—
WHILE MONTSE had been making up her hours the other laundry maids had attended a concert and glimpsed a few of La Pedrera’s most gossiped about couples there. For example, there were the Artigas from the third floor and the Valdeses from the fourth floor, lavishing sepulchral smiles upon each other. Se?or Artiga and Se?ora Valdes were lovers with the tacit consent of his wife and her husband. Se?ora Valdes’s husband was a gentle man many years older than her, a man much saddened by what he saw as a fatal flaw in the building’s design. The lift only stopped at every other floor; this forced you to meet your neighbors as you walked the extra flight of stairs up or down, this was how Se?ora Valdes and Se?or Artiga had first found themselves alone together in the first place. It was Se?or Valdes’s hope that his wife’s attachment to “that popinjay” Artiga was a passing fancy. Artiga’s wife couldn’t wait that long, and had made several not so discreet inquiries regarding the engagement of assassins until her husband had stayed her hand by vowing to do away with himself if she harmed so much as a hair on Se?ora Valdes’s head. Why didn’t Artiga divorce his wife and ask Se?ora Valdes to leave her husband and marry him? She’d have done it in a heartbeat, if only he’d ask (so the gossips said). Se?or Artiga was unlikely to ask any such thing. His mistress was the most delightful companion he’d ever known, but his wife was an heiress. No man in his right mind leaves an heiress unless he’s leaving her for another heiress. “Maybe in another life, my love,” Artiga told Se?ora Valdes, causing her to weep in a most gratifying manner. And so in between their not so secret assignations Artiga and Se?ora Valdes devoured each other with their eyes, and Se?ora Artiga raged like one possessed, and Se?or Valdes patiently awaited the vindication of an ever-dwindling hope, and their fellow residents got up a petition addressed to the owners of the building, asking that both the Artigas and the Valdeses be evicted. The conserje and his wife liked poor old Se?or Valdes, but even they’d signed the petition, because La Pedrera’s reputation was bad enough, and it was doubtful that this scandalous peace could hold. Laura, Montse’s outermost bedmate, was taking bets.
—
ON THE MORNING of St. Jordi’s Day, before work began, Montse climbed the staircase to the third floor. To Lucy from her Aphrodite. The white walls and window frames wound their patterns around her with the adamant geometry of a seashell. A book and a rose, that was all she was bringing. The Se?ora wasn’t at home. She must be in her garden with all her other roses. Montse set her offering down before Se?ora Lucy’s apartment door, the rose atop the book. And then she went to work.
—
“MONTSERRAT, have you seen the newspaper?” Assunta called out across the washtubs.
“I never see the newspaper,” Montserrat answered through a mouthful of thread.
“Montserrat, Montserrat of the key,” Marta crooned beside her. The other maids took up the chant until Montse held her needle still and said: “All right, what’s the joke, girls?”
“They’re talking about the advertisement that’s in La Vanguardia this morning,” said Se?ora Gaeta, placing the newspaper on the lid of Montse’s workbasket. Montse laid lengths of thread beneath the lines of newsprint as she read:
ENZO GOMEZ OF GOMEZ, CRUZ AND MOLINA AWAITS CONTACT WITH A WOMAN WHO BEARS THE NAME MONTSERRAT AND IS IN POSSESSION OF A GOLD KEY ONE AND ONE HALF INCHES IN LENGTH.
Without saying another word, the eagle-eyed Se?ora Gaeta picked up a scarlet thread an inch and a half long and held it up against Montse’s key. The lengths matched. Se?ora Gaeta rested a hand on Montse’s shoulder, then walked back up to the front of the room to inspect a heap of newly done laundry before it returned to its owner. The babble around Montse grew deafening.
“Montse don’t go—it’s a trap! This is just like that episode in Lightning and Undetectable Poisons—”
“That’s our Cecilia, confusing life with one of her beloved radio novellas again . . . so sordid an imagination . . .”
“Let’s face it, eh, Montse—you’re no good at laundry, you must have been born to be rich!”
“Montserrat, never forget that I, Laura Morales, have always loved you . . . remember I shared my lunch with you on the very first day?”
“When she moves into her new mansion she can have us all to stay for a weekend—come on, Montse! Just one weekend a year.”
“Ladies, ladies,” Se?ora Gaeta intervened at last. “I have a headache today. Quiet, or every last one of you will be looking for jobs in hell.”
Montse kept her eyes on her work. It was the only way to keep her mind quiet.