow. Or maybe it did not care to move quickly. There was all the time in the world for it to reach its destination.
Pablo, the man in white, was wearing grey this time. His fingers danced over the tablet and he spoke with his measured voice.
“They use them as love talismans. The Mayans said there was a girl that was turned into that insect.”
“The Mayans thought a princess’s doomed lover was turned into a maquech so he could remain close to her heart,” Gerardo said, correcting the assistant. “The Mayans thought it was a symbol of immortality.”
Pablo glanced up at him, his fingers frozen for a second.
Arturo de la Vega did not reply. He sat in his obsidian room, holding a glass between his fingers. He did not look at the insect that Gerardo was holding up in its velvet box for him to examine. Instead, Arturo set down his glass on top of a black, lacquered table.
“I don’t enjoy insects,” he said. “I don’t find them interesting. They’re too small, too common, and they don’t live very long.”
“A maquech can live three or four years in captivity. Maybe even more with the proper care.”
“That’s not very long.”
“Do you purchase your animals based on their longevity?”
“Normally, longevity is not an issue.”
“Four years is not a short period of time.”
“It seems short to me.”
“Then you shouldn’t have called me. I can’t make it live forty years just for your sake,” he said, and he knew it was a rude remark but he could not help himself. Arturo had made him wait for two hours before he deigned to see him, and he was tired of this curious sensation of levity, as though everything that might happen was inconsequential.
“Do you smoke?” Arturo asked as he took out a white gold case and plucked a thin black cigarette.
“Sure,” Gerardo said, although he had not smoked in over five years. He couldn’t afford it.
Arturo made a little motion with his hand and Pablo stepped forward, lighting their cigarettes. Up close, Pablo’s eyes glinted a synthetic blue-silver. Modified. Beautified.
Arturo puffed twice and smiled.
“I’m not completely indifferent to your beetle, Gerardo. But I’m not completely interested either. I’ve got other traders showing their goods to me and they have very impressive merchandise, and they are much better known than you. Does he come recommended?”
“No recommendations,” Pablo said with his beautiful, beautiful voice, and Gerardo wondered if that, too, had been modified. “But talent springs from the oddest place.”
“I do have a knack for spotting talent,” Arturo said.
“Mr De la Vega made Yuko Saitou an overnight sensation. Her two-headed koi are all the rage.”
“Synthets,” Gerardo said.
“We buy many, many things.”
There was a pause. The smoke of the cigarettes curled up towards the glass ceiling, and Gerardo shifted his weight feeling suddenly pinned under the men’s gazes.
“How about a test?” Pablo asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“Try on the beetle. Wear it.”
“That’s not such a bad idea,” De la Vega said.
“Now?”
“I have a party on Friday. Come back Friday. We’ll see how it goes.”
The maquech smelt like old wood. Beneath its jewels it was the colour of wood and if Gerardo closed his eyes, it felt like it was a leaf moving upon his hand, stirred by the breeze.
He opened his eyes and let the beetle back into its terrarium. He turned on the TV and clicked through the channels, and there was the news and talk about crime rates, and the soap operas, and the late night variety hour pop-star sensation.
Gerardo tried to concentrate on the TV and the images flickered in dazzling colour, but they seemed as insubstantial as ghosts. There was nothing remotely interesting to watch inside his box of an apartment with its concrete lid.
He turned off the TV and sat in silence.
He thought he could hear the rain falling, far away.
A woman walked with a leopard on a leash; a teenage boy wore a snake-skin jacket and a real snake around his neck. Men, wrapped in silk and feathers, with fish scales glued to their faces drank out of amethyst glasses. Women in dresses made of iridescent butterfly wings smiled at him.
And then, amongst the sea of revellers, Arturo walked forth with a jaguar’s skull upon his head and a cape made of animal bones, and he smiled at Gerardo. Pablo, black suit and black hat, served as his shadow.
“So good to see you. So good. Are you having fun?” Arturo asked.
“It’s a very grand party.”
“It is. Have you brought it then?”
Gerardo opened the velvet box and held it up. Pablo slipped forwards and took the box, took the maquech, and placed it upon Arturo’s shirt, fastening the golden chain. It shone like a star. It shone brighter than he’d ever seen it before, as if to please Gerardo, and people circled Arturo and fawned and sighed.
Pablo, who was still next to Gerardo, smiled a tiny, calculated smile.
“Will he buy it?” Gerardo asked, as the star moved away and was lost from his sight.
“He never knows what he wants,” Pablo said. “But he likes real things and real things are scarce.”
Gerardo was quiet, and then Pablo took out his tablet and walked away. “Luck of the draw,” he said, without turning to look at him.
A couple of hours later, Pablo walked up to Gerardo and handed him a card.
“Mr De la Vega wishes to purchase your beetle,” he said.
Gerardo nodded. He did not know what else one was supposed to do in such situations.
“Come back sometime,” Pablo said.
“The maquech,” Gerardo muttered. Pablo’s blue eyes swept over him: a question mark. “It’ll need to eat. There’s some wood it needs.”
“I’ll send someone.”
He was escorted out of the party to a black car with tinted windows. He had never been in a car. Well, nothing like a real car. Once he had sat in his uncle’s beaten-up bochito when he was a kid, but he hardly remembered anything about that ride.
Now he went down Reforma, down the only car lane, fast like a silver bullet. And he thought he’d never, ever forget that moment.
Gerardo walked down three flights of stairs into his windowless apartment.
There was something missing there. But everything seemed to be in its place; all the papers remained where he’d left them; each bird sat in its cage; each fish swam in its tank.
When he walked into the kitchen he saw ants were feasting on a sandwich he had left on the table, and he tossed it into the garbage.
He turned on the TV, and there was a report about riots due to increases in the cost of the tortilla. Somewhere in Santa Julia, two men had been shot for stealing hoarded water. In the Colonia Roma, Mexican freshwater turtles were being served as appetisers at a fine restaurant. He turned it off.
There was something missing.
He grabbed the terrarium and started putting the pieces of wood into a bag so he could courier them to De la Vega. And as he did, he realised what was missing: the smell of old wood and jungle. The smell of the maquech.