“There are so many opportunists waiting for their slice of cake. Political dilettantes. I feel helpless.”
Rubén gripped the wheel. He looked young and haunted; it was easy to feel sorry for him.
When they arrived at Sócrates’s apartment building, he still wasn’t home or was pretending he couldn’t hear the buzzer. Luckily they managed to slip into the building when a couple of people were leaving and walked up the stairs to the apartment, which lay at the end of a hallway.
The door was open a crack, and they walked in.
“Hey there, are you home?” Rubén asked.
On a messy bed someone had left a cup filled with cigarette butts. The light was on in the bathroom. Rubén walked ahead, brushing aside a curtain with wooden beads.
A young man, stripped down to his underthings, sat on the toilet, his chin pressed against his chest and his hands on his lap. Maite immediately noticed the little round burn marks on his skin and the rope binding his feet. He wasn’t moving.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
Rubén didn’t reply; instead he stepped forward and placed a hand against the young man’s neck. “Yes,” he muttered.
“Oh, my God. What—”
“Let’s go,” Rubén said, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her out of the tiny apartment.
They rushed down the stairs. Their escape was so loud she feared the whole building heard them, but no one poked their head out the door.
“We need to phone the police,” she said when they reached the car and Rubén fumbled with the keys. He looked up at her, his eyes sharp.
“No.”
“But he’s dead. He’ll have to be buried.”
“Get in.”
Maite obeyed, but as soon as she was in the passenger’s seat she spoke up again. “We can’t just leave him there.”
Rubén started the car. “What do you think they’ll do to us if we tell them, huh? You want to end up at Lecumberri? With my history—”
“What history?”
“I’ve been arrested. I’ve had my run-ins with the pigs.”
“But he’s dead!”
“I know he’s dead, and we’ll be dead soon if we call the cops.”
Maite laced her hands together tight, resting them against her lap. Rubén reached into his jacket pocket and took out a cigarette. When they stopped at a red light, he lit the cigarette and turned to her.
“I’m going to drive around for a bit. Then we’ll go back to your apartment.”
“You’re going to let a man rot in a bathroom.”
“Better him than me.”
She tried to think of something, anything to say, but as she squeezed her eyes shut, the image of the dead man haunted her, and she forgot how to utter words. When they reached her apartment, still mute, she decided to boil water for a coffee, but she fumbled with the tin and ended up dropping it in the middleof the kitchen. Grains of coffee spilled across the laminate floor.
She grabbed the broom. The phone rang. She guessed it must be her mother and considered letting it ring, but knowing her, Mother would simply phone again in ten minutes and then get even angrier at Maite because she hadn’t been there to answer the first time. She propped the broom against the wall and took a deep breath before lifting the receiver.
“Yes?” she asked and closed her eyes, already imagining the harsh recrimination she was going to have to endure.Maite, you can’t handle money. Maite, you can’t handle anything.She pressed her back against the refrigerator and waited.
“Hello? It’s Leonora,” a woman said, her voice soft.
