“Or we could do nothing,” Tristán said stubbornly.
“I told you this is power unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
“How much have you seen? Are there many sorcerers around the city? Do they all wear dirty raincoats? I don’t think I should be following orders from a guy who can’t figure out how to launder his clothes.”
“That was my father’s raincoat,” López said. “I wear it because it protects me; it’s bewitched, as are my tattoos. And yes, there are sorcerers in this city. Magic requires many elements to work, and most people don’t have all of them at once. Ewers managed to essentially secure all the components to a bomb, and instead of defusing it, you made it tick again.”
“Maybe he’s too powerful to beat. Maybe he’s superhuman. Have you thought about that?”
Montserrat scoffed. “Ewers was no Atlantean, he was a kid who became a good thief. If Ewers had a talent, it was that he was a magpie. In his letter he said he learned from every single person he met, even stealing when he needed to. He was clever and creative. He was also determined. It doesn’t make him infallible.”
“It also doesn’t mean we should be getting more involved in this shit,” Tristán said. “You’re asking me to speak to the dead like I’m making a phone call and chatting with the operator.”
“You are already speaking to the dead,” López said. “You might want to hang up on your dead girlfriend instead of dialing her every day. All I’m asking is that you use whatever power you have to help me and your friend. A bomb, okay? You activated a bomb.”
“Well, I didn’t make that bomb, old man. Thirty-something years ago, you and your friends decided to manufacture a cursed film with an insane Nazi screenwriter, and now you want me to defuse your mistake. Guess what, I’m fed up. The answer is no.”
Rather than reply López spat a kernel out into the palm of his hand and kept on gnawing at his corn. Tristán shook his head and stepped out of the dining room and headed upstairs, back into the bedroom. He paced around, waiting for Montserrat to find him. But she didn’t come. On the night table there was a bowl with mints and candy that could only be found in an old lady’s house. He tossed the candy away and lit a cigarette, collecting the ash in the bowl.
Montserrat finally stood at the doorway, watching him, arms crossed.
“He wants to help us,” she said. “But we also have to help him.”
“Yeah? What’s he doing? What are you doing? I’m the one being asked to play around with ghosts, not you.”
“He’ll draw the runes with his blood. And I’ll make the film burn. We need to work together.”
“Don’t ask this of me. What if I summon her instead of Abel? What then?” he asked, dropping the cigarette into the bowl and placing it back where he’d found it, on the night table with the doily.
Montserrat did not reply, but he could see by the slant of her mouth that she was growing restless and irritated. He considered pushing back, demanding other solutions, but then he reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and carefully retrieved Karina’s photo. He held it up, offering it to Montserrat.
She stepped into the room and took the snapshot from his hand. Then he lowered his head.
“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.”