Anio Szado (21 page)

The world was made for men, thought Consuelo, especially in America. Witness the peepholes in the doors: they were always too high, positioned to the comfort level of the men who installed them. Men set the rules of machinery, mechanisms, emotions, love. It was no wonder they always managed to get their way. A woman had to be strong and cunning. She had to have her wits about her and her full quiver of weapons at the ready.

Bah. First she needed a stepstool to see through the goddamn door.

There had been one here weeks ago, before Consuelo had thrown out the old furnishings and brought some modern life to this room. It was a curse to possess good taste. It meant one had to resort, now and then, to standing on a sturdy valise to watch one’s husband return to his home.

Tonio sometimes had visitors at his apartment: the city’s most interesting Frenchmen, his publishers or his translator, often his secretary to transcribe his notes or recordings, and probably, surely, a girlfriend—though Consuelo had yet to catch him at it. And that was not the only thing worth watching for. There was the timing of Tonio’s return. If he came home late, Consuelo would be obliged to make a point of coming home even later on her next night out. If she had to worry until two a.m., let Tonio fret until five! There was the posture with which he stood at the door, a call to her suspicion or sympathy. And there were the sounds that filtered through the tiny tunnel and curved glass. Why would he sing or whistle? Why should he be so carefree?

Now he stood at his door, fitting in his key as though he
hadn’t a worry on his mind. How did he do that again and again? So many times she had watched just this: her husband walking up to his door as if he had every right to turn his key, enter, and close his life to her gaze. She was tired of staring at a blank brown door, its frame curving like a comic book bubble threatening to burst in her face, tired of standing with her glossy lashes bent and damp against a golden ring.

She went into the hallway and knocked on his door, holding her dressing gown closed around her.

“Good evening, Consuelo.” He looked as though his mind were somewhere else.

“How are your shirts?”

“Should I know something about my shirts?”

“I told the concierge to send a maid to gather them and clean and iron them.”

“Thank you. Good night.”

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“You’ll crush my foot if you close the door that way.” She had placed her bare toes across the threshold.

“I wouldn’t want to do that. You have lovely feet.”

How generous! How adorable. Whatever had brought about this mood was something worth repeating. “My feet miss your strong hands, Tonio. No one knows how to press out the aches like you do.”

“Your feet ache? Poor Consuelo. Mine, too. Getting old is—”

Old! She shoved the door. Its angled edge smacked into Tonio’s cheekbone. Her hand came up to batter him on the other side of his face. How dare he call her old!

“Quiet.” He caught her wrist and pulled her into his apartment, closing the door behind them. “You are not the only inhabitant of this building, that you can stand in the hallway and scream. Do you want me to be evicted?”

Let them throw him on the street for making his beleaguered
wife cry! Just let them come and ask her why her heart was so painfully torn. She began to weep. “I have given my whole life to you, Tonio. And now you say I am old, that you are done with me.”

“I did not say you are old.”

Consuelo pulled open her robe. “Look at me. Touch me.” She took his hands and placed them on her breasts.

He let his hands fall to his sides. “Where is Binty tonight?”

“Probably with one of your Fifth Avenue tarts!”

Tonio took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. He strolled over to his desk, straightened a stack of papers, and pushed aside his bracelet to check the date on his pilot watch. He found the first blank page in his notebook, and uncapped his pen. “Good night.”

“You still want me,” said Consuelo. “You still love me.”

“Love is like a scar. It is impossible to excise.”

“You’d cut your arm off to get rid of it. You’d do anything to rid yourself of me.”

“I will start by asking politely. I have a deadline. I need to work through the night and I need to begin now. Would you be so kind as to go home?”

“You are my home. I belong here.”

“Do you know any other man whose wife comes to his office to watch him work? Please. You see I am at my desk. This is all I have”—he indicated the shape of the tabletop with two angular chops of his hand—“and the hope of quiet, and nothing else. Do not take from me even this. If I have no peace, I cannot write. If I cannot write, I might just as well cut off both my arms. Either way, we will both end up living in a ditch.”

“I’m bothering you,” she said humbly.

“God, yes.”

“And your apartment is so small. You should come move into mine; I have more space than I can fill on my own.”

“Give it time.”

Consuelo rose up onto tiptoes. “Really, darling? You’ll consider moving in?”

“What? I said, ‘Give it time.’ You will fill your space as you always do, then your apartment will not seem so large.” He sat down at his desk, his back to her.

Her spirit deflated. He wanted her gone. Fine. She would leave him alone.

“I’ll give you some time to yourself,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“How long do you need? I can be a model of patience. I’ll wait for you in your bed.”

“Consuelo, please, leave me alone!”

It used to be she who would turn him away—in punishment, in control, to heighten his desire. It had been forever since he’d made love to her, forever since he’d tried.

“I am giving myself to you, Tonio.”

“Don’t.”

“We’re not finished. I still believe in us. I believe in you.”

“You believe in a memory.”

“Prove me wrong, my love.”

He ignored her.

She snatched up a picture frame and flung it. Tonio ducked as though he had foreseen its course. It hit the wall with a resounding crack that spattered into a tinkling shower.

“You think you’re a man of duty?” cried Consuelo. “A real man would do anything he could to satisfy his wife.”

But even as she said it, she knew only everything would be enough. She wanted the lover he had once been for her in full, unbridled force—his passion breaking in her, shattering her like ice.

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, at first, in the light of dawn.

I was still on the couch in the studio. Antoine was gone. The sun—great relief—was low in the sky. Madame would not arrive for hours.

I lay my head back down and tried to follow a pattern of white lines that stretched across the floor.

The floorboards were pocked and scratched, the varnish unevenly worn. It wasn’t unusual for the light to catch here and there. I had often lost myself in daydreams gazing over it; often my eyes had seen a figure in the marks within the wood. Even now, I could change my focus and make the image disappear, make its pale lines blur into dashes of sunlight and nothing more.

But it returned, and, with it, realization: Antoine had made a drawing for me.

He had also covered me with a length of red wool. I pulled it around my shoulders and eased my feet onto the rug and beyond, stepping onto the floor with the crimson fabric a dragging cape.

At my feet there was a drawing made in dressmaker’s chalk, some seven or eight feet tall. Its base was a circle, a planet. Rising from it was a single rose—a rose as tall as I was, as alone on its globe as I felt in the world.

The magnitude of the drawing compelled me. I grabbed my largest sketchbook and painstakingly copied the rose. I drew sketches of the entire composition, and page after page of its
details. Then, with a rag of terrycloth in my hand, and a dress from a garment rack pulled over my head, I scrubbed Antoine’s chalk away. Soon all that remained were flecks of white, deep in the old scratches, smears of grey where the drawing had found exposed, unvarnished wood.

I checked the studio for any remaining traces of his presence: ashes, lost hairs, errant papers. I sniffed for his cologne, his cigarettes. Then I stood in the strengthening sunlight, naked under my dress. My back and hips ached, yet I felt clean and alive.

I turned my sketchbook to a fresh page and drew the rose from memory.

The rose grew in my mind—appliquéd on flowing fabrics, swaying on skirts, arcing on women’s shoulders, sparkling from brooches pinned to hats, painted on scarves, drawing attention to itself in shimmering sequins. I wanted her—the rose—to call out from every plane and curve of a woman’s form, to claim attention and love, to be bold in sharing her beauty with the world.

Smiling over my book, my hand moving in unencumbered strokes, on page after page after page, I drew.

It was still early—the traffic outside was still building—when there was a knock on the studio door. I put aside my sketchbook and went to answer it.

It was Leo. I grinned up at him. “Well, hello!”

Relief shot through his expression but was quickly driven away. He pressed past me and scanned the length of the studio to his left and to his right. His gaze remained for a while on the target of red wool that I had tossed across the couch. “Where were you all night? Who was here with you?”

“No one was here.”

“Who is he?”

I closed the door. “There is no ‘he.’ ”

Leo considered my expression, the set of my shoulders, the stubbornness in my eyes. He watched as I turned away. Suspicion clouded his voice. “You haven’t been home in days.”

“You’re guessing, and your guess is lousy. If you could manage to come home yourself sometime, you would see that I’m there. I come home late, but I come home. Exactly where do you sleep?”

“You weren’t home last night.”

“Then I suppose you were, for a change.”

“You could have at least telephoned.”

“Isn’t it better to be locked in working late than to go out into the streets looking for a phone?”

His anger wavered. “You better be home early tonight.”

“I might be. I’m not sure. I’ve got a lot to do. I’m working on sketches for an important client.”

He slipped his hands into his pockets and cast around for something to focus on. “Those them?” He walked over to a large drawing board that I had left on the window ledge. A stack of Arches paper was held to it with a metal clip. He lifted the top sheet and looked at one after another of the pages, all the way down to the wood, then he let the papers fall. “This is what you do all day?”

“Among other things.”

“Like what?”

“I sew. I study the fashions in magazines and storefronts. I think of ways we can get attention and business. I take things apart and put things together—just like you. I try to put everything I know into my designs. I try to learn what I can and come up with something new.”

He wandered down the studio. “You designed this?” He was looking at the butterfly dress on the wall.

“That’s one of the designs Madame Fiche stole from my portfolio. That’s the piece that was in the magazine.” The dress had lost its disturbing effect on me. When I looked at it now, I saw only color, fabric, and line.

But Leo seemed mesmerized. He squinted at it, and reached up to stroke the velvet with the knuckles of his rough hand. “Soft.” His fingertips gingerly touched the jeweled beads at the waist. I wondered if he had a girl, if he was picturing her in such a dress. He asked, “Ever gotten a penny for this stuff?”

“No.”

“Nothing? Is there just this one?”

“There are nine other pieces hanging on a rack.”

“Ten in all. Then we’ll call this ten percent, and call it even.” His hand pivoted and gripped. “Fair’s fair.” He yanked the dress to the floor and gathered it into his arms.

“You can’t do that!”

“Someone’s got to stand up for themselves.” The fabric trailed
after him as he hurried to the door. “I figure I get a say. That bitch used your drawings, but you took the idea from my back.” The door slammed shut behind him.

I did take the idea from Leo.