And having thus rationally thought her way to this conclusion, Fran decided that it had been a long time since she had been so grateful for an invitation.
Marta sat hunched on the finishing hands’ workbench looking down at the wad of money he had pressed on her and thinking: his friend Mickie is dead, he believes he killed him, and perhaps he did, the police are spying on him but he wants me to sit on a beach in Miami and eat the buffet lunch at the Grand Bay and buy clothes and wait until he comes. And be happy and believe in him and get a tan and have my face mended. And get a boy as well if I can, because he would like me to have a handsome boy, a proxy Harry Pendel, doing his loving for him while he stays faithful to Louisa. That’s who he is and you may call it complicated or you may call it very simple. Harry has a dream for everyone. Harry dreams all our lives for us, and gets them wrong every time. Because number one I don’t want to leave Panama. I want to stay here and lie to the police for him and sit at his bedside the way he sat at mine and find out what’s gone wrong for him and cure it. I want to tell him to get up and hobble round the room because for as long as you stay lying down all you can think of is getting another beating. But when you stand up you start to be a mensch again, which is his word for dignity. And number two I can’t leave Panama because the police have taken my passport by way of encouragement to spy on him.
Seven thousand dollars.
She had counted them onto the worktable by the glow from the skylight above her. Seven thousand dollars from his back pocket, pressed on her like guilt money the moment he heard of Mickie’s death – here, take this, it’s Osnard’s money, Judas money, Mickie money, now it’s yours. You’d think a man setting out to do what Harry had to do would keep his money in his pocket for eventualities. Undertaker money. Police money. Chiquilla money. But Harry had scarcely put the receiver down before he was pulling the wad out of his back pocket, wanting to be shot of every dirty dollar. Where had he got it from? the police had asked her.
‘You’re not stupid, Marta. You can read, study, make bombs, make trouble, lead marches. Who gives him his money? Does Abraxas give it to him? Is he working for Abraxas and Abraxas is working for the British? What does he give Abraxas in return?’
‘I don’t know. My employer tells me nothing. Get out of my flat.’
‘He fucks you, doesn’t he?’
‘No, he doesn’t fuck me. He comes to see me because I have headaches and vomiting attacks and he is my employer and he was with me when I was beaten. He is a caring man and happily married.’
No, he doesn’t fuck me, that at least was true, though it cost her more to tell them this precious truth than any number of easy lies. No, officer, he doesn’t fuck me. No, officer, I don’t ask him to. We lie on my bed, I put my hand in the heat of his crotch but only outside, he puts his hand inside my blouse, but one breast is all that he allows himself though he knows he can have the whole of me any time he wants, because he has the whole of me already, but the guilt owns him, he has more guilt than sins. And I tell him stories of who we might be if we were young and brave again in the days before they took my face off with their clubs. And that is love.
Marta’s head was throbbing again and she felt sick. She stood up, clutching the money in both hands. She couldn’t stand another minute in the Cuna work room. She walked down the corridor as far as the door to her office and, like a guided tourist a hundred years from now, stood at the threshold and looked in while she gave herself the commentary: