Silver Nitrate(96)

“You don’t know the whole story. We had a fight the night of the party. It started as a small disagreement and spiraled out of control. She said I didn’t love her, that I was with her for the publicity and because of her connections. She started drinking, and I ignored her. I flirted with other people, I laughed, I danced.

“When she said she was driving home, I knew she was sloshed, but I didn’t try to take her keys. I simply got in the car and shrugged. I wanted to teach her a lesson. I thought maybe she’d bump into another car when she tried to park, or she’d vomit over the expensive upholstery. And I was tipsy myself, and irritated.

“My eyes were closed as she drove. I could hear her crying, but I was tired and I was angry, so I kept them shut and pretended I was trying to sleep.”

Montserrat’s face was expressionless. He would have preferred it if she’d made a motion, replied with a nod, something. He’d always told Montserrat that he’d been blind drunk that night and sitting in the passenger’s seat. He had not described the party, nor hinted at a fight. The papers had whispered about trouble between the lovers, but he had not admitted it. Oblique references through the years had never crystallized into a full story.

“I didn’t see what she crashed into. I heard the screech of the tires and then there was glass everywhere and I was being hit so hard I lost my breath. It was all pain after that. I opened my eyes and I saw blood. It was everywhere, over her face, over mine…I passed out.”

Something flashed in Montserrat’s eyes then. Neither disapproval nor understanding. It was only that she’d heard this part before, or at least knew enough of it to recognize that section of the narrative: the awful taste of the blood in his mouth, his injured eye, the chaos of an ambulance and nurses. But he steered in another direction; instead of speaking of the surgery or the recovery, he paused.

“The funny thing is that I wanted her to break up with me. At the party, she said I didn’t love her, that I was stringing her along. She was right. I liked her, but I didn’t love her, and by then I didn’t even like her that much. I wanted her to go off and find someone else so I wouldn’t have to be the one doing the breaking up. I hate that. It’s always messy, and I knew it would get even messier with Karina; she was dramatic, which I enjoyed and hated. I figured we’d have a shitty night and she would dump me.”

He stood up and glanced at the photo in Montserrat’s hand.

“Look at that picture, look at that girl. She’s twenty-four there. She’s a kid stumbling around, making dumb choices, but still a kid. She deserved to grow old, to grow up. To have a whole life.”

“You didn’t kill her.”

“No,” Tristán said, scoffing. “I didn’t start the ignition, I didn’t turn that wheel and crash that car, but I knew her. I knew she was fragile; I knew she needed me to calm her down or to at least ask someone to watch over her for a bit. I knew she was hurt.”

He touched his eyebrow, slid his fingertips against the corner of his eye and smirked, feeling the scar there and beneath it the titanium mesh holding his eye in place.

“When I woke up, you know what the first thing I asked was? Not if Karina was fine, not if anyone else had been harmed…I asked if my face looked okay.

“I’ve never visited her grave,” Tristán continued. “I always thought it was silly to bury people. She should have been cremated. She wanted her ashes spread near the ocean. But her father wouldn’t hear of it. Just like he wouldn’t hear that she wanted to kill herself that night.”

“Her and you.”

“Yeah. I hated her for it, right after the accident, when they said…the eye, you know. The other injuries, the surgeries…I thought she should have had the decency to swallow pills or slash her wrists in the bathroom, like a normal person. You’re not supposed to enact the libretto of Madame Butterfly in a moving vehicle.”

He let out a low, brittle half-laugh as he took the photograph from Montserrat’s open palm. “You’re correct, Momo. I’m a selfish bastard. I’ve let everyone I’ve ever known down. And I’m always running away.”

“López says the living hold on to ghosts. You made a haunted house out of your own flesh and bones.”

“How poetic,” he muttered, sitting down again.

“It’s true. There’s no exorcism that has ever worked for you. But right now, you could do something for all of us.”

“I don’t want to talk to Abel any more than I want to talk to Karina.”

“You have to,” she said, moving closer to him, until she was right in front of him. “López says it needs to be you. He has a picture of Abel somewhere that can be used for the summoning. He’d tell you what to say and do. But the most important part is that you need to be willing to do it. You can’t be forced into it.”

She sat down on the bed. He turned to look at her. Montserrat raised a hand, her fingertips tracing the scar he’d been touching before. Then her hand went down, toward his chest, to the spot where the other scars lay hidden under his shirt. She’d looked at him at the hospital many times, she’d helped him clean himself and bathe in the awful months of his recovery. She remembered all the marks, like a map.

But he still inhaled in surprise.

“I guessed the whole story, Tristán, because I know you.”