After Delores (7 page)

“Sure.”

“Under capitalism, people with new ideas serve people with old ones. Under communism, it's exactly the same, only you don't get tips.”

And then I realized that Charlotte had come to see me.

“Did I get the job?” I asked, not knowing whether to laugh or not.

“I have to admit that there is no job. Forgive me?” She kissed my hand.

“Sure.” “I do these things,” she said, “because I like provocation. Otherwise I'm bored and nasty all day long. Besides, I didn't want to talk about Marianne in front of Beatriz. You understand that, don't you?”

“Yeah, but, how…”

“Marianne told me all about you. She said you were very kind. You paid for her drinks. You shared your cigarettes. You gave her advice and you didn't try to get her into bed. I thought you'd show up eventually. After all, Marianne was a very attractive young woman, wasn't she?”

“Yes, she was.”

“But we'll talk more about this later. What time do you get off work?” She sat there for the next forty minutes making friends with Dino and Joe by imitating all the customers. Charlotte was amazing because she could be anybody at any time. She could be whoever you wanted her to be and still have total control of the situation. She was an entertainer all the way.

When work was over, we walked to the park.

“How could you possibly get bored, Charlotte, playing characters all day long?”

“Acting is so great,” she said. “I love being hateful especially. It's so satisfying. It's terrible in life but onstage it's the best. That way, everyone watches you more closely and then they want to soothe your sorrows and make you a better person.”

As she talked, I could see how smooth she was. She knew which facial expression to use to communicate every situation. Her face was capable of such refined emotions that she managed to convey what she was thinking and acknowledge what I was thinking and still be polite. But there were always surprises. Like I'd be right in the middle of explaining about Delores when, “Oh, God!”

“What is it?”

“I saw a baby slobbering all over himself. It was great.”

She was a kid, ready to grab and respond to anything immediately. She didn't let her life walk all over her.

It was just warm enough in the park to try out a bench. I could feel Charlotte breathing next to me. She smelled like a horse. It was so exciting. Charlotte really felt things, just like those guys on Spanish TV, and it made me a little freer, being near her. My whole body was tingling, my muscles were breathing. No wonder Punkette loved her. Since Delores, I haven't known how to relate to people sometimes because I can't tell how much they really feel. If they pay attention to me, I don't know if they're doing it on purpose or if it's a trick. But, with Charlotte's voice on my neck, I realized how much I had missed closeness. I think I got too turned on, though, and kept interrupting maniacally, for no reason but to be in conversation with Charlotte. To see her teeth.

“Charlotte, when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

“Growing up has always been an elusive question in my life.”

“What does
elusive
mean?”

“Fuzzy, changing shape.”

Actually I think I did know what
elusive
meant, but I was so excited that I forgot.

“Let's see,” she kept going, “I used to play games all the time. I had six brothers. One died. Three of them are priests. The other—”

“What kind of games? Oh … I'm sorry.”

I wanted to shut up. I really wanted to shut up.

“That's okay. Princes and dragons and buccaneers. We would—”

“Princes? Do you want to get a beer? I'm sorry … I am listening. I'm hearing every word you say.”

I was. I was listening too hard. So she got silent. Almost sullen. I had no idea at all of what to do until a derelict walked by laughing to himself.

“I don't like homosexuals,” he said.

And I loved him for that because he could see the same thing in me that he saw in Charlotte. It put us in the same boat. I wanted her to put her arm around me but instead she flattened her black hair and took off her earrings.

“Better get rid of these and back to my tough self.”

Right there before me on a park bench, she transformed from the soft woman onstage, laughing and open, to an Irish butch with a set jaw and big hands, who comes home at night with tight shoulders, needing loving from her woman. I think that was the first time that any of Charlotte's personas struck me as real. She was a woman who wore suit jackets and men's pants. She'd stick her hands in her pockets and clam up when she really had something to say.

She was so close and within reach that I could no longer abide by the rule of touching and not touching. I put my hand up flat against her lapel, in the lightest way, and then pulled back, reaching for a cigarette and offering her one.

“No thanks, I don't smoke anymore.”

That's what stayed in my mind all night, tossing and turning on the couch. Charlotte doesn't smoke. How could I ever be close with a woman who doesn't smoke? No bitter taste of tobacco on her tongue when I suck it. No late-night waves of smoke hanging on our shoulders. No red tip smoldering in the dark. No passing the butt from lip to lip. She would never love my smell the way a nicotine addict craved me. That's when I wondered if Charlotte was only my diversion, and I was nothing to her. But that thought was too bleak to possibly accept.

10

I'D KIND OF
dropped the idea of giving Priscilla's gun back right away. There's really nothing that strange about having a gun. Most people in New York City seem to have one. It's normal. You're just expected to be cool about it and keep it hidden in a sloppy way. Then everyone knows you have one but nobody ever mentions it, like genitals or money. The truth was that after playing around with the gun so much, and practicing the idea of using it, I was getting used to the thought of shooting somebody.

Murder doesn't have to be a lonely tragedy. Especially in self-defense. I mean, I could kill Delores any day of the week and it would be in self-defense because she was hurting me around the clock. But that type of reasoning doesn't play in the public eye. You can only kill to protect a woman other than yourself if you want to get away with it. That's the trick, I think, that guys often use. They start out wanting to punch anyone in the mouth and then look around for the nearest rude drunk harassing some girl. That way they get their rocks off and can be a hero at the same time.

Let's say one night me and Charlotte would be on the trail of Punkette's killer. All the clues lead to an abandoned shooting gallery between a video store and a
botánica
. It's after midnight and we're picking through the garbage and human shit and used works by candlelight until some big dude steps, suddenly, out from the shadows. He whips out his knife and delivers a speech about why he killed Punkette, including all the practical details. He tops it all off with a sinister laugh and lunges for Charlotte's throat. That's when I'd pull out my revolver and let him have it right in the gut. We'd leave his corpse for the rats and run out, euphoric, onto the street. Charlotte would love me forever for that. She'd throw her arms around me and cry real tears. I'm sure everything would feel better then.

If Charlotte and I were going to find Punkette's killer, we had to get started soon. I hadn't heard from her since that day in the park and it scared me to think she might be slipping out of my life. I couldn't let that happen. I put on Delores's shirt again. There are those of us in this world who understand nothing about clothes, about what looks good and why. When one garment succeeds, it becomes a permanent part of the repertoire, a habitual sure thing. Delores's shirt had worked for Delores and, so far, it had worked for me. Now there were other, more pressing, matters.

It was almost comfortable walking over to the theater. Charlotte's neighborhood and I were getting used to each other, or maybe I was becoming part of it. Some streets in New York City are fab and their people are fabulous too. Some streets are preoccupied and keep to themselves. Some are broken and tired. Some accept things the way they are. Charlotte's streets compose their own universe with their own personal sense of order and not too many questions or possibilities. They're not romantic or inviting but that's why they suck you in. Especially if you're the kind of person who doesn't feel like looking at the future right now.

The front door wasn't locked so I stepped into the theater's cool darkness. Beatriz was there again, alone in the front row. I knew I shouldn't disturb her, because she was busy thinking about something dramatic. And, I probably shouldn't involve her in the Punkette thing, because her feelings must be very mixed. But I was curious about what kind of woman would shove Charlotte around in order to get her to do what she wanted her to and then have it work. Beatriz seemed to be staring at the empty stage. Every once in a while she would make a little sound, a snort of recognition, and then, a note.

“Excuse me.”

She looked up, interrupted but smiling graciously. A person with very good upbringing. Diplomatic. Not a common person.

“You are Marianne's friend, aren't you?” That scared me right down to my fillings.

I thought Charlotte didn't want her to know about Marianne. Or was it that Charlotte specifically did not want Beatriz to talk to
me
about Marianne? Did I know something special or had Charlotte changed her mind? I wanted to get out of there but she beat me to it by saying, “Come in and sit down. I've been waiting for you.”

She was miles ahead of me and flaunted it with style. She knew more than she should have known but was polite enough to tell me so. Beatriz didn't let suspense hang in the air like the melodrama of a waterfront movie, foghorns and mist. There were no raised eyebrows or padded shoulders and vampire nails. No, she said it like she was really thinking about something else, but in the meantime this little detail needed to be dealt with, simply that she knew more than I had told her and that was that.

“Beatriz Piazzola, like the musician.”

She tapped the chair next to her with a pencil. Then we were both staring at the empty stage.

“I warned Marianne not to let strangers into a home, hers or anybody else's. But what can you do when children want everything to be so beautiful?”

She was Latin, but not from PR and not from Santo Domingo, with a soft accent and bad skin. Her English was shaped by a slightly British inflection, like someone who had studied in a grammar school with patient nuns, writing practice phrases in a small notebook, and presenting perfect papers. English had been part of her life for a long time.

“I'm working on a play right now, adapting a novel by the British writer Mary Renault. Do you know her?”

“No.”

She smiled kindly as though my ignorance was nothing to be concerned about.

“It's the story of two women who live together on a houseboat on the Thames in the 1940s. They have lived this way for ten years, sleeping every night in the same bed and sharing, every day, their habits and imaginations. But they have never been lovers.”

“Never?”

“No. Well, one night years before, but that is best not spoken about. They have, you see, a lesbian relationship but they do not know it. Enter, the American.”

She held up one finger emphatically and laughed.

“Americans can provide the dramatic catalyst simply by entering. Because, for a foreigner, there is no difference between you and Hollywood. And, in fact, this particular American works in Hollywood. She eats lunch in the same canteen as Bette Davis. She is a walking movie and she is a lesbian. What's more, she actively pursues one of the Englishwomen and chases her into bed.”

Beatriz was covered with ornamentation. She wore clashing scarves that flashed color when she moved and an extensive collection of detailed earrings, bracelets, and clips, a leather thong, and a wooden comb. It was all somehow just right and comforting because, if I didn't want to look at her eyes for too long at a time, there were perfectly legitimate reasons to look at the rest of her. If you watched Charlotte too closely she'd eat you up, but Beatriz was designed to be looked at.

“This affair, of course, provokes a great crisis in the friendship. You see, it forces them to confront the lie in their relationship and their complicity in that lie, a lie that has consumed ten years of their lives. Do you know what it is to have to relegate ten years to a lie?” The more involved the story became, the less expression Beatriz showed in her face. And I could see she was capable of great anger.

“I feel that way about my whole life,” I said.

“Good. Then you know exactly what I am talking about.”

“I've never heard of a book like that,” I said. “I didn't know it could exist.”

“It doesn't.” She was laughing again, the kind of laugh you could pick out in a dark and crowded movie theater. “What I have just told you is my dream of this book. On the actual pages, there is no American. There is only a dreary man. And the secret, I'm afraid, is only the enlightened reader's imagination.”