The She-Devil in the Mirror Read Free

change and make myself presentable once and for all
because I’m going to stay here all night—Diana is arriving tomorrow morning,
supposedly, that’s Olga María’s younger sister, the one who’s been living in
Miami for years, that’s what she said, that she’d get on the first flight
tomorrow, they’re three hours ahead, so there’s no way she could get here today.
That one standing next to the coffin must be Memo, Marito’s second in command,
he just started working with him; Olga María didn’t take to him very well,
probably because he took Julio Iglesias’s job—that’s what we called the Spaniard
who helped Marito start the agency. Now, he was a hunk, tall and gorgeous,
though with a bit of a belly for my taste, but he drove Olga María crazy for a
few months, that Julio Iglesias, she used to tell me she didn’t know what to do,
he was her husband’s partner, her husband’s friend, but she had the hots for
him. It’s not that she was unfaithful, on the contrary, that’s why it was so
hard for her, because that was the first time she’d been attracted in that way
to another man since she’d gotten married to Marito, it was the first time she
went further than being her naturally flirtatious self, all Marito’s fault, I
can tell you, because this was when he’d all but abandoned Olga María. We never
found out who was behind it—just look at him over there, all meek and
mild-mannered, but Marito’s a sneaky devil, I always suspected he had a few
things on the side, and Olga María found out about at least two of his sluts.
That was right around the time Marito decided to start his own agency, and he
asked Julio Iglesias, from Madrid, also an expert in advertising, to be his
partner; he’d just come to San Salvador as a consultant for the company Marito
was working for. But I knew right off the bat: I’d seen that same gleam in Olga
María’s eyes when we were at the American School, when she started drooling over
one of our classmates. Julio Iglesias began going over to their house for
dinner, more and more frequently, and Olga María was getting hooked, little by
little, because he liked her, too, who wouldn’t, and what with talking about the
business and sitting around the table after dinner, they started finding
opportunities to say things to each other, seducing each other right under
Marito’s nose, because he was putting all his energy into starting his agency.
There was no applying the brakes once Julio Iglesias showed up one afternoon at
the boutique, casually, as if he just happened to be at the Villas Españolas
Mall to do a little shopping and just happened to run into a friend—his
partner’s wife—at her boutique. Olga María was totally nonchalant so Cheli and
Conchita wouldn’t notice that she was melting for that man who invited her out
for a cup of coffee, right there, in the mall, and once they were sitting in the
café he told her he couldn’t stop thinking about her, he could no longer control
his passion. And Olga María had to admit that she’d been thinking about him a
lot, too, though she couldn’t say she loved him, nor that she was in love with
him, just that it was something weird, something new. Julio Iglesias had an
apartment across the street from the Sheraton Hotel, near Villas Españolas; he
suggested they meet there, that would be best, he didn’t want to complicate
things with Marito, his partner and friend. Olga María told him she’d give it
some thought, it wasn’t so simple, even though her relationship with Marito was
on the rocks, she loved him, and there were the two girls, she didn’t want to
risk everything, throw away eleven years of her life. But Julio Iglesias kept at
it: he called her at the boutique, came by every once in a while to invite her
out for coffee (always making it seem