months … When he was younger, he’d had a receding hairline, but now it was devastating. He took Propecia and bought an anti-hair-loss shampoo, after less conventional methods failed. At first Pilar laughed when she saw him counting the hairs left in the comb or meticulously placing a lock. Then she realized what a big deal it was for him and avoided the subject. Fuck, I’m going bald, Lorenzo said once, and she had tried to ease his mind, don’t exaggerate. But he wasn’t exaggerating.
His hair was the first of a long list of lost things, thought Lorenzo. His hands gripped the sheets in a protective gesture, trying to hold on. As if losing everything wasn’t an abstract fear but rather something that was happening to him right here and now.
What have you done, Lorenzo? What have you done?
It’s almost ten a.m. when the phone begins to ring insistently. He had turned off his cell phone and put it away in the bedside table. But the landline kept ringing and ringing. In the living room and in the kitchen. Each with its own ring. The cordless in the living room, more high-pitched, more electrical. He wasn’t going to pick it up, he wasn’t going to answer. He wasn’t home. He heard it ring for a while and then stop. A short pause and it rang again. It was obvious that it was the same tenacious person calling repeatedly. Weren’t they ever going to get tired? Lorenzo was afraid.
What have you done, Lorenzo? What the hell have you done?
The night before Lorenzo had killed a man. A man he knew. A man who had been, for several years, his best friend. Seeing him again, in spite of the unusual circumstances of their meeting, in spite of the violence that was unleashed, Lorenzo couldn’t help remembering the last time they had seen each other, almost a year ago. Paco had changed, a bit fatter. He still had his hair, with the same pale wave as always, but he seemed slower, heavier in his movements. We’ve both changed, thought Lorenzo, crouching in the dark. Paco had a placid face. Was he happy? wondered Lorenzo, and the mere suspicion that he was could extenuate what would later happen. No, he couldn’t be happy; it would be too unfair.
Lorenzo had fled with Paco’s gray eyes still fixed on his. It isn’t easy to kill a man you know, to fight with him. It’s dirty. It has something of suicide to it: you are killing a part of yourself, everything you shared. It has something of your own death in it. It’s not easy to remain motionless in front of a dying body, either, trying to tell if it has stopped breathing or just fainted.Then go over every mistake, every movement, thinking of the person who will later arrive to figure out what happened. Prick up your ears to make sure no one is listening, prepare your cowardly getaway. Is there such a thing as a brave getaway?
Lorenzo went out the same way he had come in. Over the rear fence, after running his hand along the back of the dog, who had licked his boots. He had left the hose in the garage running, to flood the place. Turning it into a fish tank would help to eliminate prints, make reconstructing the scene more difficult. He raised himself up, looked both ways, and jumped over the fence. He could be seen by a neighbor, recorded by a security camera. He walked to his car, taking his time. Someone could be watching him, jotting down his license plate, remembering his face. It wasn’t an exclusive neighborhood, but in that area of Mirasierra, filled with single-family homes and buildings with few apartments, strangers attract attention. It wasn’t dawn. It was eleven-fifteen on a Thursday. A normal, workaday hour, not a criminal time of day in the slightest. He had killed a man in the garage, a man he knew. It had all been an accident, a mistake fueled by the grudge Lorenzo held against Paco. Men shouldn’t listen to their resentment; it gives them bad advice.
Lorenzo didn’t consider his crime something cold, something calculated. It wasn’t what he