Breaking Lorca

TWENTY

Victor stopped by Mike Viera’s office unannounced. He was surprised to see Lorca sitting behind the receptionist’s desk. She was busy on the phone, and Viera’s door was closed. Victor sat in the tiny waiting area and watched her over top of a Sports Illustrated. She was arranging a meeting between Viera and another attorney, speaking quietly into the phone. Instead of her usual faded jeans and work shirt, she was dressed in a neatly pressed blouse and skirt. Except for the chipped tooth, she looked like any other professional New Yorker. Should I ask her now, he wondered? Or is it too soon?

“The Frisbee champion,” she said when she hung up. “How are you?”

“I am very well, Miss Viera. How are you?”

She shrugged. “My brother has chosen to enslave me.”

“You look like you’ve been doing this all your life. Very professional.”

Before he could say anything more, the office door swung open and a woman came out. She was perhaps thirty, with heavy eyebrows that gave her a sad appearance. Her complexion was pebbled from burnt-out acne. She said to Lorca, “I have to see him again next week. I have to bring my mother.”

Lorca reached for a calendar. Mike Viera waved for Victor to enter.

“Come in! Come in, Ignacio! What a pleasant surprise,” he said, shutting the door behind them. “I wanted to ask you to come to dinner next week. I was afraid after Lorca’s distressing episode in the park we would never see you again.” He gestured for Victor to sit on the couch.

“I enjoyed our picnic,” Victor said. “It was a wonderful afternoon.”

“So you’ll come for dinner on Saturday?”

“I would like to, very much.”

“Good. It’s settled. Eight o’clock.”

“Eight o’clock, Saturday.” Yes, he thought. I should ask her now.

Victor sat down on the vinyl sofa, and a stack of files slid to the floor. He knelt and tried to balance the files into a loose pile against the wall.

“Leave them, Ignacio. It’s nothing. Tell me how you like my new receptionist. The old one called in sick too often.”

“It looks like you have a perfect arrangement now.”

Viera emptied a full ashtray into the wastebasket and lit himself a cigarette. He took a drag and contemplated the stream of smoke as he exhaled. “ To be honest, I am already a little regretting my decision to hire Lorca. She scares the clients, I think.” Viera stared up at the ceiling, as if debating whether he should go on.

“But she looked like she was doing very well to me.”

“Today is a good day. Three days ago it was a different story. At home, maybe nine o’clock, I go to ask her something and I can’t find her anywhere. I look in the basement, I look in the garage, even in the crawl space above the garage. Finally, you know where I found her? Under the bed. She was hiding under her bed, shaking like a leaf. Some boys had been letting off firecrackers on the street.”

“At the little school, the first thing they do is destroy your nerves. Stop you sleeping. Scream at you all the time. It makes the interrogation worse.”

“It makes life worse.”

“They frighten me also, firecrackers. It sounds like the war.”

There was a silence. Viera stubbed out his cigarette. “My sister used to call me a coward. You too must think I’m a coward for running away from that war.”

“I am no judge of cowards. Only a madman would run to that war.”

“Hah! You are a subversive, Ignacio.”

“No. Nothing like that.”

Viera sighed and swivelled to look at the hideous view of Seventh Avenue behind him. “Lorca has told me very little of what they did to her at the little school, but I am not blind. Did you notice the scars on her arms? And that tooth? You know some stinking guard punched her in the face? That’s how that tooth was broken. Can you imagine, Ignacio? Can you imagine yourself ever, under any circumstances, punching a woman in the face?”

No, he wanted to scream. But I was terrified. They would have killed me.

“I am not a violent man, but if I had before me the man who did this to my sister, I would kill him.”

“I would not blame you.” Suddenly Victor needed to be anywhere but this office.

“School. What an obscenity, to call that place a school.” Viera swivelled back to face him again. “Well, I don’t have to tell you. They must have done terrible things to you also in that place.”

Victor got up and in his nervousness managed to knock another stack of files to the floor. “I had better get back to work before I destroy your entire place. And someone has to make chocolate mousse for the rich, no?”

“Wait. Please, Ignacio. I’m trying to find ….” Viera was shuffling through papers on his desk, lifting up files, clipboard, legal pads. “Here it is.” He snatched up a creased yellow brochure and thrust it across the desk. “Have you ever heard of this place?”

Victor read the front of the brochure. You are not alone, it said. If you have been abducted, detained, physically maltreated, or tortured, the Torture Victims Association can help you.

Viera said, “I finally talked Lorca into going. She practically spit in my face the first time I suggested it. ‘A bunch of crybabies,’ she called it. But you know, even after only a few meetings, it seems to be doing her a lot of good.”

“She talks to these people?”

“They are victims, the same as her. Same as you. People who were jailed and beaten and God knows what. It does them good to talk, I believe. To know they are not alone. And Lorca has decided she likes very much the man who runs the place. Bob, I think his name is. Bob something.”

Victor was surprised by a pang of jealousy.

“I thought maybe you would like to go, Ignacio. To talk to these people. You might benefit from it too.”

“Me? I don’t think so, Michael. It’s very kind of you, but I don’t need such a place.” The chance of being recognized was too great. Someone who knew the real Perez. No, no, he could not consider it, even though it meant passing up a chance to get closer to Lorca.

“Think about it. Lorca is getting better-you noticed the change yourself.”

“Goddamnit!” Someone was shouting in the outer office.

Viera, followed by Victor, got up to see what was going on.

His client was standing in the middle of the reception area, clutching her arm. “Goddamnit!” she said again. “I don’t believe this place!”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“She hit me. Your goddamn receptionist hit me, that’s what’s wrong.”

Lorca was gone.

“Are you all right?” Viera said. “Let me see.”

The woman took her coat off and showed him her upper arm.

“There’s no bruise,” Viera said. “Please sit down for a moment and tell me what happened.”

“I will find Lorca,” Victor said.

He took the stairs down to the street. He searched through the crowds, stepped into two coffee shops and a McDonald’s, but she was not there. He stopped into a laundromat, a liquor store, even a psychic’s storefront. Not finding her, he finally gave up and went back to Viera’s office, passing the outraged client as she left the building.

Viera was staring forlornly out at the avenue.

“Did she tell you what happened, your client?”

“She says all she did, she asked to use the phone. To see if she could get off work a certain day. It took her a while to get through, and Lorca asked for the phone back. My client asked her to wait a minute and Lorca lost her temper. Her nerves are so bad, Ignacio. She has no patience at all.”

“I’m sure she’ll get better. It’s a matter of time, that’s all.”

“Delay of any kind-the slightest wait for anything-it makes her crazy. Absolutely crazy.”

“At the little school, they would make the prisoners wait. It was part of the punishment. They would sit a prisoner in that room and just make them wait and wait, knowing what was going to happen. But not when.”

“I don’t know what to do, Ignacio. I am her brother, but there is only so much I can do. Already, it is putting a strain on my marriage. My business too, if this keeps up. This has cost me a client. That woman is not coming back, you know. I don’t blame her, either.”

“It’s hard for you, I know. You are very good to your sister.”

“She hates being so dependent on me. I know she hates it-it hurts her pride, although she doesn’t say so. You’ll still come for dinner on Saturday?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Thank you. She needs a friend, Ignacio. Not a relative, a friend. Someone she can trust, someone she can respect.”

“I would be happy to be that friend, Michael. Except your sister has no reason to respect me.”

“Oh, you are wrong. You know what she said the day we went to the park? She and Helen had a fight on the way home, they’re always fighting. Later, I went up to Lorca’s room. I wanted to tell her about this support place.” He held up the yellow brochure. “I was telling her about it and saying how it might speed her recovery. And you know what she said? She said, ‘I know you want me to be like Ignacio Perez, but I cannot. I could never be strong like he is.’ That’s what she said.”

“I am not strong,” Victor said. It was all he could think of to say, and he repeated it. “I am not strong at all.” He felt an ashen grief that Lorca could be so deceived. It’s as if I go on and on tormenting her, he thought. As if I cannot stop.