Zig Zag (13 page)

"So
how're things with Blanes?"

That
was what she'd been afraid of. If she was going to be honest, she'd
have to say that her pride had been not just wounded but almost
slain, that it now lay abandoned in some intensive care unit in the
depths of her personality. She was no longer trying to shine; she
wasn't even bothering to raise her hand, no matter what the question
was. She just listened and learned. Valente Sharpe, on the other hand
(who still hadn't even deigned to look at her), shone more each day.
Classmates had started asking
him
questions,
as if he were Blanes, or at least his right-hand man. And if he
wasn't yet, it was only a matter of time, because even Blanes himself
asked for his opinion on things. "Valente, nothing to say about
this?" And Valente Sharpe would respond with glorious
exactitude.

Sometimes
she thought it was just envy.
But
that's not it; it's more a void. I'm deflated. It's as if I trained
for a marathon and then wasn't allowed to run it.
It
was quite clear who Blanes was going to take with him to Zurich. So
all she could do was try to learn as much as possible about that
beautiful theory and come up with another plan for her professional
career.

She
wondered if she should tell Maldonado all this, but then thought
she'd probably already told him enough for one night.

"Good,"
she said. "He's an excellent teacher."

"Still
want to do your dissertation with him?"

She
hesitated before answering. An enthusiastic yes would just be a lie,
but a curt no wouldn't be honest, either. Emotions were like quantum
uncertainty, she thought.

"Of
course," she said coolly, leaving her true feelings hanging in
the air.

They'd
walked across the plaza to Madrid's famous statue of the bear and the
strawberry tree—
"el
oso y el madrono"—
the
symbols of the city. Maldonado asked her if they could stop at one of
the ice cream parlors there to indulge one of his few "weaknesses,"
a chocolate-dipped cone. She laughed at his childlike tone when he
ordered it, and even more at his obvious delight in devouring it. As
they stood there in the plaza, Maldonado savoring his treat, he
suggested they have dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Elisa accepted
immediately, glad that the evening was not yet over.

She
spotted the man just then, purely by chance.

He
was standing by the entrance to the ice cream parlor. Gray hair, big
gray mustache. He was holding an ice cream cone, nibbling at it every
little while. This guy didn't look as much like the second man as he
did the first one. In fact, he looked like he could be the brother of
the man from the party. Or maybe—she couldn't be sure—it
was actually the same guy, just dressed differently.

No,
it couldn't be. Now she saw that his hair was curly, and he was
thinner, too. It wasn't the same man.

For
a second she thought,
This
is not unusual; there's nothing wrong with this picture. It's just a
guy looking at me who looks like some other guys who were looking at
me.
But
suddenly it was as if the floodgates had opened and a whole slew of
irrational thoughts rushed into her mind, making a racket and causing
a scene, like coked-up party crashers.
Three
different men who all look the same. Three men watching me.

"What's
wrong?" Maldonado asked. She couldn't lie. She had to say
something. "That man."

"What
man?"

When
Maldonado turned around, he wiped his hands on a napkin and no longer
looked at Elisa.

"The
guy standing by the ice cream parlor. He was giving me a weird look."
She really didn't want Maldonado to think she was seeing things, but
now she couldn't stop herself. "He looks a lot like another guy
I saw at the party at Alighieri, who was also watching me. It could
be the same guy."

"Really?"

Just
then, the man turned and strode off toward Alcala Street.

"I
don't know, I just got the feeling he was spying on me..." She
tried to laugh it off but couldn't. Maldonado wasn't laughing,
either. "Maybe I'm wrong."

He
suggested they go to some quiet bar and talk it over. But there were
no quiet bars around there, and Elisa was too jittery to walk far. So
instead they decided to go to the Chinese place and have dinner. It
was still early, and there weren't that many people in the restaurant
yet.

"Now.
Tell me exactly what happened the other day. Every detail," he
said once they'd sat down at a quiet, out-of-the-way table. He
listened carefully, and then asked her for a detailed description of
the man she'd seen at Alighieri. But before she could finish giving
it, he interrupted her. "Hang on ... Gray hair, mustache. I know
that guy. It sounds like Espalza; he's a statistics professor. He
gave some guest lectures in my sociological stats class, but I know
him more because he's in the teachers' association and I'm in the
students' association..." He paused and then adopted that
mischievous look that she loved. "He's also divorced and has a
reputation as a perv. He's always ogling gorgeous students. He must
have really been slobbering over you..."

She
suddenly wanted to laugh.

"You
know what else happened, that same night? When you dropped me off at
home, this other guy with a mustache was staring at me..."
Maldonado widened his eyes comically. "And that guy today had a
mustache, too."

"Why,
it's a... a mustachioed conspiracy!" he murmured, feigning
alarm.
"A-ha,
now
I see!"

Elisa
burst out laughing. How could she have been so stupid? There was only
one explanation: finishing college and starting Blanes's course had
taken a toll on her nerves. She laughed until tears streamed down her
face. Maldonado's expression changed abruptly as he stared at
something behind her.

"Good
God!" he said, sounding scared. "The waiter!" Elisa
turned to look, wiping the tears from her cheeks. The waiter was
Asian, but (and this struck Elisa as unusual for an Asian man) he
wore a big, black bushy mustache. "Another mustache. And this
time it's a Chinese mustache!"

"OK,
OK," she laughed again. "Enough already."

"Let's
get out of here, we're surrounded," he whispered.

Elisa
had to hide her smirk with a napkin when the waiter actually came to
take their order.

SHE
was
still giggling when she got home that night.

Javier
Maldonado was a great guy. Really great. He'd made her laugh all
night, telling stories about professors and classmates, including
Espalza and his tendency to pick up anything young with boobs.
Hearing those banal stories had been like a breath of fresh air for
Elisa, after having spent too long in a sea of books and equations.
And what was more, when she'd finally had enough, he picked up on it
instantly and took her right home. He hadn't driven, but he rode back
with her on the metro to Retiro, the closest stop to her house. His
mischievous face stayed with Elisa as she got off the train, and she
kept picturing it on the walk back.

She
came to the conclusion that although it was unfair to say she'd come
very far in her relationship with Maldonado, she had taken a few
steps. She was no fool; she'd been through this before. One of the
advantages of her solitary lifestyle was that she'd learned to depend
solely on herself. She'd been out with a few boys, especially when
she just started college, and she thought she knew what she wanted.
What she had with Maldonado was a friendship for now, but things
seemed to be moving along.

The
apartment was dark and silent. When she turned on the entry-hall
light she saw a note her mother had taped to the doorframe: "I
won't
be back tonight. The cleaning girl left you some dinner in the
fridge
."
The cleaning "girl" was a robust forty-five-year-old
Romanian, but her mother had called every maid she'd ever had a
"girl." She turned the living-room light on and the
entry-hall one off, wondering why her mother felt the need to inform
her of the obvious. Marta Morande took every weekend off; even the
society pages knew that. Most times she didn't come back until
Monday. There were plenty of gentlemen who invited her to spend a few
days at their luxurious abodes. She shrugged. What did she care what
her mother did?

She
turned the living-room light off and the hall light on, knowing there
would be no one there. The "girl" had Sundays off and
always spent Saturday nights with her sister in the apartment she
rented in the outskirts of Madrid. Elisa loved those nights when she
had the whole house to herself, knowing she wouldn't be interrupted
by her mother's annoying presence or the maid hovering around.

She
walked down the hall, turned the corner, and headed for her room. Out
of the blue, she recalled the "mustachioed conspiracy" and
laughed out loud.
Watch,
now there'll be another one waiting in my room. Or hiding under the
bed.

She
opened the door. The coast was clear of mustaches. After closing it
behind her, Elisa hesitated for a moment and then locked it, too.

Her
room was her little bunker, her fortress, the place in which she
lived and studied. She'd had many a fight with her mother about it,
insisting that she mind her own business and keep out. She'd been
cleaning her own room, making her bed, and changing her own sheets
for ages. She didn't want anybody rummaging through her things.

Elisa
kicked off her shoes, took off her jeans, threw them on the floor,
and then turned on her computer. She thought she'd check her e-mail,
since no messages had gotten through while the phone line was down.

As
she logged on, she wondered what to do that night. She wasn't going
to study, she knew that for sure. She was tired, but didn't feel like
going to bed yet. Maybe she'd look at some of the erotica she kept on
her hard drive, or visit a chat room or one of her "special"
pages. Electronic sex had been the fastest and most antiseptic way
for her to handle her long period of hibernation while she studied
around the clock. She decided she really didn't feel like it right
then, though.

She
had two unread messages. The first was from an electronic math
journal. The second one had no subject line and showed the little
paper-clip icon, indicating it was sent with an attachment. She
couldn't place the address:

mercurio0013@mercuryf
riend.net
.

It
had "virus" written all over it. Deciding not to open it,
she selected the message and hit "delete." Immediately, her
screen went dark.

For
a second, she thought it was a power outage, but then she realized
that her lamp was still on. She was going to crawl behind her desk to
check the cables when suddenly the screen came back on; one photo
filled it entirely. A couple seconds later, it clicked to another
one. Then another.