The Infamous Miss Rodriguez: A Ciudad Real Novella (10 page)

I
t wasn’t
easy to convince Aunt Elba to see them, much less to listen to what Vicente had to say. But Graciela was nothing if not persistent and before the week was over, Aunt Elba had been persuaded to look at the diagrams Vicente had drawn up.

Once they were safely ensconced in her office, high above the factory floor, Graciela left them poring over Vicente’s proposal, and wandered out to the metal walkways that overlooked the rest of the building. The relentless clatter of machinery drew her eye to the proceedings below. Half a dozen girls not much younger than herself fixed labels to the full flacons that came trundling down a moving platform while another group farther on stoppered them with cork topped with the blown-glass camellias Graciela’s grandfather himself had designed. The flacons were then sealed and boxed and carted off to be distributed to shops and department stores all over the Caribbean.

Graciela could count on one hand the number of times she’d visited the place from which her livelihood was drawn, or even paid attention to its workings beyond sparing a thought for the endless hours her grandfather had devoted to it while he’d still been alive. For most of her life, the factory had been an annoyance that had kept her grandfather from joining in their frolics and, later, an obligation that had tied her to Alvaro in what felt more like a noose than an attachment.

She’d never thought of the sacrifices Aunt Elba had made to keep it running, nor the sheer amount of daring it must have taken to go at it on her own rather than leave it to a hired man of business.

Now, at least, there was Vicente to help her shoulder the burden. He’d had plenty more ideas than he’d given himself credit for. Graciela had noticed Aunt Elba’s expression growing more and more interested as she’d heard him speak and at the end of it, even she had to admit that his ideas would be welcome.

A hand landed on her shoulder and Graciela looked up to see Vicente standing behind her.

“Have you finished?” She had to shout in order to be heard over the cacophony coming from below.

“Not quite.” A lock of un-oiled hair flopped into his forehead and Vicente pushed it aside impatiently. “There’s a lot more to be done than I had imagined. It looks like the foreman has made quite a mess of things but your aunt has some good ideas on how to get things right again.”

“I knew you two would work well together.” Graciela gave him a smile. “I should get out of your way. Should I expect you for lunch?”

“We thought we’d eat here, while we work. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all. I think I’ll go back to the hotel. Will—” Remembering her resolution, Graciela choked back an invitation for dinner. Vicente had gone above and beyond their original arrangement and it seemed unfair to her that he should have to give any more than he already had.

Already turning back to the factory floor where her aunt was studying something that looked like a set of blueprints, he gave her a distracted wave and clattered down the metal stairs.

Graciela followed more slowly, turning right where he had gone left. A short corridor of offices through whose doors she could glimpse smartly-dressed typewriter girls and bespectacled clerks, led her to the exit where she found her aunt’s chauffeur waiting.

“Take me—take me to Miss Tolentino’s house, please,” she told him as she settled into the leather seat. She’d meant to return to the hotel, but there was no one waiting for her there and, anyway, it had been two days since she and Beatriz had been able to see each other.

When she arrived at the handsome townhouse, however, she saw not her friend but her friend’s mother, who let out a wordless exclamation and dropped the flowers she’d been holding.

“My dear, dear girl,” she cried, rushing to envelop Graciela in a hug. “Do tell me all about your
wonderful
news.”

Tight within Mrs. Tolentino’s vise-like grip, Graciela managed to draw in a breath. Before she could attempt a word, Mrs. Tolentino was talking again.

“It’s all I’ve been able to talk about since I heard,” she said, and Beatriz, who was just that moment descending the wooden staircase, confirmed her statement with a groan. “It’s the most unbearably romantic thing I’ve ever heard of. An elopement, days before your wedding! However did it all happen?”

Not three minutes later, Graciela had been tugged into the parlor and deposited in an armchair, a cup of coffee in her hand and a captive audience on one end of the loveseat. Beatriz had settled herself on the other end, busy sorting the spools of thread in her sewing basket as her mother went into raptures.

“When did you know you loved him?” Mrs. Tolentino asked, interrupting Graciela’s unexciting account of meeting Vicente at the Gonzalez’s dinner.

Her words faltered as a sudden memory flared inside her.

It hadn’t been the first kiss they’d shared, or even the second, which had left her breathless. That had come during the night—the one night—they’d spent together. She’d fallen asleep in his arms and sometime in the early dawn, she had opened her eyes to find him awake.

“What are you thinking about?” she’d whispered into the stillness.

“The future,” he’d said, and his voice, Graciela remembered, had sounded like the voice of a man who didn’t think he had any future to look forward to.

“I suppose you’ll want to leave soon, to make a new beginning.” Though she’d known him for less than a month, Graciela had found the thought oddly disappointing. “When the time comes…promise you won’t forget me.”

“I couldn’t if I tried,” he’d said, and somehow his lips had found hers in the dark.

This kiss was different than the ones they’d shared. The first two had been polite, gentle caresses that had been infused with the passion and heat of their wedding night. In this one, however… in this one she could feel every bit of his strength and tenderness and underneath it all, something rough and desperate and wild. It had been a promise, though Graciela still wasn’t sure exactly what that promise had entailed. Or even if he meant to keep it.

Graciela lifted the cup to her lips, aware of Mrs. Tolentino’s eyes on her but unable to suppress the wave of heat sweeping over her at the unexpected pleasure of the memory.

She hadn’t realized Beatriz had been watching her as well, not until later when they were saying goodbye at the door and her friend whispered, “You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”

“No,” Graciela whispered back. “That is—I don’t know. It’s a business arrangement, Bea, not a true marriage.”

“Even so.” Beatriz tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I saw it in your face earlier. You’ve fallen in love with your husband.”

“You’re being as fanciful as your mother,” Graciela said, and tried to distract her friend by changing the subject. “Has there been any gossip?

“You know there has, enough to keep everyone talking clear until the next century,” Beatriz said. “Alvaro Medina jilted two days before his wedding—it’s the most exciting thing that has happened in Ciudad Real since his father was caught with the Catalan actress. The Gonzalez girls called this morning and they could hardly wait to sit down before they told Mama all about it. They made it sound as if Mr. Aguirre had all but kidnapped you in order to get his hands on your dowry. I tried to tell them he’s got a fortune of his own, but they know he used to work at your factory.”

Graciela frowned. “Mrs. Santiago said the same thing when she ran into Aunt Elba earlier. It must be Alvaro’s doing. I wouldn’t mind, only it spoils Vicente’s chances of making friends if everyone thinks he’s a villain.”

It shouldn’t have mattered, because chances were Vicente would leave as soon as he helped Aunt Elba get the factory back on its feet. And even if that weren’t the case, it would take a great deal more than dispelling rumors for snobbish Ciudad Real society to ever make friends with the help. Beatriz knew this as well as Graciela, but she restrained herself from saying out loud what they were both thinking: even without Alvaro’s intervention, Graciela’s husband would not be received now that the truth of his background had come out. And now, neither would Graciela.

She’d been prepared for it to happen, and to face it alone. Now she had Beatriz’s support and Vicente’s as well, for as long as he stayed. For the first time since she’d begun her campaign, Graciela felt her heart lightening.

* * *

G
raciela was already
in bed when she heard the door to the suite open. She sat up a little higher, letting the covers slip down to her lap in order to expose the delicate lace on the neckline of her nightdress—rather a fruitless gesture, since she was sure Vicente wouldn’t come into her room. They hadn’t been together again since their wedding day, even though Graciela would have liked nothing better. But it had seemed wrong to demand it of him when she didn’t know if he wanted it or if he would feel obligated.

He had
seemed
to enjoy it, but that was the problem with paying people to do things for you: you never could be sure.

To her surprise, his footsteps stopped just outside the door. He must have hesitated because there was a pause, then a knock.

“Vicente?” Graciela called. “Come inside.”

He did, but only as far as the doorframe. “I want to thank you for the opportunity to help out at the factory.”

“Oh, Vicente. I should be thanking
you
. How did things go with Aunt Elba?”

“Very well, I think. I’ve got some ideas on how to cut costs and make production more efficient and she’s willing to implement them. It will take time, I think, but with enough improvements, we might be able to hold for another quarter.”

“That’s wonderful,” Graciela murmured, unable to muster the excitement she knew she ought to be feeling.

“Also, here—“ He stepped into the room and dropped a small brown bag on the covers, then retreated to the doorway. The scent of roasted peanuts filled the air. She looked at Vicente, who gave her an abashed shrug. “I can never pass Lito’s cart without buying peanuts now.”

He gave her a lingering look, then, before she had a chance to say anything more, stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

Graciela wrapped her hand around the warm bag and thought about the sheaf of papers sitting on her vanity. Her grandfather’s man of business—hers, now—had drawn up a settlement for Vicente that was even more generous than she’d promised him. All it needed was Vicente’s signature. Then an account would be opened in his name, the funds deposited there, and he’d be free to leave if he chose.

Putting him in the second bedroom had been an attempt to keep him close, but she knew he would want his freedom before long.

He hadn’t asked her about the money yet but it was only a matter of time before he claimed what he was owed. And when that happened, there would be nothing to stop him from walking out of her life for good.

N
early four weeks
after the wedding, Miss Rodriguez received the newlyweds in her home for the first time. Curiosity, Vicente supposed, had driven most of the guests to accept her aunt’s invitation, even if it meant sharing a table with a Jezebel and a common laborer.

As dinner parties went, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Or so Vicente surmised as he watched Elba and Graciela eat and chatter with their guests—anything other than sitting at a rickety table in his shirtsleeves as he ate boiled plantains and fried eggs was still, to him, an extraordinary event.

The evening had passed without any mayor incidents and soon, the street outside the parlor’s tall windows was brightening with the light cast by the guests’ motorcars as their chauffeurs queued up outside Miss Rodriguez’s door.

Vicente and Graciela lingered in the parlor after all the guests had gone. As it tended to these days, before long, talk between Vicente and Miss Rodriguez turned to business.

It hadn’t taken him all that long to realize that she
had
needed his help—not with the actual running of the factory, which she was more than capable of doing, but with wrangling the foreman, a mulish, hard-headed man who’d been doing everything he could to undermine Elba’s strict instructions. What was worse, he was a wastrel, and his careless ways were costing the factory more than even Elba had guessed. They would replace him, soon, but in the meantime—for as long as he had to— Vicente was more than happy to make sure Elba’s commands were carried out.

“I wondered if you’d had a chance read the financial report I left on your desk earlier today,” Elba said as she poured herself another glass of Spanish sherry and carried it over to the armchair by the window.

Graciela, who’d been saying goodbye to the Gonzalez girls, returned to the parlor as Vicente replied to her aunt. “I looked it over. Not very encouraging, is it?”

Elba’s response was to remove her spectacles and drop them on the table beside her. “We had another order of
Graciela
this afternoon,” she said, referring to the scent the current Graciela’s grandfather had created and named after his wife. “It ought to be enough to carry us through another quarter. Give us time to find more buyers—somewhere abroad, perhaps.”

Vicente swirled the port inside his glass like he’d seen General Espaillat doing earlier. “I don’t mean to sound discouraging, but we’d need a hell of a lot of buyers to get through the next quarter.” Even with a foreman who wasn’t hell-bent on muddling Elba’s commands and introducing chaos into the neatly arranged processes because he thought he knew better, it would take a great effort to get the factory out of the red. It had been taking heavy losses for a long time, and Elba had exhausted the family’s personal finances in trying to keep it afloat.

“I know,” Elba said quietly before rallying with a burst of energy that reminded him of Graciela. “I want to look over the books tomorrow to see if we can reduce any more expenses. I won’t scrimp on quality, but we might have overlooked something.”

Graciela had been watching them from the doorway. Now, she crossed the room and sat beside Vicente on the settee, and as their arms brushed, Vicente was aware of his arm twitching, as if it would rise against his volition and settle around her shoulder. He wondered, for the millionth time, how he was ever to survive going through the days without touching her.

“You’re going about it all wrong,” she said. Vicente recognized the expression on her face as the one she’d worn while plotting new ways to make herself infamous. “The only way to increase sales is to make people—real people—
want
whatever it is you’re selling. Then every store will be
begging
for enough quantities to supply the demand. You know, like when Sofia Alcantara wore that
hideous
green hat. It looked like a soursop, but all of a sudden, everyone wanted one just like it and every store began to carry green hats. It was perfectly awful.”

“We place advertisements in all the major newspapers,” Elba said.

“Yes, and they’re frightfully boring,” Graciela said. “Did you see the advertisements Mr. Cortez had drawn up for their chocolates? They were placed in every ladies’ magazine and just last week
Minerva
carried an invitation to its readers to attend a lecture on the chocolate-making process—with a tasting afterwards, of course.”

“Sales of Cortez’s chocolates are up by five percent,” Vicente said, recalling what Cortez had told the men before dinner. He was a pompous braggart, but Vicente had no doubt he was a good businessman.

Graciela threw him a grateful smile. “If we could do something similar, I’m sure I could persuade Mr. Quintana to lend us a space in the store—he’s the owner of
La Parisienne
,” she told Vicente, “and an old friend of my grandfather’s.”

Vicente had never doubted in his wife’s brilliance, but Miss Rodriguez stared at her as if she’d suddenly sprouted a second head.

“Sounds like you’ve made quite a study of sales,” Vicente said.

“An informal one, conducted in department stores and sewing circles.” Graciela said, in that flippant way she had of saying things she meant in earnest. “Rather a conventional pastime, I know, but after all, I needed something to occupy myself with between schemes.”

Elba collected her wits. She ignored what must have been a vexing reference to her niece’s outrageous behavior and said, “Why, Graciela. You’ve never taken an interest in the factory before. I thought you didn’t care for any of it.”

“I do care,” Graciela said. “But I never dared interfere. I thought you’d think me a bother.”

“Not a bit,” Elba said softly. She continued in a brisker tone. “Well. It’s a very good idea but I’m afraid we haven’t the budget for it.”

“We can use my dowry.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Of course you can,” Graciela said. “And you will. It’s my money and my factory and I don’t intend to take no for an answer.”

Vicente hid a smile as he watched the two Misses Rodriguez face each other with identical expressions of stubbornness. It was anyone’s guess which of the strong-willed women would hold on for longer, though he did think Graciela was in the right. Her dowry might not be large enough to pull the factory from the red, but it would go a long way towards making the fashionable people of Ciudad Real—or the island and the rest of the Caribbean, if he correctly guessed the scope of Graciela’s ambition—realize just how desperately they wanted to smell like
Graciela
.

He said as much, even though he’d wondered if he should intervene at all, and the matter was resolved far quicker than Vicente had expected. Elba was a proud woman, but she was not a fool—she knew as well as he that Graciela’s idea was a good one.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll make arrangements to have the funds transferred so that we can start as soon as possible.”

Graciela met her success the way she did everything else—with enthusiasm and vigor. She began to lay out her plans and it was well past two in the morning when the two of them finally left Elba’s parlor.

Elba’s manservant let them out and Graciela paused in front of the front door and lifted her face to the sky. There was a breeze, and though it was as warm as the soup Elba’s housekeeper had served for the first course, it was strong enough to lift the tiny curls around her hairline. Her dark cheeks were flushed from the heat and the sherry, her eyes sparkling with the anticipation of plunging into another scheme, even if there was nothing scandalous about it.

She was going to be a success, and it was Vicente’s misfortune that he wouldn’t be around to see it.

* * *

“
S
o I’m
to be famous after all,” Graciela said, unable to suppress a smile.

She and Vicente were sitting in the back of the motorcar on their way to the Hotel Europa. After dinner had ended, Aunt Elba had drawn her aside to ask her if she and Vicente would like to return to the house. Graciela had refused. It had been a nice gesture, and Graciela had made sure to tell her aunt that she thought so, but she had always wanted independence and her rooms at the hotel seemed a step towards achieving it.

“It seems so. If you won’t mind posing for it.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, recalling some of the posing she’d done only weeks before. “What did you have in mind?”

Vicente hesitated.

“There is something—” He cut himself off, looking embarrassed. Digging into his waistcoat pocket, he produced a small square of cardboard, on which something was printed. Graciela took it from him and found herself looking down at her own face. It must have been one of the photographs she’d taken with Mr. Sanchez. She was sitting on an upholstered bench, completely nude, and he’d caught her as she was turning to look at the camera. Her face was in profile, partly hidden by her unbound hair, which fell down her back in thick curls.

“You’ll think me a brute for keeping it. I destroyed all the others but this one…” He gave her a helpless look and Graciela could feel her heart warming.

She could have taken offense at his stealing such a private photo, but she
had
been planning for it to be seen by every member of Ciudad Real society and a few others besides. She glanced down at it again, and saw herself the way he must have seen her—though her face was half-turned, she looked determined and tenacious enough to do things like skewer a butcher’s brother with the end of her parasol or save herself from an unendurable match.

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “I’m touched that you kept it. I—I’d like for you to take it with you. When you go.”

“When I go,” he echoed. Some emotion she couldn’t describe flickered in his face and suddenly Graciela felt as if she had made a misstep. “As to that. I promised your aunt I’d help her find a new foreman. And of course I’ll be here to help you with your campaign. I won’t go before then.”

“And after?”

“I hadn’t thought about it yet. But I suppose it’s time I started making plans.”