Read Online Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online Page B

careers, but Hilda’s words signaled a new direction. He put his self-pity aside and reviewed his skills, hoping to find something productive but at the same time agreeable. He decided on photography, in which he was minimally skilled. Years before, he had bought a Japanese camera with all the accessories and he thought the moment had come to dust it off and put it to use. He placed a few prints in a portfolio, scoured the telephone book for places to apply, and so found himself at the door of a women’s magazine.
    The editorial offices occupied the top floor of an old-fashioned building with the name of the founder of the publishing firm chiseled in the portico in gilded letters. During the so-called boom in culture, when there had been an attempt to involve everyone in the fiesta of knowledge and the vice of information and more pages of print were sold than loaves of bread, the owners had decided to redecorate the building to be in tune with the delirious enthusiasm rocking the country. They had begun on the ground floor, carpeting it wall-to-wall, adding exquisite woodwork, replacing the shabby furnishings with glass-and-aluminum desks, removing windows to open up skylights, closing stairwells to provide niches in which to embed safes, locating electronic eyes that opened and closed doors by magic. The diagram of the edifice was turning into a labyrinth when suddenly the rules of the game were changed. The redecorating never reached the fifth floor, which had kept its furnishings of uncertain color, prehistoric typewriters, archival filing cabinets, and disconsolate stains on the ceiling. These modest appointments had little relation to the luxury weekly magazine edited there. From its covers smiled scantily clad beauty queens, and across its slick pages spilled a rainbow of colors and daring feminist articles. Because of the censorship of recent years, however, black patches now covered naked breasts and euphemisms designated forbidden concepts like abortion, ass, and freedom.
    Francisco Leal knew the magazine because he had once bought a copy for his mother. The only name he remembered was that of Irene Beltrán, a journalist who wrote with some audacity, a rare commodity in those times. For that reason, when he reached the reception desk he asked to speak with her. He was led into a spacious room lighted by a large window from which one could see in the distance the imposing bulk of the Hill, somber guardian of the city. He saw four desks with as many clacking typewriters and, to the rear, a clothes rack filled with richly colored gowns. A coiffeur dressed in white was combing out a girl’s hair while another girl awaited her turn, sitting as motionless as an idol, sunk in the contemplation of her own beauty. They signaled to Irene Beltrán, and the moment he saw her across the room he was attracted by her expression and by the amazing hair falling over her shoulders. She waved him over with a flirtatious smile, the last sign he needed to conclude that this girl would be capable of robbing him even of his thoughts, for he had imagined her, exactly as she was, in his boyhood books and adolescent dreams. As he drew nearer, his confidence evaporated, and he stopped before her, embarrassed, unable to tear his eyes from hers, made even more dramatic by makeup. Finally he found his voice and introduced himself.
    â€œI’m looking for work,” he blurted out, placing the portfolio containing his prints on the table.
    â€œAre you on the Blacklist?” she asked candidly, without lowering her voice.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen we can talk. Wait for me outside and when I finish here I’ll join you.”
    Francisco left the room, threading his way among desks and suitcases open on the floor and piled with stoles and fur coats like plunder from a recent safari. He bumped into Mario, the hairstylist, who glided by brushing a wig of pale hair, informing him in passing that this year blondes were very