her phone, and for a moment she considered asking one of the others to run the errand, but they were all—these relatives of hers—useless, not much better than the mannequins on rollers she had them drag around on the nights she had her clients over, a scheme Ireneo, the only one not related to her, had helped her come up with in order to double the number of lamps and faces—those brief, bright pools of mystery—present at her consultations, without having to reach further beyond the unpaid ranks of her family, all of whom worked for her gratis, in expectation of an inheritance … no, it would have to be Ireneo, and she would have to wait, she thought there was still time, “but time for what?” she asked herself as she climbed back into bed, covered herself, reached for a thermometer, looked for the leaves to see if anything else was galloping around in them, found that her head was empty, said, “bollocks!” again, and promptly fell asleep.
W hich was just what Ireneo, who had been more or less awake since he had arrived some days previously, wished he could do, but every time his head began to loll his mother, who had a platoon of servants at her command but wanted only him, would moan as if on cue, and Ireneo’s hand would go out and damp her forehead with a washcloth or squeeze a little water between her lips, and when, in a faltering, unenthusiastic voice she would ask him to sing, he would produce warbling, incomplete versions of songs she had taught him during his boyhood and made him perform, in a wig and short pants, along with a few poorly executed dance steps, in front of her employees at the factory during Christmas parties, while his father, who had drunk himself to death before Ireneo had turned ten, gazed on in poorly concealed disgust, a look which years later had found its echo on his mother’s face when he had told her he had no interest in taking up a position in her company, and that, instead, he had decided to go “into the occult,” a field in which if one sold one’s soul at least it was on one’s own terms, and which, if less remunerative, had significant and lasting rewards, a stance that Ireneo had continued to maintain, even though, thus far, his role remained a supporting one, after all even now as he sat by his mother’s bed the old running shoes, which he had gone so far as to sleep (if not bathe) in, continued to give off promising sparks of import that he very much looked forward to being able, again, to give his full attention to, in the way, as he saw it, Doña Eulalia paid attention to the bits and pieces of information that came to her, at all hours of the day and night, which focus allowed her, most of the time, to make something like sense out of not very much at all, a skill that Harry, a few hours later, would have been very happy to have had a little of, as against his better judgment, he negotiated the gray and violet streets of the pre-dawn city on his way to Alfonso’s, while at the same time continuing to think of the young woman on the plane with her book on the Black Dahlia, the man with his new golf balls, Señora Rubinski, Ireneo, Doña Eulalia with the lamp on her head, the connoisseurs, Alfonso, Solange, the young man with the knife blade in his throat, all of which had seemed to him, as he drank glass after glass of sparkling water at his kitchen table and watched the clock hands tick ever closer to this ridiculously awkward hour, like so many inexplicable blocks of ice bumping against each other on the black water that, since hearing the story of the silver angel, he had off and on been doing a dog-paddle in, any one of which he would have gladly clambered onto and taken his chances on, not least the one that corresponded to Señora Rubinski and Señora Rubinski’s dead husband, whom the excellent lady had, that very evening upon his return from the café, described as they stood a moment together on the sidewalk as a most marvelous and thoughtful
W hich was just what Ireneo, who had been more or less awake since he had arrived some days previously, wished he could do, but every time his head began to loll his mother, who had a platoon of servants at her command but wanted only him, would moan as if on cue, and Ireneo’s hand would go out and damp her forehead with a washcloth or squeeze a little water between her lips, and when, in a faltering, unenthusiastic voice she would ask him to sing, he would produce warbling, incomplete versions of songs she had taught him during his boyhood and made him perform, in a wig and short pants, along with a few poorly executed dance steps, in front of her employees at the factory during Christmas parties, while his father, who had drunk himself to death before Ireneo had turned ten, gazed on in poorly concealed disgust, a look which years later had found its echo on his mother’s face when he had told her he had no interest in taking up a position in her company, and that, instead, he had decided to go “into the occult,” a field in which if one sold one’s soul at least it was on one’s own terms, and which, if less remunerative, had significant and lasting rewards, a stance that Ireneo had continued to maintain, even though, thus far, his role remained a supporting one, after all even now as he sat by his mother’s bed the old running shoes, which he had gone so far as to sleep (if not bathe) in, continued to give off promising sparks of import that he very much looked forward to being able, again, to give his full attention to, in the way, as he saw it, Doña Eulalia paid attention to the bits and pieces of information that came to her, at all hours of the day and night, which focus allowed her, most of the time, to make something like sense out of not very much at all, a skill that Harry, a few hours later, would have been very happy to have had a little of, as against his better judgment, he negotiated the gray and violet streets of the pre-dawn city on his way to Alfonso’s, while at the same time continuing to think of the young woman on the plane with her book on the Black Dahlia, the man with his new golf balls, Señora Rubinski, Ireneo, Doña Eulalia with the lamp on her head, the connoisseurs, Alfonso, Solange, the young man with the knife blade in his throat, all of which had seemed to him, as he drank glass after glass of sparkling water at his kitchen table and watched the clock hands tick ever closer to this ridiculously awkward hour, like so many inexplicable blocks of ice bumping against each other on the black water that, since hearing the story of the silver angel, he had off and on been doing a dog-paddle in, any one of which he would have gladly clambered onto and taken his chances on, not least the one that corresponded to Señora Rubinski and Señora Rubinski’s dead husband, whom the excellent lady had, that very evening upon his return from the café, described as they stood a moment together on the sidewalk as a most marvelous and thoughtful
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