Free All Yours by Translated By Miranda France By (author) Pineiro Claudia Page A

that I saw it, as if it had been calling out to me: the blue folder. It was on Ernesto’s bedside table, exactly where he had left it the previous night, after reading over his presentation for the conference. “What a bird-brain, Ernesto, you forgot the folder,” I said to myself. And without thinking twice, I jumped into the car and set off for Ezeiza airport. Any wife in my position would have done the same.
    I drove faster than usual. I had to get there before Ernesto boarded the plane so that I could give him the blue folder. In my mind, I followed his steps, trying to calculate whether I could catch him in time. He must have arrived at Ezeiza quite a while ago. He had left in very good time; early enough to have avoided a long queue at check-in. Nobody bothers with that airline rule about arriving two hours before your flight. Ernesto does, though, because he’s very punctilious about such things. And methodical, besides, so it would be logical for him to go straight up to the departure lounge after checking in. What would be the purpose in staying downstairs? As for me, I had my work cut out with my timings. At the motorway toll, just for a change, only half the barriers were working and that delayed me considerably. Then at the airport it took ages to find a parking space. As soon as I was out of the car, I broke into a run, the folder in my hand. I didn’t wait for the automatic doors to finish opening before whipping through them and into the hall, looking around me for Ernesto. I went from counter to counter, searching among the check-in queues. He wasn’t there, so I went to look at the departures board. The flight to Rio was the only one leaving at that time. It was a Varig flight, so I returned to their counter and asked if Ernesto was already checked in. They told me that they could not give out that sort of information and I could tell, from the employee’s monotone, that it was no use persisting. I looked in some of the little bars lining the route to departures. Ernesto drinks a lot of coffee, not that it does him any good – but he loves it; perhaps he had stopped off there. Nothing. He could be in the lavatory, or buying something. I looked for him in the souvenir shops, at the news-stands, and waited a prudent amount of time at the door to the men’s lavatory. He didn’t appear. I could invent a reason to have him summoned via tannoy, but I preferred to leave that as a last recourse. Ernesto hates any kind of embarrassment and something like that would be excruciating for him, even if his life depended on the contents of the blue folder. The best thing would be to wait beside the escalator leading to departures. If he had not gone up yet, sooner or later he would have to come this way.
    I was walking towards the escalator when I saw Ernesto’s jacket. A jacket just like Ernesto’s. It wasn’t Ernesto wearing it, though, but another man, someone who was going up the escalator with his arm around a woman. She was tall and dark. The man was whispering things into her ear. Wearing Ernesto’s jacket. And with trousers just like the ones Ernesto had been wearing that morning. With a well-defined crease, the way I iron Ernesto’s trousers. And in his hand – Ernesto’s bag. The bag that I had packed. For Ernesto. He turned his head to kiss her. Ernesto kissed her. And she, Charo, returned the kiss.
    The escalator carried them away, up out of view, and I wanted to scream. I must have suffered something like a momentary paralysis, because my voice wouldn’t come out; I opened my mouth, but no sound emerged. In fact, all other sounds seemed also to have disappeared. As if someone had turned down the volume of the ambient sound. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t hear. I could only see.
    Until there was nothing to see but their shoes: Ernesto’s and her sandals.
    And then I saw no more.

22
    Inés went into the house, shut the door and turned the key twice in the lock. It was half-past