“You’re not. You call next week to see if you have shifts. You’re getting seven days off unless you apologize for being disrespectful.”
“I haven’t done anything!”
When Mario was in a bad mood, he became a petty tyrant. She knew from experience that the answer was to bow her head and blurt out a half-assed apology. That’s what Samuel or the boys did when Mario was grumbling and stomping through the building. But if there was anything she hated, it was having to stomach a bully. Every single fiber of her body resisted the impulse to grovel, even when she could see by the look in Mario’s eye that he expected her to. Maybe it had been the comment on sexism that had gotten him riled up. Whatever it was, Montserrat would be damned if she was going to take a reaming from this guy.
“Well? Are you going to apologize?”
Montserrat slammed her cup down on the rickety plastic table where they were supposed to have their meals. “I’ll take the seven days off. Maybe when I come back you won’t be such an ass,” she said, gathering her jacket under her arm and storming out of the room.
As soon as she opened the front door, she knew she’d messed up. She shouldn’t have gone off on him. Mario had been baiting her. He was probably itching for excuses to let her go, and she was giving them to him on a platter. Well, there was nothing to be done about it that day. Mario would probably change his mind in a few hours. He usually did. If he didn’t call her in the morning…well, fuck.
Montserrat put on her jacket with a quick, fierce motion and hurried to her car. She desperately needed to find alternative sources of income, because this job wasn’t cutting it anymore.
2
Tristán had been without a phone for ten days now. On the one hand, he wasn’t surprised because Telmex wasn’t exactly prompt, but with the rent he was paying at his new apartment he had assumed things would proceed more smoothly. The apartment manager had certainly assured him he’d get all the trimmings at his new home.
Now, to be perfectly honest, the apartment wasn’t the height of luxury. Sure, it was located right next to Polanco, but it was actually in Granada. Tristán told himself it was like Polanco, except it wasn’t, not with the warehouses and ratty buildings nearby. Walk a few blocks and you’d be in a land of new sports cars and chic restaurants, but that was still a few blocks from him.
Tristán’s building was five stories tall, painted green, and had been refurbished to serve a higher class of clientele in the past few years; he didn’t doubt in a decade or two developers would bulldoze the whole colonia and build it anew, making it as shiny and elegant as Polanco. But for now the prosperity that the building owner had expected had not manifested.
Yet Tristán could not do any better. Already the new apartment was making his wallet bleed. He needed to line up more gigs.
That was why he wanted to get his phone up and running again. He was trying to land an ad campaign. He kept staring at his pager forlornly and running to a pay phone a block away to make calls.
The one good thing about this state of affairs was that the journalists might have a harder time getting hold of him. The anniversary of Karina’s death was coming up. Ten years since she’d died. A guy who worked over at a miserable rag had called him a few weeks before looking for an interview. At least this way Tristán wouldn’t be tempted to talk.
Ten days was ridiculous, though. Tristán reached the pay phone and dialed the number for the apartment manager’s office. Because this was supposed to be a nicer building, there wasn’t the usual portera in a checkered apron, her hair in curlers, that people could harangue about a problem. You had to phone a number.
The girl at the management office said she was aware of his phone issues, and no, there was no update on when that would be fixed and it was really Telmex’s fault anyway so maybe he should be harassing them instead. When he pointed out that the apartment had been offered to him with three months of free phone service the girl replied that she didn’t have his contract in front of her but it was still Telmex who had to fix his phone line. He hung up, muttered to himself, and began walking back to his apartment. Tristán was trying to cut down on his smoking, but frustration made him stop in front of a newsstand, where he bought a pack of cigarettes, some Chiclets, and an issue of Eres. He knew he shouldn’t grab the magazine. It only upset him when he saw the well-groomed faces of younger actors who had obtained roles he’d been up for. And there was the danger that they would be running a story on Karina. But he felt masochistic that afternoon.
Karina. He managed to forget her for three quarters of the year, but eventually succumbed, took out her pictures—he carried one in his wallet, but he had many others, tucked away in a shoe box—and spent too many hours staring at them. When he’d been younger, he’d believed he would be able to put the accident behind him. Now he could admit that might never happen, that in fact the ache was getting worse. Each year made the pain sharper. Most people couldn’t understand that. Whether they said it outright or not, they considered him weak, foolish, a failure.
Tristán stopped in front of the mailboxes, fetched several letters, and stuffed them in his back pocket, then lit his cigarette and headed to the third floor. After he walked into his apartment and tossed his jacket on the couch, he finally looked at the envelopes and realized one of the letters was a welcome message from the management company and the other two were not addressed to him. Those letters were for Abel Urueta, apartment 4A.
That was a name you didn’t hear these days. Montserrat and Tristán had spent more than one truant afternoon at the Palacio Chino and the Cine Noble eating mueganos and watching horror movies, including Urueta’s old flicks. Nowadays the Cine Noble showed pornos, and the Palacio Chino was falling to pieces, all its golden décor slowly tarnished by grime and neglect. Few folks made movies in Mexico anymore, almost everything went straight to video, and it was a stream of cine de ficheras and cheap comedies with men who pawed at a woman’s tits. La Risa en Vacaciones, with its hidden cameras and cheap jokes, was what passed for entertainment. And now Abel Urueta, who had directed three magnificent films in the 1950s, was a mere footnote in the history of entertainment.
Tristán felt something close to childhood glee as he looked at the letter. He quickly walked the steps up to the fourth floor and knocked on the door of 4A.
A distinguished-looking gentleman, his gray hair parted in the middle and a handkerchief knotted around his neck, opened the door and regarded Tristán curiously. He’d never seen a photo of Abel Urueta, but he thought this was the right guy. He had Stanley Kubrick eyebrows—arched a little, the eyes intense—coupled with a half smile fit for Luis Bu?uel.
“Mr. Urueta? I’m sorry, I seemed to have received your mail by accident,” he said, extending the letters.
“That damn postman,” the older man said, shaking his head. “One year I don’t give him cash on Postman’s Day and he acts like I spit on his face. Well, forgive me if I didn’t have change that morning. It’s practically armed robbery dealing with people these days. Accident! That fellow keeps slipping my correspondence in whatever mail slot he pleases.”