Silver Nitrate(55)

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m fine. I’m watching a movie.”

“Is it any good?”

“It’s Ninón Sevilla, my dear. Good does not begin to describe her. I met her through Libertad Lamarque, who had been blacklisted after getting in a tiff with Eva Perón. She slapped the dear lady across the face, then ran off to Mexico.”

She pictured Abel wrapped in a robe, the glow of the television on his face, ancient actors reflected in the lenses of his glasses.

“And you?”

“I’m watching La Telara?a. Taboada’s show. I have the VCR programmed so I never miss it.”

“Taboada doing TV…who would have thought! And I was so much better than him, back in the day. But I heard they don’t like him at Televisa and he doesn’t like them. Still, I suppose a paycheck is a paycheck. Not that TV can approximate film in any way.”

She could hear drums playing in the background. Sevilla must be about to dance one of her musical numbers.

“You want me to stay on the line while you watch your movie?”

“No. I’m fine. I’m sorry I bothered you today, Montserrat.”

“It’s okay.”

“I didn’t think anything bad would happen when we dubbed that film. You need to believe me about that. It had been so long since I cast any spell, why…I was almost sure it wouldn’t work! When Ewers died, I couldn’t do anything. The spells he taught us were useless. I tried a dozen times, drew his runes…nothing. I think I stashed the nitrate print away for that reason.”

“Because you didn’t think it was magical?”

“Yeah. I was scared to do anything with it. If I kept it locked away, I figured maybe there might still be a little magic left. If I opened it, it would be like exposing a negative to the light. Montserrat, I wanted it to be good again, like it used to be. They put my name on posters when I was young.”

“I know, Abel. I know.”

“I should let you get back to your show.”

“Call me in the morning, all right?”

“Sure.”

After Montserrat hung up, she walked back into her office and stared at the corkboard. She’d promised Abel she’d hand him the nitrate print and the letter, and of course it was the right and the smart thing to do. Both Abel and Tristán had seen something odd; it could be if she clung to these items soon she’d be seeing weird things. Yet in a way she wanted to find out if there was some truth to Ewers’s talk of spells or if it was nothing but odd coincidences: the vivid imagination of an old man, nightmares, perhaps even too much booze.

She looked at the last page of the book, with Ewers’s badly distorted photograph, and pressed her palm against the paper.

She phoned Tristán again, and when she got no answer, she sent a message to his pager. Montserrat changed into her pajamas, which consisted of a t-shirt with the cover art from the Killers album by Iron Maiden. Her gray sweatpants hung loosely around her hips. She flipped through channels and dozed off in front of the TV.

The phone woke her up. She picked up, groggy from sleep, assuming it was Tristán. He always called at ungodly hours, never worried about everyone else’s schedules. But it was Abel again, the words frenetic.

“Montserrat, please, you have to help—”

There was a loud thud, then a click.

“Abel?” she said, but he’d hung up.

Montserrat called him back immediately. The line was busy. She phoned Tristán. She got his machine. She thought to send him a message via his pager, but she didn’t want to wait. Tristán could be anywhere.

Still half in the grip of sleep, she stuffed her feet into a pair of sneakers, plucked her keys from the hook by the door, and put on the leather jacket she had been wearing earlier that day.

The walk to the garage seemed to take an eternity even though it was only a block away. When she reached Abel’s building, she used the spare keys Tristán had given her to open the front door. As she climbed the stairs she wondered if she was going to have to pick the lock on Abel’s apartment, like she did when she and Tristán went into the grain storage buildings. But when she reached Abel’s door, she saw that it was open a couple of inches.

Montserrat stepped into the apartment. It was dark in there, and the first thing she did was slide her palm against the wall, trying to find the light switch.

“Abel,” she called out as the lights went on. “It’s Montserrat.”

She walked slowly, not wanting to frighten the old man. Everything seemed in order in the living room. His books were arranged on the shelves, the oval portraits with signed photos of long-dead movie stars sat right above Brownie cameras, and old issues of Cahiers du Cinema were stacked on the coffee table.

Montserrat poked her head down the hallway. “Abel, I’m here.”

The apartment was quiet. A thin shaft of light escaped from underneath the door of one of the bedrooms. He must be in there.

“Abel, can you come out?”

She felt unnerved. Rather than proceeding, she stepped back and went into the kitchen. She grabbed a knife from a drawer and headed back into the hallway and stood in front of the door, taking a deep breath.

“Abel, I’m coming in, okay?” she said.

She waited a few seconds, hoping he would reply. But the only answer was a thick silence. It made her think that Abel was not home, although she had the definite sensation someone was waiting for her inside the bedroom. She turned the doorknob and walked in.