A Change of Skin Read Online Free PDF Page A

pointed toward the valley and said that from here on the road was easier. That would be absurd, certainly, said your husband. Yes, that was what he said. You looked at him and spoke again: “How many hours before we’ll get to the sea?”
    â€œTo the sea?” smiled Javier. “When, Franz?”
    â€œNot until tomorrow.”
    You turned and closed your eyes again. For several minutes you were all silent. You sensed Franz feeling in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes and opened your eyes and reached across his chest and got the pack. You lit a cigarette and passed it to him stained with the red circle of your lips. Then you lit one for yourself. Only when you had finished the cigarette did you say, as if the conversation had not been interrupted for a moment: “I can accept everything except the same old thing forever repeated. Nothing is so marvelous that it can’t eventually become boring.”
    You felt Javier’s eyes and passed your hand over your hair.
    â€œThe truth of it is that love can be created without passion,” Javier said. “One can appreciate beauty and a woman’s character quite coldly and with no desire. Love without hunger, without urgency.” Franz raised an eyebrow and shrugged his shoulder. I would have done the same, Dragoness. Really I would.
    Now you were passing through a village and Franz slowed down. You deliberately turned your head away from the window. But Isabel pressed her nose to the glass and watched the gray, unwhitewashed, one-story adobe houses go by, the little roadside stands selling eggnog and mulberries and plums and cheap crockery junk, the motionless figures stiff with cold and wrapped in gray cloaks. Her nose was against the glass and her breath clouded it and she drew a cat in the cloud and then began to play tick-tack-toe with herself, drawing round O’s and X’s. Ah, me. Her right hand, which was drawing the X’s, was defeated by the O’s of her left. She stopped and stroked her fingers across the sun-brown skin of her arm. Now there was a true forest to the right and against that dark background Isabel ought to have been able to see her eyes reflected in the window, green and brilliant above her smooth high cheeks. A lovely woman, Dragoness. No one can accuse me of not appreciating her. No one. Suddenly she moved forward and leaned across the seat and opened the door beside you and without a sound lunged toward it. Javier caught her by the shoulders and jerked her back just as soundlessly while you reached and pulled the door shut again and Franz said evenly and without surprise, “Careful there.” Then Isabel had fallen face down across Javier’s crossed legs, her mouth open against his thighs, and was crying, waiting for him to caress and calm her, touch her long dark hair, wipe away her tears. Javier paid her no attention. When he moved his hands, it was only to raise them and study his fingernails. He laughed softly and reached forward and touched the back of your neck. You did not move, Elizabeth. You stared straight ahead. Bravo. As you would put it, you had graduated and joined the Navy, ship ahoy.
    â€œWhich way here?” Franz asked.
    You and Javier spoke at the same time: “Don’t go through Cuernavaca.” “Just follow the highway.”
    â€œYes, but how far?”
    â€œTo the turnoff.”
    â€œIs it before or after the tollbooth?”
    â€œAfter. You pay toll to Alpuyeca. Before Alpuyeca, you turn off.”
    â€œI remember now.”
    â€œYou mean you’ve been to Xochicalco before?”
    â€œHell, Lisbeth, of course I have. All four of us were … I mean, the three of us were there just last year.”
    â€œHow silly, I had forgotten. Little Isabel.” That bitchy smile of yours.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNothing. I meant that when we went to Xochicalco last year you hadn’t made your debut yet.”
    â€œVery funny,” Javier