The Time in Between: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

your model till tomorrow.”
    “And this one? We can’t keep this one?” Ignacio insisted, keen to close the negotiations as soon as possible. Once the model had been chosen, everything else seemed to him to be bothersome procedures that he wanted to eliminate swiftly.
    “Please, don’t even suggest such a thing. I can’t allow Miss Sira to use a typewriter that other customers have been fiddling with. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll have a new one ready, with its own case and packaging. If you let me have your address,” he said, looking at me, “I’ll take charge personally of getting one to your house before noon.”
    “We’ll come and collect it ourselves,” I interrupted. I could sense that the man was capable of anything, and a wave of terror made me shudder to think that he might show up before my mother, asking for me.
    “I can’t come over till the evening, I have to work,” said Ignacio. As he spoke, an invisible rope seemed to tie itself slowly around his neck, ready to hang him. Ramiro barely had to take the trouble to pull at it just a little.
    “And what about you, miss?”
    “I don’t work,” I said, avoiding his gaze.
    “You could arrange to make the payment, then?” he suggested casually.
    I couldn’t find the words to say no, and Ignacio didn’t even sense how that simple-seeming proposal was looming over us. Ramiro Arribas accompanied us to the door and bid us farewell warmly, as though we were the best customers in the shop’s history. With his left hand he vigorously patted my fiancé’s back, with his right he shook mine once again. And he had words for us both.
    “You’ve made a superb choice in coming to Casa Hispano-Olivetti, Ignacio, believe me. I assure you, you won’t forget this day for a longtime. And you, Sira, please come back at about eleven o’clock. I’ll be waiting for you.”
    I spent the night tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. It was madness, and I still had time to get out of it. All I had to do was to decide not to go back to the shop. I could stay home with my mother, help her to beat the mattresses and scrub the floor with linseed oil, chat with the women who lived next door on the square, then make my way toward the Cebada market for a quarter pound of chickpeas or a piece of cod. I could wait for Ignacio to return home from the ministry and make excuses for my failure to fulfill my task with any simple lie: that my head hurt, that I thought it was going to rain. I could lie down awhile after lunch, feigning some general malaise. And then Ignacio would go alone, he would complete the payment to the manager, pick up the typewriter, and it would all be over. We would never hear of Ramiro Arribas again, he’d never again cross our path. Bit by bit his name would sink into oblivion and we’d move ahead with our little everyday lives. As though he’d never caressed my hands, desire just there below the surface; as though he’d never consumed me with his eyes from behind the blinds. It was that easy, that simple. And I knew it.
    I knew it, but I pretended not to know. The next day I waited for my mother to go out on her errands. I didn’t want her to see me getting myself ready: she would have suspected I was up to something strange if she’d seen me all done up so early in the morning. As soon as I’d heard the door close behind her, I began hastily to get myself together. I filled a basin to wash myself, I sprinkled myself with lavender water, heated the curling tongs on the stove, ironed my only silk blouse, and removed my stockings from the line where they’d spent the night drying in the night dew. They were the same ones from the previous day: I had no others. I forced myself to calm down and put them on carefully, so that I wouldn’t cause a run. And each of those mechanical movements, repeated a thousand times in the past, for the first time had a defined recipient, an objective and a goal: Ramiro Arribas. It was for him that I