Читать книгу Wicked Weeds - Pedro Cabiya - Страница 17

4. HEART-SHAPED / CENTRIFUGAL FORCE

The situation deteriorated over time, in some respects. As the relationships among the three friends fell apart, each woman’s relationship with me grew stronger. And as each of their relationships with me grew stronger, the greater was my confusion about it. Mysteriously, our work environment became increasingly childish. If Mathilde and I worked longer than was strictly necessary on a given task, Patricia Julia and Isadore would become furious with Mathilde; out of revenge, they wouldn’t speak to her for the rest of the day, and they’d punish me by treating me with cool disdain. If, during lunch, Isadore and I sat down together to chat, the other two would join forces to chastise us with their collective indifference. The same would happen with Mathilde and Isadore if I dared to walk Patricia Julia to her car and if she lingered in order to talk with me a while in the parking lot. There was no way to maintain harmony. I was always doing something that upset our precarious balance, and I couldn’t remedy the problem because I couldn’t imagine what the problem might be.

Over time, and despite everything, we came to know one another quite well. Better said: I came to know them quite well. Terrified they’d discover my secret, I had no choice but to maintain my distance. So great was their zeal for asking me personal questions, for finding reasons to be near me, for initiating, through all possible means, conversations that had nothing to do with work, that many times I began to suspect that they were plotting my destruction.

The most insistent of the three was, without a doubt, Mathilde. About a month into our professional coexistence, she took up the habit of arriving earlier than the others, waiting in her car until I arrived, and only then getting out. She’d bid me good morning and immediately relieve me of my briefcase, or whatever else I was holding.

“Give it to me,” she’d say. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“That isn’t necessary, Álvarez,” I’d resist. “I can manage on my own.”

“Oh!” she’d fume. “You just love to annoy me. Call me Mathilde!”

“Okay,” I’d say, “Mathilde, I can manage on my own.”

“Perhaps,” she’d reply, feigning anger. “Now give it to me and stop arguing.”

Et cetera.

I remember the last time she was in my office.

“Helllloooo,” she said, poking her head in the door. Loyda, my secretary, never could restrain her.

“Miss,” I said with theatrical seriousness. We never got tired of this game.

“I’m sorry, sir,” interjected Loyda, too late. “I told her that. . . .”

“Thank you, Loyda,” I said. “It’s all right.”

“Yes, sir,” said Loyda, retreating, but not before directing an intense look of hatred at Mathilde. As soon as she’d closed the door, Mathilde stuck her tongue out at her.

“What is it?” I said, not getting up. Mathilde walked over and sat on the edge of my desk, to my right, as usual. She was wearing a sky blue mini-skirt. Once again I was visited by that terrible sensation of vertigo, as though a chloroform-soaked handkerchief had just been waved under my nose.

“Nothing,” she said, crossing her firm, pink legs. The feeling of succumbing to a powerful narcotic intensified; it’s possible that the lavender-scented lotion she used to moisturize her thighs was causing me to have an allergic reaction. “I left the centrifuge separating cells for a primary culture. It will be finished in half an hour.”

“Excellent,” I said in a conclusive tone. But then, as though trapped in an inescapable magnetic field, I couldn’t remove my eyes from hers, nor could she remove hers from mine. To make matters worse, neither one of us said anything. It was as though she wanted to wrest a confession from me. She examined my expression with such intensity that her eyes burned my face. It lasted only a few seconds, but to me, it seemed an eternity.

“And you?” she finally said, swinging her legs and looking away from me.

“Me?” I said, and surprised myself wishing, inexplicably, that she’d go, that she’d leave me alone. “As you can see.”

“Busy,” she said sadly. With genuine sadness, the sadness of a little girl who asks for and doesn’t receive the attention she needs. But why had she gotten like this so suddenly? Why didn’t she go downstairs to talk with her colleagues, or help them? Certainly they would have a great deal to do.

“Paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork,” I said. “Here in the office, it’s what I must do.”

“Hmmm,” she mused. “Is that why you came to our lab, to flee your paperwork?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I laughed.

“In a manner of speaking,” she repeated very seriously, lifting her leg and grazing my elbow with the pointed heel of her shoe. “In a manner of speaking, of course.”

Then the magnetic field again and silence. This time, however, she took pity on me.

“Well,” she said, sliding smoothly off the desk to her feet, “I’m going. I’ll leave you to finish your paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork.”

“I’ll see you down there,” I said. She walked slowly to the door, paused, waved goodbye, and left. I felt enormously relieved. But then I noticed that there was something in the place she’d been sitting: small, heart-shaped, wrapped in red foil. A chocolate.

I went out after her. Luckily she’d not yet crossed the threshold out of my office.

“Mathilde,” I said. She turned.

“Yes?” she replied. Loyda stopped typing and looked at us curiously.

“You dropped this,” I said, holding out the chocolate. First, her face turned livid and then it ignited in a blazing red. She looked at Loyda. Loyda returned the look, reprimanding her with a small smile of contempt.

“Oh!” said Mathilde, brusquely grabbing the chocolate from me. “How stupid of me! Thank you.”

She hurried off. I could hear the rapid-fire echo of her heels in the hallway.

That was Mathilde: intelligent and responsible, but extremely absent-minded.