The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (14 page)

It all worked well for a couple of months. By the third month, their clothes came out of the washing machine all mixed up, only one bed saw any use, and the thing about having visitors stay over had stopped seeming like a good idea. María married at twenty and Bernabé at twenty-three. She achieved a lot. He achieved nothing.

During the first years of their marriage, María smartened up the flat and studied hard, worked as a waitress, a secretary, and, finally, a bookkeeper for a small company that sold office products. She slept five hours a night on average, relaxed only on Sunday afternoons, and had no time for fun, friends, or holidays.

Bernabé, meanwhile, settled down on the sofa in front of the TV and watched nothing but soccer games. He forgot how all the domestic appliances worked and what all the cleaning products were for.

He was perfectly contented with his job at the café near their flat. He loved standing behind the bar, almost like a therapist or a confessor; he liked the regulars and the games of dominoes they played when he could escape from his chores for a while; he enjoyed making saucy comments to the girls who sometimes came in for a midmorning coffee; he was fond of the lads who came to buy sandwiches, the seductive sound of the cigarette machine, and the smell of toast for breakfast and grilled meat for lunch.

It had its downside too, of course. Primarily, the uninterrupted twelve-hour shifts, from seven to seven, the miserable salary, and the complete lack of a career ladder. But he wasn't ambitious. He was happy enough with his routine life, his soccer game on Sundays, his beers in front of the TV, and the unconditional love of María, his hyperactive wife, who was always cooking up plans that they never had the time or money for.

“This summer, if we manage to save a bit, let's go away somewhere, shall we? What do you reckon?”

“Depends,” he would reply, absorbed in the highlights of the match he had just watched. “Where do you want to go?”

“To the beach. To the south. Somewhere really sunny.”

But that summer, instead of going on holiday, they had to deal with a complicated pregnancy that meant María, faced with the threat of premature labor, had to stay in bed for three months. The baby was determined to be born early and the doctor was equally determined that it would reach full term.

From her throne of white sheets, María gave Bernabé orders: “Open the blind, close the curtain, put the washing machine on, make me a hot chocolate.” Until, after ten days, Bernabé told her the only lie of his life. He said he had a double shift at the café and, what with her on leave, money was tight, so he would make the sacrifice and work longer hours. “María, it's for the good of both of you,” he said, and from seven to ten he went to watch the game at a friend's house.

Lucía was born two months premature, which coincided with an international soccer final, much to her father's annoyance.

“Typical girl,” he exclaimed when he held her for the first time.

A short while later, María got her job at
Librarte.
“What a weird name for a magazine,” said Bernabé, and carried on eating his chips.

Then the twins were born on the only day of the year that, as luck would have it, no soccer was being played anywhere in the world.

And life got a lot more complicated for María.

The chaos into which her daily routine descended after the kids were born contrasted significantly with the early days of marriage.
María no longer suggested going on holiday, nor did she dream that her husband, one day, might find a job that was better suited to their desperate financial situation. She got used to his trivial chat in front of the TV, his lack of ambition, his domestic habits, and his apathy.

Sometimes she let herself think that if she hadn't left with the first guy to wander through Urda, she would still be a free woman. Then she was shocked to look in the mirror and come face-to-face with the spitting image of her mother, albeit a modern version: another zombie stuck in a rut.

But these thoughts weren't of any use to her. To banish them from her head, she hugged her three kids, smiled kindly at Bernabé—who, at the end of the day, was a good person, a good father, and a loyal husband—and pretended to be truly happy.

Until Barbosa arrived on the scene.

CHAPTER 22

C
ésar Barbosa was no male model. It's true that his cocky attitude, his leather jacket, and the stubble that caressed his jutting cheekbones made him look particularly manly, and that his husky smoker's voice combined with a thick Madrid accent made him undeniably attractive to foolish women. But what had really driven María into Barbosa's hairy arms wasn't his voice or any of his questionable physical attributes, but the belief, lodged in the deepest recess of her girly imagination, that one day the hero from
The Bridges of Madison County
would come and save her from her tedious life.

María had identified so much with Meryl Streep's Francesca in that film—which Bernabé, who fell asleep in the second scene, had dismissed as boring, bland, and unrealistic—that from that day on her outlook on life had taken a 180-degree turn. She clung to the idea that all was not lost, even if she was trapped in a dull, lifeless marriage, as intensely as her children dreamed of going to Disneyland.

All she needed to make her fantasy a reality was a flesh-and-blood Clint Eastwood: someone who looked like a bad guy but had a heart of gold. Someone disillusioned when it came to
love, with a past he would rather forget and an uncertain future. Someone who was willing to start a passionate affair with a married woman.

That man was César Barbosa.

He had no scruples when it came to wooing a woman. First he would let her talk at length about herself, because he knew that women like nothing more than to be listened to. Then, expertly, cunningly, he would identify her weak points. Finally, he would attack, aiming straight for the heart.

To a woman who feared loneliness, he promised undying love. To a woman who was smothered by commitment, an open relationship; to a woman who erred on the side of prudishness, a long courtship with plenty of respect; to a woman who suffered with sexual inhibition, 1,001 nights of rampant debauchery; and to María, an extramarital adventure with all the trimmings.

Secret meetings, clandestine dates, hotels, parks, and backseats, whatever you want, babe, we'll act out your fantasies, your deepest desires, as filthy as you like, you're so hot, you're too young to feel so old, you've got a heart-stopping ass, what a waste, come on, be generous, if your husband doesn't know how to value your body, then let Barbosa enjoy it.

She accepted the invitation to debauchery, of course. She had spent months dreaming of that day.

“I want you to call me Francesca,” she said as she entered the room of the little hotel that would become their meeting place from then on.

And he shushed her with kisses.

•  •  •

César Barbosa was the type of guy who put his faith in the university of life and awarded himself an A. Who showily scorned degrees and prizes because he secretly coveted them but knew he didn't deserve them. Who believed he was an artist, with an artist's vices, and thought that being an artist wasn't an affectation but a way of life.

He dropped out of journalism school through a combination of complete failure and expulsion, after six years of clowning around in the cafeteria. He adopted the title “freelance photographer” to explain to his father why he should lend him the money for his first Kodak camera. Then he went out into the street in search of an image to can and flog to the papers for a fee that would finance his experimental artistic photography. He set up a studio in the attic of a derelict house. He called it a “loft” and managed to trick a few aspiring models into posing nude for him. He did indeed sell those photos for a tidy sum, but he used a pseudonym. Later, he specialized in the underground movement, and that was when he bought his leather jacket, on Portobello Road on a research trip to London paid for by a Sunday supplement, and some Dr. Martens boots that he destroyed going up Guadarrama on a motorbike.

He got a dragon tattooed on his arm. Time went by, fashions changed, and the underground movement emerged and went mainstream, but all the while César Barbosa refused to let go of his leather jacket.

“Few of us nostalgic types are left,” he often muttered at the bar. “True survivors of a mythical time when we had The Cure, punk, and Madonna's fingerless gloves.”

“And Bruce Springsteen,” the barman would reply, raising his glass. “The Boss.”

In recent years he had done a few jobs for
Librarte.
He usually turned up at the office unshaven and reeking of stale tobacco, often wearing a sleeveless T-shirt to show off his dragon. The girls called him the Pirate behind his back, mainly because he had the same name as Captain Barbosa from
Pirates of the Caribbean
, but also because his cocky attitude and fondness for rum meant he was more than worthy of the nickname.

For two years, María paid no attention to the Pirate apart from muttering timid pleasantries—“morning, good morning, the invoice, thank you, we'll transfer the money in a month, goodbye, bye”—and when she did pay him some attention it was quite by accident, and thanks to a silly, embarrassing mistake, which she blamed on the children's tonsillitis. “I swear I don't know what got into me, what a thing, come into the office when you can, César, and we'll sort it out.” She had paid him twice for the same piece of work: a photo shoot with a truly ugly author, what a joke, the poor thing's hideous.

“I didn't even notice,” he lied, because he awaited each paycheck in cold sweats. “In any case, I've spent it now.”

“Then you'll do the next job for free,” said María, ever pragmatic.

But César turned up at the office holding an envelope with the money, and he handed it to María with the same solemnity with which Sultan Boabdil handed over the keys to Granada to the Catholic kings.

“Come on, let me buy you a drink,” the Pirate said then.

And he took her straight into a scene from
The Bridges of Madison County.
While Clint Eastwood showers in the upstairs bathroom, Meryl Streep takes an ancient flowery dress out of the trunk, plonks it on, and looks like Laura Ingalls from
Little House on the Prairie
but fifty years older. Clint Eastwood stares at her in surprise, not understanding what the demure look is all about, because he knew, right from the very beginning when he asked her under the Madison Bridge how to get to the nearest town, that he was going to get her. María didn't care. César Barbosa took her for drinks, listened to her talk about herself for hours on end, gave her a ride on his motorbike to the corner of her street, and on parting said the thing about the heart-stopping ass.

There was no turning back after that.

CHAPTER 23