Bea steps back, suddenly wanting to be anywhere else but there.
¡Mierda!
She buries her face in her palms. She wants to cry, to scream, to sob. But she can’t. She’s got to hold it together. She mustn’t break down now or she’ll be in serious trouble. Because somehow, Bea knows that she’s responsible for this. Her mamá is right. She’s evil. And she’s got to get out of here, without calling anyone. Now. Thank God she’d used a fake name to book the room. But the bra?
Bea squeezes her eyes shut.
¡Mierda! ¡Mierda! ¡Mierda!
When she opens them again, a sudden sweep of good luck, the beating wings of her guardian angel, directs Bea to Vali’s exposed foot and the dark red bra strap hanging from his big toe. A bizarrely comic touch in an otherwise tragic situation, and, despite herself, Bea smiles.
It takes longer than it should to extract the bra since, at first, she tries to do it without touching Vali’s foot. Bea still feels the chill on her fingertips from his shoulder and she’s loath to feel it again. But, after much fumbling, Bea surrenders to the fact that she’ll have to touch the body. She holds her breath, bites her lip, picks up his cold dead foot with one hand, her bra with the other, and pulls. Bea’s gaze fixes on Vali’s hairy toes and, for some reason, this brings tears to her eyes. It takes an extra minute of reluctant manoeuvring before the bra snaps off and Bea stumbles backwards, clutching it to her chest.
She’s about to run but finds herself stepping forward to the headboard, to say goodbye. He isn’t so very ugly, Bea thinks. There’s something lovely about him, almost handsome. Bea bends down to wish Vali a safe journey into the afterlife. She wants to say something, something suitably poignant and profound, but can think of nothing. Instead, she takes her left hand and places it lightly against his heart.
“Goodbye, Val.”
As her warm hand meets his cold skin, a snap of electricity shoots through Bea so she’s thrown back from the bed and against the wall. Pain flashes up her back and slowly fades. She lets out a low, long groan. When she looks down Bea sees a scar burned across her left hand: thin, red, and snaking from her forefinger to her wrist. What the hell? She traces it, lightly, with her thumb. Strangely, although it’s hot to the touch, it doesn’t hurt. For a moment, she’s lost in the shock of the mark and in awe of the astonishing, unexpected power that created it. For a moment, Vali is forgotten.
Bea closes her eyes and presses her face into her scarred palm. A snapshot of memory flashes in the darkness, and then another. She’s sitting astride Vali as he grins in pre-orgasmic bliss, moaning as she presses her hands to his chest. The beat of his heart quickens, harder and faster, harder and faster. She tightens her grip and he gasps. She’s holding his life force and she wants to play with it. What’s the harm in that? Bea squeezes and releases, Vali gasps and moans. He’s enjoying it as much as she. She doesn’t notice, not instantly, when her hand feels hot and wet and heavy, as if she’s holding his beating heart in her hands. And all at once she’s surging with more power than she ever imagined possible. It courses through her like electricity.
Bea screams. The pulsing stops. The gasping stops.
She opens her eyes to see the shape of Vali still prostrate under the bedsheet, his belly tugging the cotton tight, two hairy toes still exposed. Shock and awe, regret and loss, crash together, ripping through what she thought was real and true, tearing it all to shreds. Bea sits amid the destruction, still desperate to pull it back together again, and begins to cry. Quietly at first, tears slip down her cheeks; then, suddenly overcome by a capsizing gust of grief, Bea is seized by great racking sobs that shudder through her, again and again and again.
1:33 p.m.—Goldie
When I arrive at the hotel, two ambulances are stationed outside. My first thought is of Leo. Could something have happened to him? Surely not. That’s ridiculous. Leo is invincible. One of the guests must have choked on their overpriced English breakfast, or an overweight, overprivileged, over-the-hill white man has been struck down by a heart attack—it happened once at the Fitz during my tenure.