He hadn’t seen her at first. He’d heard the tap-tap of her cane, heard the distinct patter of her shoes, and then her voice, loud and clear. “What are you up to?”
The boys had turned in surprise and then, seeing the girl with the pigtails, they laughed and swore at her. Go away, they said. But she was insistent. She stood there, gripping her cane and her grocery bag, and glared at the boys.
“You go away,” she replied.
Two of them scuttled toward the front door, but the biggest boy stared Montserrat down. She stared up at him, though, and before he could open his mouth, she hit him with that cane. The way she landed the blow, Tristán could tell she had done this before, and the big boy yelped and stumbled, but he did not raise his hand against her.
“Come on,” the other boys said. “You know she’s nuts!”
They ran off. Tristán stood with his back pressed against the wall, warily looking at the little girl as she adjusted her stance and gripped the cane properly again.
“I’m Montserrat. But you can call me Momo. Wanna play?”
Just like that, with a boldness that made him immediately agree that yes, he wanted to play after he helped her carry the groceries up to her apartment. Which proved his point that she’d never been scared, while he on the other hand had possessed a long résumé in the art of being a coward. This haunting couldn’t have happened to a worse person.
He was going to buy five dozen roses the next day.
Tristán adjusted the candle on the table, scraping off a drop of warm candle wax with a nail, and looked at Montserrat as she turned a page. The sight of her fingers upon those yellowed pages made him grimace.
“Should you be reading that?”
She glanced up at him. “Why not?”
“Urueta gave you a racist magic manual circa 1960. Very vintage, and also probably the equivalent to a fucking Necronomicon in Spanish.”
“There was a kid from the UNAM who told me he photocopied the real Necronomicon one time. He wanted to barter my copy of Fulci’s Zombie for it.”
“The laserdisc of Fulci?”
“That one. He also wanted a blow job for it. There’s always someone wanting to sell you a lie around El Chopo.”
Tristán wondered who had been the kid who had the gall to ask Montserrat for a blow job, not because she was unappealing—she had, as he liked to say, her angles—but because she looked like the kind of person that would knife you in the bathroom stall if you asked for that. She was a Tlaltecuhtli, not a Venus.
“Of course, but that’s a real magic book in your hands,” Tristán said.
“Why? Because Ewers might have been a real sorcerer?”
“I’m sure he was. His spell worked, and I saw Karina standing right here in this apartment,” Tristán said, pointing in the direction of the hallway where he’d seen the dead woman.
“It doesn’t mean the book is correct.”
“What, he wrote all that down and lied?”
“There’s something about this book,” Montserrat said, tapping a nail against the page. “It’s like Urueta said, it’s a mishmash of ingredients. And there are pages missing.”
“Where?”
“From the back,” she said, carefully sliding her hand along the spine. “Page seventy-one jumps to seventy-three. There’s no table of contents, so it could be a misprint, but I don’t think so. I think someone gave this book a new binding. Printed 1961, Talleres de Ediciones BE, Doncellas eighty-seven, Mexico City.”
“It’s creepy. Everything about this is creepy.”
“That was the point, wasn’t it? That it might make a good story for Enigma?”
“Only now I wish you’d worked on a piece on UFOs. By the way, you’re not going to turn this whole thing into a video segment, are you? I can’t sit on camera and say what I saw. I’d look crazy.”
“No, I won’t make you do that.”
She shook her head, closed the book, and he was certain she’d depart any minute now.
“Let me get you a soda,” he said. “Or a coffee.”
He made a much better coffee than the abomination Montserrat had served him at her place. He had real beans, for one, and his mother had made sure, like any good Lebanese boy, he could make a decent cup. Anytime someone came to visit you had to serve proper coffee. Tristán still kept the rakweh his mother had gifted him before his father changed jobs and his family moved back up north. They’d wanted him to go with them, too, worried that his acting career was turning from a side gig into a full-blown profession—his father didn’t quite approve of showbiz as a vocation—but by then it was too late. Tristán was determined to be a performer, and all talk of going to university and studying for a career fell on deaf ears. Even nowadays, when Tristán phoned his mother, she sometimes mentioned that one of his uncles might employ him at his furniture shop.
“I don’t want coffee.”
He was already halfway to the kitchen but paused to turn and look at her. He didn’t know what Montserrat saw in his eyes, but her expression softened. She nodded.
“One cup.”
Tristán, who had been kneading his hands together, now smiled brightly. He tried not to glance at the clock on the wall, for it would show the hour and the inevitable fact that sooner or later she’d go home, and it would be night outside, and he’d be utterly alone and helpless, with only a candle to keep him safe.
11
“What I’m interested in is occult doctrines and occult sciences in 1930s and 1940s Germany,” Montserrat said, quickly glancing at the notes she’d jotted down and adjusting the telephone against her ear. “It’s for a possible gig with a TV show.”
“I’m surprised to hear that. I thought you were married to audio,” Regina said.
“It’s not paying that well these days. Besides, it’s merely a possible gig. Nothing final. Anyway, would you know any books that would be useful? I don’t mean half-researched junk but some stuff with teeth.”
“It’s not exactly a common subject. Can I call you back in a bit?”
“A bit like an hour or a bit like a few weeks? Because I’d rather have it be an hour.”
“Are you in a rush?”
“Tick tock,” Montserrat said.
“Okay, fine. An hour. Call me back.”
Montserrat called at an hour and ten minutes, and Regina answered at the third ring.
“I got two books to recommend to you. Do you have pen and paper?”
“Sure.”
“The first one…oh, honey, no, I’m on the phone.”
Montserrat heard an exchange of muffled words, as if Regina had pressed a hand against the receiver. In the background was the sound of a record player. Regina was living with someone new. It neither surprised Montserrat—it had been two years, after all—nor filled her with jealousy. She felt only that vague curiosity she sometimes had about other people. She had never lived with anyone. She couldn’t stand the thought of having to surrender her movie posters to the tastes of a lover, or having to engage in the domestic compromises such relationships entailed.