“I’m leaving,” Gaspar said.
Marita got up to follow him, but Gaspar walked out fast and alone without waiting for her, forcing her to run down the street after him. It was late to go back to La Plata, but Gaspar headed toward the highway and the bus stop. Marita followed him as fast as she could: it wasn’t easy to catch up. Luis’s shouts also followed them: quit fucking around, stay and sleep over, I’ve already made up the bed, tomorrow we can talk more calmly. Gaspar couldn’t go any farther than the highway: at that hour there were no radio taxis, yellow cabs didn’t come to Villa Elisa, and the train wasn’t running. The only options were to wait for a bus that passed once an hour, hitchhike, or stay at Marita’s parents’ house. When she caught up with him, she felt like slapping him. Leaving her like that, making her run through the night like a dumbass, begging him to stop like they were on some soap opera. But she held back.
“Don’t talk to me right now,” he said. “Please.”
“Your dad asked him not to tell you. It wasn’t his fault.”
“I said don’t talk to me.”
Marita stopped in the middle of the road, incredulous, as she saw the white and red of the approaching bus that would take them back to La Plata.
“We need to buy a car,” she said.
On the bus, she let Gaspar sit alone in the last seat. When they reached La Plata, she went back to the apartment, but he stayed out alone, walking.
Marita ran to Professor Herrera’s office. She was late to see the university press director, all because Gaspar had been too furious to let her get a good night’s sleep. And she had to work. Gaspar was selfish sometimes: his drama came before everything else. She knew, though, that when she got home that evening, he would apologize and would probably have calmed down. She was aware that they had to break that cycle somehow, and she trusted that they would, with the correct therapy. Gaspar was right when he said he couldn’t go on seeing his childhood psychiatrist.
The college’s hallway was papered with signs on both walls, and paper banners with slogans were also hanging from the ceiling and doors. Elections were coming up, and it was the first time since she’d started school that Marita wasn’t involved in the process. That year, the work at the press had absorbed her entirely. Currently, she was helping on the collection of great forgotten essays from the seventies onward. Texts that had been published to no great acclaim in alternative magazines or media outlets, by authors who over time became famous. Also articles by disappeared journalists, the occasional overlooked gem. The criteria were eclectic because the choice was up to Herrera, the teacher whose class she assisted in. He was also the most admired and feared professor at the college, though she knew his gruff character was just a show for his classes: outside the classroom he was very nice. Marita still needed to read the essays in the last book, the one that would go to press that afternoon, because she had taken a week off. And now, instead of returning on time and enthusiastic, she was turning up bleary-eyed and half asleep. Herrera demanded meticulousness and Marita loved that job; she wanted to keep it for the coming years. They weren’t paying her yet, but it was possible they would hire her soon. Plus, she wanted to show Herrera the testimonies she had gathered about the AIDS crisis in the city, and the photos of the first pride parades. It was a modest project but, with some work and more material, it could be published. That wasn’t going to happen if she came in late and didn’t demonstrate seriousness.
“Finally,” said Herrera without a greeting. “We need to get to work.”
Marita set her backpack on the floor and licked her lips in case there were breadcrumbs or drops of coffee left over from breakfast. She wanted to seem professional.
“We need to send Volume 12 to press. You didn’t correct it, we had a temp that week, so I’m not holding you responsible, but the proofreading is a disaster. We can’t send it like this. I need you to sit down and do it now.”
“Professor, there’s not enough time to proof a whole book, and I’m not a proofreader, either.”
“No, my dear, I’m not asking for the whole book, I’m not crazy. It’s the last article, by Olga Gallardo. I don’t know what happened: it seems like the temp didn’t even glance at it. Take a look. It’s missing accent marks, it jumps around, it’s a disaster. Clearly it won’t be the same as if the proofreader had done it, but she can’t come in today. You and I have to do what we can.”
“No problem.”
“Have you read that text?”
“Not yet.”
“I went back and forth on whether to include it up until the last minute, because Olga was a very particular person in her final years. Mental illness is terrible, Marita, it can devastate us. I met her when she was young and she was an excellent professional, bold, a little too bohemian, like everyone. And at the end, she was just a shadow of herself. She got obsessed with this case you’re going to read, but not just that. It’s never just that.”
Marita had heard of Olga Gallardo before, the great female chronicler in a male-dominated world, and also a suicidal alcoholic. She thought the whole legend was an exaggeration, and also unfair, because although everyone insisted Gallardo had been great, they never assigned her in classes. Herrera himself had said once that in her work, it was hard to know where the facts ended and the fiction began. And how that was the mortal sin for journalists, who, though they should by all means employ the narrative tools of literature, must never employ the imagination: public responsibility and commitment to truth-telling were inalienable. Marita made a cup of instant coffee and then printed the article from her computer. It was called “The Za?artú Pit,” and it wasn’t very old: Gallardo had killed herself soon after it was published. It was a suicide note. Marita felt a little apprehensive as she sat down to read the text, pen in hand. It meant reading the words of a woman who was possibly crazy, the words she had left as a testimony before killing herself. And it had been a horrible death, from rat poison—that was also part of the legend, her painful last gasps in a hotel, because she had left her house to die. Herrera had his back to her as he talked into the phone, twisting the cord. Marita settled into her chair and entered the jungle, a pit of bones, the heat.
The phone rang, so did the doorbell. The brand-new cell phone’s battery was dead, and he didn’t plan on charging it. He wasn’t about to respond to anyone. He had thrown Marita out. He’d done it because she was in danger, and, of course, she hadn’t been able to understand. She’d been scared. She wanted to know if it was true what the article said about the house where Adela had disappeared, the human remains, if it was true about the difference in size and area between the inside and out. He hadn’t wanted to answer: he couldn’t, but he didn’t deny it, either. While Marita yelled at him, he was watching Adela, naked, in a corner of the apartment, lit by the dusky light shining in from the balcony. Her body was covered in trickles of blood or maybe strands of red yarn, and she was dancing a childish and elastic dance, her blonde hair falling over her black eyes, black as Omaira’s eyes and his father’s before he died. He tried to look at Marita, but he couldn’t stop seeing that little-girl body, white and obscene, skipping near the curtain. Marita insisted. Gallardo made things up, she told him, everyone knew that. Everyone, everyone, who is everyone? That woman had killed herself because of him. His second death. There would be more, he was very sure of that. The fact that this article had found its way into Marita’s hands was the final message. He couldn’t explain it to her because it would be years of explanations and of silences, and so he’d thrown her out. Pack your bags, I can’t take care of you, Marita, I seriously cannot take care of you, you have no idea what this is. I don’t either, but I sense, I know, I always knew, that the end is coming and they sought you out. But I can’t let them, not you: if anything happens to you I won’t be able to forgive myself. And something’s going to happen. Get out.