“Sorry to bother you. I’m trying to find a gentleman by the name of Romeo Donderis. He also goes by José López. I was told he knows the owners here.”
“The owner’s not here today.”
“Could I leave my number? He could call me back.”
“You can leave it, but I don’t know when he’ll be coming in,” the woman said with a shrug.
Montserrat wrote her number on a napkin and handed it over. “Hey, can I look through your Yellow Pages?”
“I suppose. Come behind the counter.”
Montserrat did. The Yellow Pages were next to a battered Garfield phone with the cat’s pupils rubbed out. Montserrat opened the second volume, looked under “Publishers” for Ediciones B. But it wasn’t listed. Marisa had said Clarimonde Bauer had run into financial issues, so maybe the company had gone out of business. Still, she remembered the address printed in the book. It was downtown.
“Do you have change for a bill?”
“What do you think this is, a bank?”
Montserrat took out a bill and stuffed it in the glass for tips. She handed another bill to the woman, who frowned but gave her the coins she needed.
Montserrat thanked the woman. The creperie employee waved her away and went back to watching television.
At the corner there was a public telephone, its plastic shell defaced with crude graffiti. She tossed in a coin and dialed the number for Tristán’s pager. After all, he did say he would keep it clipped on and wanted to be informed of what she was up to. She left a message with the address she was going to and indicated she’d stop by his apartment that night.
Montserrat took the subway to Bellas Artes and bought a map from a newspaper kiosk a few paces from the station’s exit, and after consulting it walked around the Alameda, avoiding the vendors who occupied it this time of year, offering to take pictures of the kids with Santa Claus or the Three Kings for a modest sum of money. She dodged pedestrians and peddlers of plastic trinkets, ignored decorations of giant artificial poinsettias hanging from buildings and signs advertising romeritos con mole, and followed her map down a small net of streets filled with ancient gray buildings.
The building that corresponded to Ediciones B was a turn-of-the-century construction with very tall, narrow windows that had been boarded up. A frieze with flower shapes ran above the windows, and the cornice was also decorated with floral motifs. Two wooden double doors were locked with a large chain and a padlock. The wall by the door was plastered with a sign that had been painted over with so much graffiti you could not read what it said, though it was obvious it had once spelled the word “condemned.” Now only the letter “c” was clearly visible.
The building in front of Ediciones B was a toy store or kids’ clothing store. It had a sign that said “Pingos” in colorful letters, but its steel shutters were rolled down. The street was quiet, with no street vendors or nosy neighbors to watch her. Montserrat decided to take a chance and reached into her purse, pulling out the two paper clips she had used to open Abel’s apartment, and went to work on the padlock.
It was exceedingly simple to figure out its mechanism, and after looking both ways and making sure no one was watching her, she removed the chain and pushed one of the doors open, slipping inside.
The lobby of the building was impressively vast, and then came a flowing wrought-iron staircase and behind it a long hallway. The interior was half in shadows. She walked past the staircase, following the hallway, and reached what must have been a ballroom at one point. It was now an expanse of dust and darkness, a chandelier glinting and catching a stray ray of light as she poked her head inside. It was empty.
Montserrat changed directions and went back to the staircase, ascending it with a hand firmly on the banister. Darkness gave way to light as she reached the second floor; they had not bothered boarding up the windows at that level, and although it was getting late, light still streamed in, making it easy to find her way. She walked into offices that had a desk or two, or a chair that lay upturned, like cargo that had spilled from a shipwreck and been left abandoned on a lonesome beach.
A couple of windowpanes on this floor were broken. Rain had filtered in through the years, licking the floorboards and staining the walls. Pigeons had also drifted inside, nesting in filing cabinets. There were droppings on tables. A few of the birds, startled as she walked into a room, flew away. But others remained, eyeing her from above empty bookcases.
She stumbled onto a series of bluelines, tucked in dusty drawers, and opened boxes that had been piled in a corner. She pulled out a copy of The House of Infinite Wisdom and gazed at its familiar first page with the vegvísir.
Alma was right. Clarimonde Bauer had kept reprinting her lover’s book.
On the third and top floor she paused in front of a bathroom without a door—it had been pulled off; only the hinges marked its passing—to rub her leg. A tap could be heard dripping, the sound of the water echoing against the white tiles.
She kept looking, opened more doors or poked her head into abandoned offices. In one room there was a calendar that said “1985” and a metal filing cabinet. She pulled at a drawer and found dusty invoices from years past. That office had an interconnecting door with another room, and when she opened it, she found herself in what must have been Clarimonde Bauer’s office. At least, it was her photograph hanging on the wall, behind a desk.
Montserrat approached it, looking up at the face of the young girl she had seen in pictures, now sliding into middle age. She opened a drawer and found business cards bearing the address of Ediciones B. She chanced upon an old invitation for a party organized by Clarimonde, printed on ivory cardstock with an address in Las Lomas. She pocketed the invitation and looked in other drawers, but they only yielded stationery and envelopes. Montserrat exited the room and went back to the hallway.
When she passed by the bathroom it was quiet.
Montserrat froze in her tracks. The sound of water dripping, which had been so evident minutes before, had vanished. It was as if someone had closed the tap, or something was muffling the noise.
She took a step back and stood in the doorway of the bathroom. Light streamed through a frosted glass window, and the mirrors above the sinks reflected tiles, peeling walls, the bathroom stalls. The ordinary sights one would expect.
But on the mirror closest to the window, she saw a shadow that had the curious shape of a man. Just a shadow that gave the impression of someone in a trench coat, standing in profile. It could have been a trick of the light, an object reflected across the bathroom. Except then the shadow shifted, a silver spark rippling across the glass, reminiscent of a flash frame.
The silence strained her senses, making her wince.
It was a silence she recognized, that she’d met back in Abel’s apartment, and which had threatened to burst her eardrums and now seemed to encase her in a velvet softness.
Montserrat reached into her purse and clutched the napkin that she’d smeared with her blood. Her throat was dry, and her heart was pounding. She was afraid of moving, of walking down the hallway, because if she turned she’d see something behind her, but in front of her there was the bathroom with its mirrors that held within them impossible reflections.