He saw no need to tell her about Susan. That relationship was not important either for Susan or for him. He was sure he was one among several lovers who helped her bear an unhappy marriage, which he considered should have ended years before. This was a topic they both avoided: Susan said nothing about it, and he did not ask. They were colleagues, good companions, linked by a sensual friendship and intellectual pursuits. Their encounters were straightforward: always the second Thursday of the month, and always in the same hotel; she was as methodical as he was. One afternoon a month was enough; each of them had their own life to live.
Three months earlier, the idea of finding himself with a woman at a reception of this kind, searching for topics of conversation and testing out the ground for the next step, would have made Richard’s ulcer explode, but ever since Lucia had been living in his basement he had found himself imagining dialogues with her. He wondered why with her exactly, when there were other more suitable women available, such as his neighbor, who had suggested they become lovers because they lived so close to each other and because she occasionally looked after the cats. The only explanation for these imaginary conversations was that loneliness was starting to weigh on him: another symptom of old age, he told himself. There was nothing more pathetic than the sound of a fork on a plate in an empty house. Eating alone, sleeping alone, dying alone. What would it be like to have female company, as Lucia had suggested? To cook for her, wait for her in the evening, go out hand in hand with her, sleep curled up together, tell her what he was thinking, write her poems. Someone like Lucia. She was a mature, stable, intelligent woman who had a ready laugh. She was wise because she had suffered, but did not cling to suffering the way he did. And she was pretty. But she was also bold and bossy. A woman like her took up a lot of room: it would be like struggling with a harem; too much work, a bad idea. He smiled, thinking how presumptuous it was of him to suppose she might accept him. She had never given any sign of being interested in him, except the occasion when she had cooked for him, but back then she had just arrived and he was on the defensive or his mind was elsewhere. I behaved like an idiot, I’d like to start over with her, he concluded.
On a professional level, Lucia had proved to be an excellent choice. A week after her arrival in New York he asked her to give a seminar for the faculty and students. They had to hold the session in a big lecture hall because more people enrolled than they had expected. It fell to him to introduce her. The topic was CIA interventions in Latin America. Richard sat in the audience while Lucia spoke in English without notes, in that accent of hers he found so beguiling, detailing how the agency helped to overthrow democracies, replacing them with the kind of totalitarian government no North American would accept. When she finished, the first question was from a colleague who referred to the economic miracle in Chile under the dictatorship. From the tone of his comment, it was obvious he was justifying the repression. The hair stood up on the back of Richard’s neck, but he forced himself to remain silent. Lucia did not need anyone to defend her, and replied that the supposed miracle had evaporated, while the economic statistics conveniently ignored the enormous inequality and poverty.
A visiting professor from the University of California mentioned the violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and the thousands of unaccompanied children who crossed the US border either to escape or to search for their parents. She suggested reorganizing the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s. Richard took the microphone in case there was anyone in the audience unaware of what she was referring to. He explained that it was an initiative by more than five hundred American churches, lawyers, students, and activists to help the Central American refugees, who were treated as delinquents and deported by the Reagan administration. Lucia asked if anyone there had taken part in the movement, and four hands were raised. During that period Richard had been in Brazil, but his father had become so involved that on a couple of occasions he was put in jail. Those were some of the most memorable moments in his elderly father’s existence.
The seminar lasted two hours, and was so fruitful that Lucia was given a standing ovation. Richard was impressed not only by her eloquence but because to him she looked very attractive in her black dress and silver necklace, and with the pink highlights in her hair. She had the cheekbones and energy of a Tatar, and he remembered her as she’d looked years earlier, with a reddish mass of hair and tight jeans. Even though she had changed, he thought she was still striking, and had he not feared being misinterpreted, he would have told her so. He congratulated himself on having invited her to his department. He knew she had been through difficult years: an illness, a divorce, and heaven knew what else. It occurred to him to ask her to teach Chilean politics for a year at the university as it might serve as a diversion for her, but it would be even more useful for the students. Some of them were colossally ignorant, arriving at college without being able to place Chile on a map, and most likely unable to situate their own country in the world. They thought the United States was the world.
Richard would have liked Lucia to stay longer than two semesters, but it was hard to come up with the funds: the university administration was as slow in making decisions as the Vatican. When he had sent her the contract, he’d offered to rent her the basement apartment, which was unoccupied at the time. He imagined Lucia would be delighted to have somewhere so sought-after in the heart of Brooklyn, close to public transport and at such a reasonable rent, but when she saw it, she could scarcely conceal her disappointment. What a difficult woman, thought Richard. They had started off on the wrong foot, but since then things had improved between them.
He was convinced he had been both generous and understanding toward her. He had even accepted the eventual presence of the dog, which according to her would be only -temporary, but which had already lasted more than two months. Although pets were forbidden in the rental agreement, he had turned a blind eye to this Chihuahua that barked like a German shepherd and terrified the mailman and neighbors. He knew nothing about dogs but could see that Marcelo was very odd, with bulging toad’s eyes that seemed not to fit in their sockets and a tongue that lolled out because of all the missing teeth. The tartan wool cape the dog wore did nothing to improve his appearance. According to Lucia, Marcelo had turned up on her doorstep one night, close to death and without an identity collar. “Who could possibly be so cruel as to throw him out?” she said to Richard with a pleading look. That was the first time Richard had noticed Lucia’s eyes. They were as black as olives, with thick eyelashes and fine laughter lines around them—cat eyes, although that was an irrelevant detail. What she looked like did not matter. To retain his privacy, ever since he had purchased the house he had followed the rule of avoiding all familiarity with his tenants, and he had no intention of making an exception for her.