Silver Nitrate(20)

“Ten years,” she said.

Tristán clasped his hands tighter. Karina would have been thirty-six. He could hardly believe it. Time had slipped through his fingers.

“I forgot about it, yeah: a whole decade next week. The reporter started asking questions, and I thought she wanted a story about me. But it was about her.”

“I forgot, too.”

Tristán shook his head. “Yes, but I wouldn’t expect you to remember. She didn’t die in your car, after all.”

“What did the reporter say?”

“You know what she said. And if she didn’t say it, she implied it. They all do. Fuckers.”

He hadn’t been driving, but nobody seemed to care or remember that. What they remembered was that Tristán Abascal was a party animal who demanded that innocent, pure-hearted Karina Junco drive him home after feeding her a vast number of drugs during an orgy in Cuernavaca. Every single quote and commentary had been about how Tristán had guided her to perdition.

It was the way Karina’s father sought to cleanse his child’s image. It was a lot better to say her perverted boyfriend had practically murdered Karina than to admit she’d been an alcoholic and a junkie.

The shame of it…the fucking shame he felt, in the hospital, his body aching, and then the shame as his mother cried on the phone, as his eldest brother read him a headline…Shame, pain, guilt. It didn’t end.

“They always talk shit.”

“I should have called someone,” Tristán muttered.

She sat down, resting on the couch’s arm. “Tristán, don’t start. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have gotten help.”

“Your face was smashed with glass. You couldn’t run to a pay phone.”

“She needed help, that night—” he muttered and stopped, catching his breath.

He remembered he’d been wearing a burgundy jacket, and they’d both overdone their drinking. He remembered the tears in her eyes as she clutched the wheel and kept begging him to look at her, and then he pretended to fall asleep.

Tristán unlaced his hands and now dug his fingers into the couch, as if he could rip the upholstery apart and puncture his hands with wooden splinters and metal springs.

“I should have gotten her help before that. I knew she was overdoing it with the drugs and the drinking, but I never complained.”

Karina and Tristán looked good together, and they were going to have another major hit, and if the press found out about her addiction maybe they’d cancel the project. He wanted that role. It was a great part.

What a selfish thing to think! Even these days, when he thought about Karina, he didn’t consider how horrible her death must have been, crushed under that car. He thought about his face. He thought about the surgery and how his eye would never look the same, or about the scars on his chest. And right now he was angry because he thought Karina was probably going to get the cover of a magazine next week, but he would never have another magazine cover again.

Selfish, selfish prick, and Montserrat didn’t know anything about it, she didn’t understand. He wanted to tell her everything and could not.

Tristán sat up and let out a pained laugh. Montserrat was looking at him from the other end of the rickety couch.

“I’m exhausted, Momo. Sometimes I think it would be easier to drive off a cliff and re-enact that crash. Give the public the ending they want.”

She stretched out a hand. He shook his head and brushed her hand away. Montserrat stood up and went to her bedroom. When she returned she had a blanket and a pillow. She handed both items to him, wordless. Tristán placed the pillow under his head and wrapped himself in the blanket.

He heard the click of the light switch and her sock-clad feet against the wooden floor. The numbers on the VCR next to the TV glowed a bright red, and he stared at them, burning the minutes into his retinas until at last he fell asleep.

He woke up to the scent of fresh coffee. In the kitchen, Montserrat was frying eggs. He stretched his arms and turned his head as she walked into the room with two plates in her hands and placed them on the round dining table.

Tristán sat in front of her and took a sip of coffee. The eggs were burned. Montserrat was a terrible cook, but he ate them all the same. His stomach was gurgling. The previous day he’d limited himself to a liquid, alcohol-based diet.

“I have a shift. I can give you a ride home before I head into the studio,” Montserrat said.

“It’s fine. I don’t want you to be late.”

“I wouldn’t be late.”

“I guess that would be nice, then.”

Montserrat nodded. Tristán focused on his plate. She cleared the table. He followed her into the kitchen and watched her as she placed the cups and plates in the sink.

“I’m sorry I woke you up last night.”

“It’s not the first time.”

“I’m still sorry.”

She scraped the fork against a plate, brushing crumbs into the drain. Her hair was pulled back with a scrunchie, and he was surprised to see Montserrat, like himself, also looked older than he remembered. Her face seemed to have acquired a couple of wrinkles on the forehead during the night.

But no, it was the simple passage of time, which he did not ordinarily recognize.