The Years That Followed Read Online Free Page A

Then she knocks, twice, waiting a couple of minutes each time for a response. One of them might be in the shower, or still asleep, or they might be . . . When there is no answer, Pilar inserts her key in the lock and pushes the door open.
    As she does so, the smell assaults her. She cannot avoid it: the force of its onslaught makes her stagger. For a strange moment, Pilar remembers the mouse, caught in a trap in the corner of her bedroom downstairs. She’d forgotten she’d set it, and the sweet, sickly scent of decay had driven her mad for days until she found the small, weeping, blackening corpse, tracking it down by making her way around the apartment on her hands and knees.
    This here, she thinks suddenly, must be some mouse.
    â€œMr. Alexander,” she calls, standing with one foot just over the threshold, ready, always ready, to retreat. “Madam Sandra?” She can hear the appeal in her voice. There is a stillness to the room that is unnerving. As though nothing has moved here for days. She can hear the low hum of the air-conditioning; but despite its coolness, the air is thick with something that Pilar does not have the words to name. She feels her knees begin to tremble. Her palms are damp, the key sticky in her grasp.
    She opens the door to the vast living room. Nothing. Frightened now, compelled to move forward yet dreading what she might be about to discover, Pilar puts her hand on the bedroom door.
    â€œSeñor?” she calls. “Señora?”
    When she pushes her way in, the overpoweringly fetid air makes her gag. Her eyes water. The angry, insistent buzzing of a millionglassy flies, their bodies fat, their wings blue-veined and translucent, tries to drive her back. Our territory, they say, swooping around her head in a cloud of rage. Ours .
    Pilar puts one hand to her mouth—she cannot be sick, not here. With the other, she tries to wave away the flies. But what she sees has made her throat close over. She is unable to speak. Around and around inside her head, the words of her mother’s prayer keep pulsating. The holy words seem to mimic the furious rhythm of the bluebottles’ buzzing. Almighty God, have pity on us, help us in our hour of need. Almighty God, have pity on us, help us in our hour of need. Over and over again it goes.
    But Pilar knows that the woman on the bed before her is beyond pity, beyond help. She is naked, her body marble-like against the blood-soaked satin sheets. Her arms are by her sides, her palms facing upwards as though in supplication. Underneath her breast, there is a single, scarlet wound. Pilar begins to shake, but something drives her forward.
    She moves away from Madam Sandra, trying not to look back. She calls out Alexander’s name: “Mr. Alexander, are you here? Mr. Alexander?” But there is no reply. Pilar pushes open the bathroom door. At first, she cannot make out what she is seeing. There are signs of struggle everywhere: towels are strewn across the floor, toiletries scattered; shards of glass crunch underfoot. Everywhere there is a buzzing blue cloud of flies, drunkencrawling, sated. A great mound of white stuff in the bath, slumped to one side, looks for all the world like a wash-day bundle, just like in the launderette where Pilar once worked during her early days in the capital. She comes closer, still calling Mr. Alexander’s name.
    And then she sees Mr. Alexander’s head, just visible beneath the taps. The smoothness of the skin, the now delicate contours of his familiarity fill Pilar with an agonized tenderness. For one crazed moment, she longs to reach out and touch that forehead in all its vulnerability. She recoils at once, her hands flying to the base of her throat, guarding herself against attack. Mr. Alexander is dressed in his white bathrobe, one foot protruding palely at an odd angle. Underneath this foot, the bath is filled with an opaque red-black substance, one that looks both thick and