The Lady Matador's Hotel by Cristina Garcia

Author:Cristina Garcia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

La Hacienda

It’s sunny out, the sky a uniform blue. The lawyer sits on her veranda finishing her morning coffee and biscotti. The gardeners methodically clip back the bougainvillea and mow the winter lawn. Tomorrow they’ll prune the fig and avocado trees. Every summer, the groves yield enough fruit to bring in a tidy profit. Gertrudis watches a pair of lizards mate in a corner of her patio and thinks how silly human passion is next to this minimalism.

She tries to quiet her mind but it’s hopeless, like balancing a beehive on top of her head. Gertrudis has made the necessary calls. Now it’s only a matter of giving the calls sufficient time to take effect. She might’ve expected anything from her husband except pure treason. To her, an agreement is an agreement, no matter how unsentimentally it’s made. Undoubtedly, written contracts are best but frequently impossible. When she’d been in grade school, Gertrudis had agreed to consider a lovelorn classmate’s request for marriage but only if he put the proposal in writing. (She turned him down, nonetheless.)

The lawyer is surprised at how deceived she feels, at the wire of anxiety scraping her inside. After finishing her coffee, Gertrudis orders her car to be brought around—the German roadster she likes to drive herself. It’s her custom to take it out for a spin on Sundays. Everywhere the lawyer goes—outfitted in driving gloves and goggles—people look on deferentially. Speculation will fly over the fact that she’s driving her roadster on Wednesday. Let them talk. She’s tired of caring.

Gertrudis settles behind the wheel and adjusts her side-view mirrors. Today she’s a minefield of clarity, as if she can see in all directions at once. The barbed wire festooning her whitewashed walls looks funereal, like a widow’s stiff lace. The wrought-iron gates of her mansion open smoothly. As she exits, Gertrudis nods to the lumpy security guard, midmeal in tamales and beans. She notes that the time is wrong on the bright face of the sentry’s clock.

“Fix it,” she orders him, tapping her watch. “It’s three minutes slow.”

The lawyer’s first stop is seventy miles away, in the Highlands. She accelerates through her neighborhood, its avenues lined with thick-topped poplars. Every estate has its own security guards, armed with machine guns, like hers. It’s not a choice but a necessity. Kidnapping has become a way of life. Gertrudis counts herself lucky. She has nothing criminals might ransom: no children, no pets, both parents long dead. The bank president down the street had his twin daughters kidnapped from their bedroom last Christmas. Only one survived. Evita, now sixteen, attends boarding school in Switzerland. And Señora Hochman’s prize shih tzus were stolen over the summer. It cost her ten thousand dollars—negotiated down from double that—to get back those yapping balls of fluff.

A commotion is under way on the northwest road out of town, impeding traffic. Protesters are picketing Won Kim’s Glorious Textiles factory, one of her chief suppliers. Gertrudis did business with Won Kim’s father years ago, an ox of a man but not entirely without charm.

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