Silver Nitrate(42)

“Look, I told myself that I had a nightmare, too. Just like you did. And I was willing to believe it because frankly even if I wasn’t doing drugs that night, maybe all the stuff I snorted and injected through the years dislodged a few components inside my head. I was willing, until two hours ago, to toss myself on a couch and tell a psychiatrist how the other kids bullied me when I was little and that I wasn’t potty-trained until I was three.”

“But?”

“Oh, I’ll show you ‘but,’?” he muttered, slipping his hand into his pocket and taking out the apartment keys.

He unlocked the door with an angry curse word, then stomped toward the dining room table, where he extended an arm and pointed at a yellow manila envelope.

“Look at it,” he said.

The manila envelope had been ripped open, but she handled it carefully, sliding its contents onto the table: it was full of feathers, as if someone had plucked a chicken. There were also seven long nails, old with rust, and a long piece of thread, knotted seven times. She contemplated this strange assortment of objects with a raised eyebrow, then looked again at the envelope, searching for a sender. There wasn’t one, but the recipient’s address and name scribbled with a black marker did not belong to Tristán. She raised her head quickly.

“You stole Abel’s mail?”

“I didn’t steal Abel’s mail. The postman keeps leaving it in my mailbox, and I was distracted today so I opened it before I paid attention to the name. And look what I found! I saw my dead girlfriend and now he’s getting a fucking witch’s kit in the mail.”

“We don’t know what that is.”

“You go to the Mercado de Sonora and shop around blindfolded or what? That looks like witchcraft!”

Montserrat had not, in fact, paid too much attention to the wares sold at the market, but what she had seen were candles, powders, sprays, soaps, and incense, all packaged with silly labels that promised money, love, or fortune. She had not come across an assortment of feathers and nails like this; it didn’t look like any of the amarres Araceli might buy.

“Why don’t we talk to Abel?” Montserrat asked, as she began stuffing the contents back inside the envelope.

“And ask him what, if he’s signed up for the hex-a-lot club of the month?”

“Don’t be a dick. We need to hand him his mail anyway.”

“Great. We can hire an exorcist after that.”

“Yeah, I’m sure there’re a few in the Yellow Pages.”

“You think I was drunk and made this all up, don’t you?”

Tristán stared at her, and Montserrat stared back until finally she let out a sigh and shook her head. “I don’t know what you saw, and maybe this funny envelope is a coincidence. But in the unlikely event that it’s not, I’m guessing you can’t afford to move to a hotel permanently, so we need to figure out what’s going on.”

“Promise you don’t think I made it up.”

“I don’t think you did.”

“And swear you think I’m clean.”

Montserrat wished she could reply with an enthusiastic yes, but all she was able to do was press her lips together and slowly nod. Tristán had been a very active addict, to put it mildly, and his behavior during the lowest days of that addiction had been erratic; there had been moments when he said he could feel bugs under his skin, and one time when he saw flashing lights. He’d kicked the habit, but there had been one relapse a few years ago.

“Okay, look, come with me,” Tristán said, grabbing Montserrat by the arm and pulling her with him.

They stood next to the bathroom’s doorway and looked inside. Folded towels were stacked on a shelf, and there was a wicker hamper for the dirty laundry and a fluffy bathroom mat by the sliding shower door.

“What?” Montserrat asked, unable to discern an oddity. If anything, Tristán could be accused of being a little too neat.

“When I left my house the taps were closed. But look now.”

Montserrat starred at the thin trickle of water going down the sink’s drain.

“You probably left the tap open when you left.”

“I did not. Someone was in this apartment.”

Montserrat stepped into the bathroom, taking one more look around, then reached for the tap and closed it. She glanced at the mirror and saw Tristán’s troubled face reflected there.

“I’m not lying, Momo,” he said.

“I know,” she said, turning around and clutching his hand between hers.





10


“Have a drink,” Urueta told them, his hands flying toward the bottle and the glass. But Tristán shook his head.

“You need to tell us what this is about,” he said, brandishing the envelope, which the director had simply tossed aside on one of the couches and Tristán had snatched up immediately.

“It’s nothing bad. A protective spell.”

“You order them from a catalogue or what?”

Urueta laughed. One of the feathers from the envelope had adhered to his shirt, and he carefully removed it. “I became uninterested in magic practices after Ewers’s death, but others continued their studies. My friend José López was one of them. I mentioned we cast a spell, and he sent this as a gift. It’s no different than buying a bracelet against the evil eye.”