‘Order DJ Jeffy a margarita,’ she instructs, walking off to the bathroom, arm-inarm with Mitchell. There’s no time to tell her you’re not Mitchell’s assistant. You are an A&R manager. You find artists. You find songwriters. You put the two together. Two years ago, when you transferred from London, you went to clubs to hear live music four nights a week, but now you spend most of your time online—searching, listening, downloading. Your iPod is more important than your cell phone. Mitchell’s boss describes your office as a lean, mean machine, and he’s right, in a way: the already skimpy department is losing a lot of weight. Nobody is replaced. Nobody is promoted. Mitchell, according to Veronica Clark, may be too expensive to last much longer. She mutters this behind his back. When he leans over her to grab his drink, she strokes Mitchell’s sleeve and blows him a pouting kiss.
More people show up. By the time your food arrives, the party has spread to another two tables. Mitchell circles the groups, clapping people’s shoulders, taking calls, making introductions. You’re squeezed between Veronica Clark and DJ Jeffy, so you have to push back your chair to say hello to Rico, who’s just arrived. Carlos stands behind him. He’s not wearing a tie tonight.
Rico wanders away to talk to Mitchell, but Carlos crouches next to your chair. You stop eating your soggy burrito.
‘Would you like to meet DJ Jeffy?’ The blonde woman is shouting at Carlos, who ignores her. She’s sitting at the next table, the back of her seat almost touching DJ Jeffy’s. When she blows smoke rings, they float like miniature haloes over his head. She has been warned twice already by the waiter about smoking in the restaurant, but she keeps saying she’s from Colorado and the rules of a fascist state don’t apply, and what’s the City going to do anyway? Close the place down? This makes everyone laugh, except the waiter.
‘I was hoping you’d be here tonight,’ Carlos tells you. He speaks quickly, clearly, almost impatiently. His tie is stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket; a striped roll of silk bubbles out. ‘I was hoping I’d see you again.’
His skin is lighter than Rico’s, and his accent is more American, or maybe more European. You’ve been to Spain; you’ve seen men like Carlos before. You walked past them each evening in the streets of Seville, where they stood around outside bars with big windows and tiled floors, expensive jackets flung over their arms, laughing and drinking and smoking. They were sturdy and well-fed. They seemed to know the order of things in life, the way things were done. They weren’t like English men, who stood outside pubs, pint glasses balanced on window sills, or crammed themselves into aluminium café chairs on a wind-blown pavement, shouting over the roars of passing buses.
‘Yes,’ you say, because there’s a pause, though he hasn’t asked you a question.
‘I can’t stay right now: Would you have lunch with me? Perhaps next week?’ When you say nothing he smiles at you. His teeth are small and white. ‘It’s just lunch, OK?’
‘OK,’ you say. You wish Veronica Clark wasn’t listening to every word of the conversation, observing the exchange of business cards. You wish she couldn’t hear where you’re meeting—the Café de Lune on East 56th Street—or when.
After Carlos and Rico leave, Veronica Clark pretends to be shocked, the way you pretended to sound reluctant.
‘You know, I think he’s married,’ she tells you.
‘Really?’ You turn to the left. ‘Are you married, DJ Jeffy?’
DJ Jeffy can’t speak. His mouth is stuffed full of food.
‘I meant the Mexican,’ she says, scowling. The waiter tells everyone they have to smoke outside or agree to pay the thousand-dollar fine.
You don’t know if Carlos is married or not, and in this moment—faced with chipped mirrored tiles, stubbed-out cigarettes, the sight of Mitchell stroking his flush face over and over again, the coagulating remains of dinner, a bill longer than your forearm—you decide not to care.
On Wednesday you catch a cab to Café de Lune, even though it would be almost as quick to walk. It’s a sultry day, and you don’t want to arrive looking damp and out of breath. For some reason, you want to impress Carlos. He’s a banker who wears a suit to work and eats lunch in the East 50s. Everyone else you know works on the other side of Fifth Avenue. They got into the record business because they wanted to wear jeans to work, hang out in the studio with Daniel Lanois or Dr Dre, and get free tickets to Bob Dylan tributes at the Garden. They complain that Norah Jones has sold too many records and won too many Grammys, and demand that you find the next Norah Jones, the next Coldplay, the next OutKast. They spend all day talking about units and scans and shipping and adds and hits and ringtones. Compared with them, Carlos is an international man of mystery.
Normally you wear Capri pants and a tank top to work, but today you’ve chosen a shiny, low-cut blouse, a pencil skirt, and mules. Everyone’s been asking all morning if you have a job interview at another company. You think you’re dressed up, but you’re the only person in the restaurant, male or female, not wearing a suit.
Carlos sits waiting for you at a table near the back, thrumming the rim of his glass. He’s more attractive than you remember. As soon as you sit down, he’s waving over the waiter, ordering you a glass of wine, the sea bass. The last guy who took you out for a meal worked in production at another label: he explained to you that O-cards added six cents cost per CD. Carlos doesn’t talk about his job. He wants to know about you.
‘You’re English and you’re beautiful, that’s all I know,’ he says. ‘Tell me everything.’
Your face flushes, because you’re drinking red wine and talking about yourself at lunchtime. After a while you’re not even talking about work: you’re telling Carlos about Stroud, the town where you grew up, and Cheltenham, where you went to school, and Durham, where you went to university. When he repeats the place names, they sound elegant and mysterious. Ladbroke Grove, your neighbourhood in London, is suddenly a wooded glen: you see trees and a meadow, a fountain. You hear pan pipes.
Carlos is from Mexico City, and the bank he works for is a Mexican bank. He was transferred here a few months ago. He’s known Rico all his life.
‘You don’t look like a Mexican,’ you tell him. ‘Not that I really know what Mexicans look like, apart from Rico. And Benicio Del Toro, I guess.’
‘He’s from Puerto Rico.’ Carlos smiles at you. ‘And I’m not really a Mexican, you know. Both my parents were born in Spain. So I’m Euro-trash, really. I hope you don’t mind.’
You don’t mind. There’s a second glass of wine, and crème caramel, which Carlos calls flan. He’s not square and stocky at all, you realise. He’s a cartoon of a man, thick and muscular. For the first time you understand words like ‘virile’ and ‘rugged’.
Something has to be wrong with him. Men like this don’t exist in New York, or if they do, they live on the East Side and work in the Financial District and you never get to meet them. Sometimes you glimpse them hurrying out of Brooks Brothers, but they’re never in the places you think they might be, like eating oysters at Grand Central, or at the theatre, where at least you could sit next to them. They’re hidden away out of reach, in member-only lounges at airports, in town cars, in first class.
‘You’re married,’ you say.
‘Yes.’ He doesn’t seem surprised that you know.
‘What does your wife think about you asking other women out to lunch?’ You hope you look stern and unimpressed.
‘Look,’ he says, brushing one hand over yours, as though he’s sweeping away crumbs. ‘My wife and I are separating. She’s already back in Mexico.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Everyone is sorry. It’s a bad situation.’ He swirls the dark puddle of wine in his glass.
‘I’m sure it’s complicated,’ you blurt, because you’ve been talking too much today and can’t stop. ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’
‘It’s not complicated, really,’ he says. ‘She wants to have a child, and I don’t. But you’re right—we don’t have to talk about it
today. Please don’t think I’m always asking women out to lunch. It’s just—when I met you, I couldn’t think about anything else. I kept asking Rico about you and wanting to see you again.’
You have nothing to say to this. All you can do—and this is another word you understand for the first time—is simper.
You leave the restaurant and he offers to walk west with you, although you know his office is in the opposite direction. Near a side door of the Plaza Hotel, he grabs your hand and hauls you up the steps.
‘Come here,’ he says. He pins you against the wall and kisses you hard on the mouth. Around the mouth, in the mouth—a hungry, invasive kiss. One minute you’re both walking along the street, not touching; the, next you’re suctioned to each other in a doorway. The kiss overwhelms you, but you don’t shrink from it. Instead you lean into Carlos, arching your body up into his, trying to forget things like doorway and public place and married man.
When the kiss—this rude, flagrant kiss—ends, you’re still in the doorway, clutching each other’s elbows. People walk along the street not looking at you, as though nothing’s happened. Carlos grins and says goodbye, and you teeter down the stairs, leaving him there, not looking back.
Alone in your office, you’re giddy and hot. You shut the door and sit in the low armchair in the corner, trying to steady your breathing. Your skin prickles. A headache’s beginning, and a stomach-ache as well. Your legs tingle; your heart seems to be beating in your pelvis.
Mitchell barges in without knocking. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and waving a stubby cigar around, even though this is a non-smoking building. He wants to know if you were over at Sony. Veronica Clark saw you walking in that direction.
Veronica Clark is jumping to conclusions, you tell him: you had an appointment at the gynaecologist’s on Central Park South. There’s no reason why you can’t tell Mitchell about your lunch, but this is the first thing that enters your head. All you can think about right now are your sexual organs.
Several days and many telephone calls later, you meet Carlos for dinner at Gotham. He’s waiting in the bar, and you sit on high stools pulled close together, facing each other. Other people are close by as well, but Carlos does not seem to notice them. He strokes your arm and the back of your neck. He tells you how desperate he is to see you. He says he thinks about you all the time.
After two drinks, you’re making out. Perhaps other people are looking: you don’t know. You can’t see anybody but Carlos. You pause to sip your drinks, and the waiter bobs up; perhaps he’s been waiting a while to tell you your table is ready. You look at Carlos and Carlos asks if you can eat at the bar.
You’re wearing a wrap-around dress that falls open a little when you sit down. You bought it at lunchtime in Saks. Usually when you buy new clothes you model them back in the office for the assistants, but Jennie left last Friday and this is JJ’s last week: she spends all day at her desk, scowling and working on her résumé.
Carlos draws his fingers up and down your inner thigh.
‘The first night I met you, I could see your underwear every time you crossed your legs,’ he tells you. ‘It was driving me crazy. I remember, there were these little flowers over your panties. Grey flowers, maybe, or purple.’
‘I don’t have any floral underwear,’ you say, but he doesn’t believe you. ‘All my underwear is either black or white.’
‘I remember it exactly,’ he says, frowning. ‘Little flowers. Or maybe they were numbers?’
‘You must be thinking of someone else.’ You gulp down the dregs of a vodka martini, the twisting sliver of lemon tickling your lips.
‘There’s no one else,’ says Carlos. He sounds hurt. ‘There’s only you.’
His face splits into a smile, and you slump towards him, your tongue mashing into his. He tastes like salt and cigarettes, and tonight this is the most delicious taste in the world. You want to lick his tongue dry. You want to eat the mouth off his face.
At the end of the evening, you can’t go to his place because, he tells you, his wife is there. She’s back from Mexico to collect her things. And he can’t go back to your place, because his wife will get hysterical if he stays out all night. She won’t accept that the marriage is over. She wants Carlos to move back to Mexico City with her and have a family. Her name is Valeria.
‘So you’re not really separated,’ you say, slurry with drink. You’re both standing on the sidewalk, ignoring the lurking cabs. Reflected in the restaurant window, your face is pale, the lipstick sanded off your mouth.
‘It’s complicated,’ he says, and you want to point out that this is exactly the opposite of what he said in the Café de Lune. You want to stalk away from him without any goodbye embraces. You want to ignore his calls from now on. But instead you let him kiss you again, let him help you into a cab. At home you go to sleep thinking of the way his accent adds extra syllables to the word ‘complicated’. Although you’re annoyed with Carlos, thinking of the sound of his voice makes you smile.
You can’t ignore his calls. You meet up with him every few days. You travel all over the city to find bars—Dip, Milk & Honey, Flute—where you won’t bump into your colleagues or his. After three weeks, you’ve been out together eight times. You’ve had sex at your apartment and—just once—standing up in Mitchell’s kitchen; he’s away in Paris, and he’d given you the key so you could feed his cat. Carlos can’t spend the whole night with you because Valeria is still here. She wants him to visit a therapist—a marriage counsellor—on East 57th Street; you’re not sure why he tells you the address. She wants him to talk to someone.
He says he has no intention of going. Carlos doesn’t need someone to talk to. He talks to you. Every time you’re out together, neither of you can shut up. You dissect every conversation you’ve ever had, what you were feeling on a particular day, exactly what you were thinking at the SoHo Grand, at El Teddy’s, at Café de Lune. You have so much to tell each other. You agree on so much. You both like the Marx Brothers and anchovies. You both dislike Pernod and the Dutch. You discuss movies and books, and tell each other childhood stories: yours involve damp picnics, sandcastles on North Devon beaches, the ferry to Boulogne; his are about ski trips to Colorado and a ranch in the country. He describes Mexico City and says he wants to take you there. He’s already been to London, but the pieces of your life there—the Market Bar, the Hammersmith Apollo, the Number 52 bus—are new to him.
You sit close together, knees touching, and announce things: I miss you, I need you, I love you. Somehow you’ve skipped the tentative stage of a relationship, when no one wants to give too much away. Too much is what you and Carlos are all about: you both say too much, feel too much. He’s not like the American guys you’ve been out with, who always seem to be looking out for what they can get, what they can get away with. And he’s not like an English guy, either, pasty and diffident. It feels as though you’ve invented him, as though you’ve invented each other. It feels as though you’ve never been in love before.
It feels as though you’re having an affair, but neither of you will call it that. Carlos is separating; he tells you this over and over. He hasn’t separated yet: he is separating. And the larger part of him is already yours.
Although he doesn’t want to, Carlos agrees to talk to the therapist. He and his wife go together but, at the end of the session, the therapist says she wants to see Carlos alone.
‘She asked me to stay behind for a minute,’ he says. He’s calling you from his office, as usual. He calls at least three times a day. ‘She asked me if I was having an affair.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told her I was in love with an English woman, and she said she could tell.’
‘She could tell I was English?’
‘She could tell I was in love with another woman.’
He says he’s decided to keep going to marriage counselling, even though he thinks it’s a waste of time. He’s not in love with his wife anymore, but he thinks that he o
wes her this much. He owes his family, too. When he married Valeria, the wedding was huge. Everyone rich and important in Mexico City was invited. Eight hundred people, six different bands. They even had fireworks. His wife is the one with the money, he tells you. He doesn’t usually talk about money, though you know he didn’t grow up poor. His parents have maids and a cook, who still call him Master Carlitos; there’s the ranch in the country. Everyone in Mexico has a maid, he insists, but his family seem to have a lot of them.
‘The wedding was a big deal,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be an even bigger deal if we get divorced. Everyone will be angry with me again.’
You want to ask him what ‘if’ means, what ‘again’ means, but Mitchell fills your doorway, screaming something about getting your ass to the conference room. International has made a video for an act you’re taking to the big conference in London; it’s important you sell them around the world. Mitchell hates the video. It looks cheap. The main dancer is too fat. This is what happens when nobody will spend any money, he screeches; you get fat dancers and a no-name director.
‘I wanted Sophie Muller,’ he complains. ‘Who do we get? Kenny Ortega’s nephew. The dancer’s probably his niece. She’s probably his slut illegitimate daughter!’
‘Can’t they stretch her?’ you ask.
‘If we stretched her from here to Acapulco, she’d still look fat.’ Mitchell’s face is so red it looks sunburned. ‘I don’t want all of Kenny Ortega’s fat fucking Mexican relations in the video!’
‘I think Kenny Ortega’s from Palo Alto,’ you say, and tell Carlos you’ll call him back later.
When you do, that afternoon, he’s been speaking to Rico. He’s sworn Rico to secrecy and told him about your relationship. Rico disapproves.
One evening, after you and Carlos make love at your apartment, Carlos finishes getting dressed in the bathroom. He needs to look in the mirror to make sure his tie is straight. He’s supposed to be at a business dinner.
‘Remember when we had lunch together that first time?’ he calls. You’re still lying in bed, the sheet taut around your waist. ‘I was so excited to see you again.’
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 132