House of Beauty. Melba Escobar

talking to her for a few weeks, until one suffocating afternoon Karen heard her scooter approaching. Karen was lying on her bed with rollers in her hair, leafing through an old magazine.

      ‘What’s the plan? Just lie here all day, getting fat on sunlight?’

      ‘I fed Uncle Juan,’ Karen said.

      ‘Go and do something. You’re pregnant, not sick. Make yourself busy doing whatever I tell you to, or you’re out of here.’

      Of all the books she read, the one that stayed with her – the one she read right up to the day she gave birth – was I Love Myself, though she no longer thought its message was aimed at her.

      The man sitting beside Karen that sunny morning at Sabrina Guzmán’s funeral was none other than the author of her bedtime reading, Eduardo Ramelli. He must have been over sixty. His even cinnamon complexion shone, and he had blue eyes and greying, neat hair slicked back with gel, like a heart-throb of old.

      ‘Chanel No. 5,’ he whispered in her ear.

      Karen kept quiet, not because she didn’t know the author of Happiness Is You was wearing Paco Rabanne 1 Million, nor because she didn’t want to play the game, but because her throat had closed up. Ramelli shot her a half-smile, his eyes fixed on the priest but clearly conscious of her delicate presence beside him.

      ‘What’s your name?’ he asked after the Eucharist. A long and severe ‘shhh’ from nearby ended his efforts to get her to talk. Then came the familiar ‘Go in peace’. Mass was over. The first two pews were reserved for close family. A woman was crying inconsolably, her arms wrapped tight around a young boy. The keyboard sounded and an out-of-tune choir sang ‘Ave Maria’ while the funeral goers filed out of the church. Karen reached the aisle and headed for the exit. She smelled Ramelli behind her for a couple of metres, until she lost the scent when two tall women intercepted him. She focused her attention on the ladies. They had fluffy hairdos, like egg whites whisked to stiff peaks. Tailored clothing hung from their brittle bodies. Some had drivers waiting for them outside. Often a bodyguard handed his employer a bulky umbrella at the exit, so she could take her time smoothly skirting the puddles while he ran in the pouring rain to the same car. Then they all got in, women in the back, servants at the front.

      Crossing Avenida Calle 100, Karen was assaulted by the beeping horns, the exhaust fumes, the green buses as timeworn as the hunger of those begging, the one-armed men clutching squeegees on the hunt for coins, the displaced people with their dirty bits of cardboard that invariably told the legend of a lost town, the chronicle of a massacre. They’d all used the same black marker to set down the account, with grammatical errors, their handwriting suggesting they’d barely finished third grade, and they’d done so with an unsteady hand, the pavement their only support; once they’d got their story down they set up on the same ordinary corner and went in search of the elusive compassion of the commuters. Several women, almost always black or indigenous, with children hanging from their breasts or back, kept one hand on the little one, held the cardboard in the other and had their coin tins tucked under an arm. It was a sorry balancing act, and the women engaged in it had to be constantly alert to the changing traffic lights.

      As soon as the lights turned red, the vehicles were set upon by beggars, criminals, addicts, street performers, down-and-outers, children and pregnant women, as well as disabled, illiterate, displaced, abused and maimed people. The performance was so repetitive and predictable that nowadays no one was the least bit surprised. Or almost no one. Recent arrivals to the cold city were often distressed when confronted with this sight.

      The mountains surrounding the city ‘marked the limits of civilisation’ – at least, that’s what students at the elite San Bartolomé College were taught in the seventies. Every day, more people arrived from all over the country. Karen realised with a start that she was just another one of them. She was like the mango sellers, the scrap-metal buyers, the collectors of broken odds and ends, the jugglers and the beggars.

      But what astonished her wasn’t the vast array of professions that hunger inspired. It was how it had all become routine. She watched those women in their armoured SUVs, the way they wound up the window when someone approached with a hand outstretched. The reaction seemed to come straight out of an instruction manual read in a land where guards, fences and muzzled dogs formed part of the everyday scenery.

      When she arrived back at House of Beauty, her legs were tired. Her hands were cold. She ran up to the second floor, and got changed as fast as she could. She was almost ready to go into her cubicle when a sharp knock sounded on the lavatory door.

      ‘Yes?’ she said, tying her shoelaces.

      ‘Doña Fina wants to speak to you,’ a voice said from the other side.

      ‘Coming,’ she said, and checked her reflection in the mirror, fixing her ponytail before going out. This is what happens when you go where you’re not invited, she thought. Just when she was starting to save enough money, she was going to get herself fired on account of a client she barely knew. Doña Fina was waiting with the door half-open.

      ‘You wanted to speak to me?’

      ‘Sit down,’ Doña Josefina said curtly.

      Karen scrutinised her boss. Doña Josefina was raising her left eyebrow slightly.

      ‘Karen, you were absent from work, during work hours, without my consent,’ she started. ‘I want you to know that nothing escapes me. Even when I’m not here I have eyes and ears everywhere. Do you hear me, honey?’

      ‘Yes, Señora.’

      ‘Now, just so you’re aware how much I always know, I’ll tell you where you went: to that girl Sabrina Guzmán’s funeral. Know how I found out? This morning her mother called, saying she thought she came here often, and that she’d been here the day before last. I wasn’t sure who took care of her, so we checked the appointment book. That’s how I found out you lost a client. My deepest condolences, honey.’

      ‘I only saw her two or three times.’

      ‘Four, to be exact. And what do you know about her?’

      ‘Not much, Doña Fina, she was a normal teenager.’

      ‘Oh honey, as if that exists. You’ve got to understand, if they launch an investigation, the police will ask you the same questions. You’d better know how to respond. What did she get done?’

      ‘The usual.’

      ‘A wax?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Bikini?’

      ‘Yes, Señora.’

      ‘The full Brazilian?’

      ‘Yes.’

      At that moment, Annie poked her head around the door.

      ‘Sorry to interrupt. Karen, your next client is waiting.’

      ‘Can I leave, Señora?’

      ‘Off you go. But best not mention this to anyone. If you start saying a client died after an appointment with you, no one will set foot in your cubicle again.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Karen said, wondering if Doña Fina was serious. She was making sure to pull the door half-shut behind her when she stopped midway and turned around:

      ‘Excuse me, Señora, but the girl is already buried. What could they investigate now?’

      ‘How am I to know?’ Doña Josefina waved her hand. ‘Now shut that door for me, I have important things to attend to.’

       4.

      As the years went by, Eduardo cried more easily. He cried in romantic films, on seeing how his hair came away on the pillow, on noting his erectile dysfunction. Not long ago he cried, oh how he cried, when, finally, after a Viagra, and vast amounts of concentration,