After Delores (10 page)

She went to the mirror and started combing her hair, changing her earrings, changing her scarf. Her hands and feet were very tiny and her slippers, refined.

“Don't think that I'm afraid of death. It is the waste of time that disgusts me. In Argentina, I killed a woman, but it was a political assassination. I can say this freely, knowing it means nothing tangible to you.”

I was eating eggs with a woman who said she had killed another woman, at least one, because she had to. Claiming it was almost as good as doing it, choosing to be known as a murderer. I wanted to be repulsed, but discovered, instead, a twisted admiration. Beatriz stretched her mouth tight, waiting for lipstick.

“Now a woman is dead who would have been murdered eventually and I have survived into this life.”

I looked back at the open peephole.

“You in America don't have this decision but everyone else in the world must choose between making love and making history. You Americans impact on the world simply by eating breakfast, with so many people working so hard so you can have it exactly the way you like it. For the rest of us, we have to fight to affect anything, or else just live our private lives of hope and sorrow. If I want power in the world, then the world must take priority, not personal habits like love. At precisely the moment when I become convinced of which direction is most necessary to me, the other presents itself. Now, theater, that can be made for love or history.”

“And now you're making it for love?”

She smiled a tired smile. It showed the beginnings of a wrinkled face that would become increasingly exquisite with old age.

“I make theater with Charlotte. Sometimes in the early morning she is smiling, plotting in her sleep, being wild in her dreams. I brush back her hair and say, ‘Bad, sleeping beauty, bad.' Because she is the mischievous imp in every fairy tale, and with a woman like that, all you can do is pretend. Those are the moments when I can see so clearly what we can make together. And you? What kind of family do you come from? What does your father do?”

“He's a narc in the Dominican Republic for the CIA.”

“Oh, the intellectual type.”

And we both cracked up laughing.

We were drinking coffee by that time and I could see right through the peephole into the hallway. It completely altered the apartment. It was staring at me, like Beatriz was staring at me. I needed another question, quickly, so she wouldn't look at me so hard.

“How did you and Charlotte meet?”

She was really solemn for the first time that afternoon, as though all this talk about murder and politics was throwaway chitchat but Charlotte was a serious matter. Beatriz's eyes were like the nipples on Coco's lover. Dark and sharp as swords.

“Onstage, of course. I'm not usually attracted to actors. In fact, they are my least favorite people in the theater. I could never say words I don't believe, not for money, or approval, certainly not for the principle of being convincing on any terms. Watch out when an actor tells you, ‘I mean what I say.' That's the biggest lie of all. With Charlotte, the first thing I saw was her way of holding a script over her mouth so that only her eyes showed, laughing.”

She illustrated her story with a napkin at the kitchen table.

“Even though it was hidden, you could imagine the mouth and how wicked it was.”

Beatriz poured more coffee into my cup and I realized that I was beginning to slide. Maybe there was a bottle somewhere. If I kept drinking coffee, eventually it would kick in. I hoped that would be soon.

“In theater there are many moments inside of one moment, so without the precision of emotion, the play is nothing. It is slop. Charlotte and I were working together for the first time and we were developing a nuance that had to make itself understood in a matter of seconds. I tell you, she had me crying. She was wiping tears off her own face and slowly painting them on mine until they dripped down my cheek and onto my tongue. I know she's selfish, but she can fool the magician. She fell in love with me first, though, and I'll tell you why. It's because I'm not beautiful.”

Yes, you are
, I thought.

“Beautiful women never take beautiful women for lovers. They like elusive faces and quirky expressions. It's because they want to be loved for themselves, but they also demand adoration. And they don't ever want competition. Especially from the same bed. But, she unleashes me. Our first night together we had talked all evening, strolling the summer streets, with sirens and water pouring out of hydrants. Two elderly women were yelling in Spanish, their fat arms sticking out of cheap housedresses. When the time came to make love, I was sitting on my bed saying, ‘Come here,' and Charlotte walked towards me in a moment filled with wanting and compliance. She took those steps across the dark room. She didn't look at me, but there was volition and desire and her body coming closer with no affectation. It was a raw honesty that showed me then how much the rest of my life was lies.”

13

I WENT STRAIGHT
from Beatriz's house to The Blue and the Gold and started drinking in a little booth behind the jukebox. When you begin to think about drinking and staying away from it, every dark street sends out a personalized path of light leading directly to a bar. It offers something to do, a place to watch the clock, and when you're drunk enough to sleep, you can go home. But, if you stay out of bars, there's nowhere to go but home, and then no place to go from there.

The news was on the TV but they were bombing Libya and I couldn't handle that. Then the channel got changed to the ball game, which doesn't interest me at all. I had to find something to think about in a stein of flat beer and a bag of Dipsy Doodles. When that's your evening activity, the beer goes down real fast and then there's nothing to do but buy another one. I was thinking about smashing Delores's face with a hammer, when I looked up and there she was. She was sitting at the bar, legs crossed, drinking a White Russian. She had dyed her hair bright orange and was bouncing her foot up and down in Sunshine's clothes, expensive and too big for her. There was a white headband wrapped around her forehead that made Delores's skin pale and her wrinkles deeper. She didn't look hip. She looked silly like Grandma Bozo.

I wanted to run out of there, but where to? Or run right up to her and scream in her ear, or flash Priscilla's gun, which was home in my drawer. I wanted to spit on her and break her neck and beg her to come back to me.

Delores was so close, I could hear her swallow. The sound gurgling in her throat made me nauseous. If I listened to the rain the way I listed to Delores's spit, I would have drowned right there in the bar. She was the woman with whom I had been living and loving, and at the same time a monstrous orange thing.

The day she left, I sat in my apartment, so sad. I didn't know how to be that sad. She was yelling at me and I just sat there.

“I'm leaving you for a woman who is going to marry me. You had your chance and now you just can't take it.”

“I can't help it that I can't take it,” I said.

What did I love about Delores? It was something concrete that she would do or say, it was how I'd feel when I saw her. She was always so happy when I came home and she liked being next to me walking down the street. She'd slip her arm into mine and say, “Oh, I'm so cozy.” It was a sense of well-being above anything else. The problems started when she talked about “forever.” My idea was that we stay together for as long as it worked and then something else would happen. You never know which way a relationship will go, so you have to be creative. I couldn't say “forever” unless I knew for sure it was true. But, I believed that Delores was my friend, so whatever changes we went through, we'd go through them together. I had a picture in my head where we'd talk it all over stage by stage and try this or that, always being considerate and in touch. I wouldn't picture it any other way. But, as soon as Sunshine came along, Delores split. Sunshine said “forever,” so she wasn't interested in me anymore. It's not like we had stopped getting along or stopped having sex—everything was intact except the future. Man, was I surprised. I was so used to Delores being my friend and she changed so fast that I let her hurt me too deeply because I didn't know enough to treat her like a stranger yet.

“Delores, can't you just be nice and talk to me for one minute so we can figure something out?”

“You had your chance,” she said.

See, from my point of view, Delores didn't play fair. When you dump your lover, you should show a little consideration to the woman you've been whispering to in the dark for so many nights up until that one. Not Delores. She took what she needed and then cut out. She was not sentimental. She was seasoned. Sometimes I thought Delores didn't know how to take care of herself, so she needed to find other people who would do it for her. If they didn't do it well enough, she'd get rid of them. After all, Delores was no spring chicken and you get tired of hustling. People like that run into a lot of lowlife and sometimes they become lowlife themselves. Her lover before me broke her nose. The one before that took her money. Both guys. Some nights I'd listen to Delores tell me about the brutality in her life and secretly I felt frightened, but I didn't know of what. Then one day I wasn't hearing about it, I was living it. It wasn't just Delores's stories anymore. It became our life together.

I remember one night we were walking home late along the avenue, both in suit jackets with girly decorations. We were both pretty. I looked up at her and said, “You know, I think you're my best friend, Delores.” And she scrunched up her face in a kind of pure happiness you rarely get to bring out in another person.

“No one's ever said that to me before,” she said. “That's what I've always wanted, a chum.”

I remember watching her against the eerie glare of headlights knowing that I was the person Delores cared about the most. Now I'm the one she most wants to break. I guess that means I know her inside out. That's why I can't let go. Something organic keeps her right there, next to me. Whenever I move, she follows me because Delores left everything unresolved and that was a dirty trick.

Once, about two weeks after she left, I saw her across a subway platform in a crowd of people and she looked pretty, but seeing her alone and so close in that bar, she looked terrible. I've watched that face say so many different kinds of things. I'm afraid when I see her now because each expression is familiar and would evoke memories that, good or bad, I wouldn't want to be thinking about if we were to meet. I'd rather just be present. That Delores. I don't know what was missing, generosity or need, but that last day, boy, she was on a campaign of slash and burn. She was screaming at me, jumping around in a carnival of hate, trying to destroy everything, and I just turned off. I knew inside that there was no way to react that would have changed anything.

So when she came over and stood at my table at The Blue and the Gold, I knew I would be thrown into chaos.

“That's my shirt,” she said.

“Hi, Delores.”

“That's my shirt and I want it back.”

She was holding her White Russian with its little swizzle stick. I didn't get up but I could clearly see her expression. It was blank.

“Hey Delores, where's your yuppie girlfriend?”

“She's not a yuppie, she's a lesbian.”

“Okay, a preppie with a twist.”

If I looked straight ahead, my face would have been between her breasts. She was wearing her black bra. I could tell.

“If you don't give me that shirt right now, I'm going to tear it off you.”

I was thinking how, if she tore it, she wouldn't be able to wear it, but instead I said, “Look, Delores, why don't you call me later and we'll talk about it. Let's talk about it later.”

One of the underlying reasons I said, “Let's talk about later,” was that Delores had never called me since the day she left, not to give me her new phone number, not to pay the phone bill, nothing.

I got up to go to the bathroom and she kind of grabbed at the shirt, but let go before it ripped. When I got back, she was still standing there.

“If you don't give it to me right now, I'm going to make such a scene that they'll never let you back in this place.”

Then I got scared. It wasn't losing the bar so much, it was the reality of the situation, of how Delores was angry that I was alive and she intended to obliterate me.

She yelled so loud, everything in that place stopped except the video games' repeating jingle.

“Give it to me now or I'm going to make a scene.”

What could I do? I looked down at my table at The Blue and the Gold and slowly undid all the buttons. I handed her the wilted green shirt and sat there in my bra. You would think she'd at least leave at that point, but she took it back to her seat and sipped her drink. It was a while before Sal, the bartender, came over and told me to put on my jacket. That's when my head split open. It wasn't a headache. It was my skull. It cracked from the inside and nothing was keeping my brains together. I couldn't even cry. I couldn't do nothing.

14