Tomorrow I’ll sniff his suit, look through his pockets.
No, stop! I have to stop myself right there. Because whatever he’s done…
I don’t want to know.
Thirty
My eyes were squeezed shut, but I could feel Jen leaning over me, her long hair like soft feathers on my sweaty cheek. “I’ve brought you more champagne,” she whispered.
Jen steadied my shaky body as I maneuvered myself up. My ankle still seared with pain. How? Why? I’d been so careful not to twist it again, yet every time I woke up it felt more painful than ever. Jen lodged a pillow behind my back and handed me an opened bottle of Mumm. I vaguely remembered the triplets discussing me while I was half asleep. But I couldn’t muster up any details of the conversation.
“Pass me my migraine pills,” I said. “I feel like shit.” My sight was hazy, and I couldn’t focus. The room felt small and airless; they must have closed the blinds to my view outside, but with my eyes so heavy I didn’t have the energy to look around me or even ask for a doctor. I wondered if I had meningitis or some kind of virus, I felt so bad. But too weak to even care, I glugged down some water and what was left of the champagne and swallowed another pill, eager to get back to my Juan dreams.
Jen took my ankle in her hands. “It looks bruised, shall I get some ice?”
I yawned and turned on my side. “Leave me, I just want to sleep.”
Jen took the pillow from behind my head. “You get some rest then. It’s for your own safety and ours,” she murmured, and I slumped back beneath the covers and slipped back to my memories, a month or so before the accident.
Juan came home today from one of his long weekends away. I’d been mulling something over and over in my head, and I wanted the answer.
“Darling, why, when you’re away, do your charge cards and credit cards have no movement on them?” I was at the kitchen sink, doing the washing-up but quickly took off the ugly, bright blue gloves. My mother’s voice told me to. Always warned me, it did, to hide my evidence. “Don’t let your husband see you with the Hoover, darling.” That voice often danced in my head at unexpected moments. Sometimes when I was in the middle of a business meeting with a client, or at the gym—places my mother had no right to be: “Be a cook in the kitchen, a maid in the living room and a… well, you know…” She never got to the “whore in the bedroom” part. These sorts of words were never actually spoken out loud. My mother was too proper for that. She believed in a Stepford Wife type of marriage.
“What do you mean?” Juan had that face on again. The “What—who, me?” face that told me he was lying. The pupils slightly dilated, the neck pulled back into itself—just a touch—as if to say, “How dare you, don’t you trust me?”
But I did dare. I did dare ask. And no, I didn’t trust him. How could I? That handsome face and physique demanded women’s attention. Juan didn’t have to do a thing. Just smile his disarming smile, just be himself. He didn’t even have to flirt.
I said it again. “It’s as if you don’t spend any money at all when you’re away. What about clients’ dinners? Taxis, hotels? There’s never any record of any spending. How come you don’t use your corporate card?”
“A lot of the tabs are picked up by the clients. Or I pay cash, as you well know.”
“Most people pay for everything by card, even chewing gum. People of our generation, anyway.” My parents did still believe in cash. (If you don’t have it, don’t spend it.)
“Honey, you’re welcome to go through my expenses with a fine-tooth comb, but please don’t read anything into the fact I like to pay cash.”
Juan was like Michael Corleone not wanting his wife to ask him about his “business.” Although Juan’s method was less direct. He never actually told me to keep out of his business. He just skirted things with a laugh, or, “It’s so boring, honey, you don’t want to know.” Had I been more confident of myself, less in love, I would have tackled him about his evasiveness. But each day was like a gift wrapped in gold, and like a little girl who’s just been