‘So was I,’ you tell him. You’ve had this conversation before. ‘Though I didn’t really know what to expect. Not that kiss in the street, anyway.’
‘You looked so beautiful,’ he says. ‘Though I was disappointed when you walked in. I thought you would have dressed up more. I thought it meant you weren’t interested in me.’
‘What are you talking about? I was dressed up!’
‘I thought you would have worn something really special.’ He sounds petulant, as though you betrayed him, somehow, with your choice of outfit.
‘I don’t live in your world, you know,’ you tell him. This is as annoying as the underpants conversation. Obviously your clothes are a language he misreads, can’t translate. ‘I don’t work in bloody international finance. I can wear shorts and a bikini top to the office if I feel like it.’
Carlos blows you a kiss from the bathroom door.
When he’s gone, you run a hot bath and lie there with your eyes shut until the water turns tepid. Carlos exhausts you. You’ve never had such ferocious, athletic sex before. Each time you see each other, it’s a round in a boxing match: brief and intense. Your tongue is tired. Your stomach muscles hurt. Everything—eyes, teeth, fingernails—feels gritty; except the pulverised stickiness between your legs.
Every week, Carlos and his wife go to see the therapist. You thought that Valeria was back in the city just to pack her things: she must have a lot of things. Carlos still talks about separating, and perhaps, in his head, he and Valeria have separated. But most of the time—when he’s not with you—his body is still married and living on 71st Street.
*
You discover that Carlos’s apartment is not only on 71st Street: it’s just off Fifth Avenue. The only person you know who lives that close to the park is Mitchell, and he lives on the West Side.
He calls you with good news: his wife is going back to Mexico City on Thursday, and he wants you to come over and see his place. There’s bad news as well. She’s only going away for the weekend, and he’s going too, on Friday. They have family to see, talks to conduct. Nothing good can come of this trip, you decide. In your imagination, the eight hundred wedding guests are lined up outside his parents’ stucco mansion, waiting to knock some sense into Carlos’s head. They gave gifts; they saw fireworks; they are Catholic. Like Rico, they will disapprove of a relationship with another woman. They will not hear of a separation.
The building on 71st Street looks as though it used to be some kind of grand residence or embassy. The floor in the lobby is marble; the curving staircase is ostentatiously wide. Carlos’s apartment isn’t especially big or especially light, but there’s a subdued elegance to it. Everything’s muted: books, paintings, furniture. The only strong colour is the green of the park, visible through the bay window in the living room.
After you and Carlos make love—which you do almost immediately, because you can’t waste a second of this night sitting on the sofa or chatting in the kitchen—you lie twisted together in bed, singing snatches of old standards. Carlos seems excited that you know so many old songs. When he sings ‘If I Loved You’, you tell him he looks like Gordon MacRae. He’s very pleased by this, smacking little-boy kisses all over your face.
He’s not looking torward to going to Mexico City in the morning. The trip is Valeria’s idea.
‘She says she hates it here,’ he says. ‘She says we were happier at home.’
He worries about tell-tale stains on the pale green bed linen, but when you suggest he change the sheets, he shakes his head.
That would make her suspicious,’ he says. ‘She would see the sheets in the laundry hamper and ask questions.’
‘Why don’t you just wash the sheets yourself?’
‘I would never wash sheets. It would never enter my head that sheets need washing. She knows that. The housekeeper comes once a week—she washes the sheets.’
‘Well, what day does the housekeeper come?’
Carlos has no idea.
You step into the small bathroom off the bedroom and close the door. The room looks bare, as though it’s been stripped of all its soaps and bottles and lotions. But drooped over the towel rail is a silky, mushroom-coloured bra. Valeria’s bra.
Smaller and flimsier than anything you would wear, it’s as transfixing as a giant billboard on the side of a highway. I still live here, it shrieks. This is my home. Whether she intended to or not, Valeria has marked her territory. When you draw one finger down the skinny strap, you see her as a real person for the first time. She’s small, you decide, as delicate and wispy as her mushroom-coloured bra. She’s dark-haired and petite, gentle in her gestures. She has slender, expressive hands.
Maybe she looks slightly nervous or worried, which wouldn’t be surprising: her husband has persuaded her to move to New York, and she doesn’t like it here. He won’t agree to have children; he tells her he wants to separate. She begs him to go to a marriage counsellor and even though he agrees, he’s reluctant. Four years after their huge, expensive wedding, he thinks that trying to save their marriage is a waste of time.
She doesn’t even know the worst of it: that there’s another woman in their home, having sex with her husband. A stranger standing naked in her bathroom, stroking her silky, mushroom-coloured bra.
You tell Carlos that you don’t want to stay the night, that you have a big meeting first thing tomorrow. He doesn’t seem to mind; he has to get up at five to catch his flight to Mexico City. You both need some sleep. You’ve worn each other out.
Mitchell announces that he’s tired of being out of the office all the time, because he’s getting nervous about the way all the haters conspire against him every time he’s out of town. It’s not his fault that business is bad; it’s the fault of the business, he says, and the businessmen who run it have to work out a way to fix this mess. He’s just a records guy from way back, he says. He used to be the hottest DJ in the city. This is true: everyone in the London office used to talk about him as though he was some kind of god. But even a minor deity can’t make people go into record stores, or stop them from downloading things for free.
You have to pick up some of the slack, he tells you. This means you have to go to Vancouver and Los Angeles. Mitchell only gets tired of travelling when it doesn’t involve Europe or Bangkok.
In Los Angeles, at the House of Blues, you meet up with Rico. You’re both there to hear a Mexican ska band, and afterwards you go backstage together to tell the band they were great. The band members are sweaty teenage boys, slouching in armchairs. They struggle up to shake your hand. They can tell by the way their manager is behaving—jumpy, almost panting—that they need to make a good impression.
Rico comes back to your hotel and the two of you sit outside by the pool. Los Angeles is all around you, sparkling and stretching. In New York it’s beginning to feel like fall, but here it’s still warm, the way it was the night at El Teddy’s.
You both order vodka martinis. Rico shows you pictures of his two children. You tell him you’re in love with Carlos.
‘No,’ he groans. ‘No, no, no. It’s just an affair.’
‘A love affair.’ You want this to sound better, and it would sound better, you know, if Carlos were here, and it was some other era. The 1950s, perhaps.
‘You have to stop.’
‘I agree.’ You don’t know why you’re saying this. Perhaps you want it to be true; perhaps you just want Rico to like you again. ‘I think we should stop seeing each other for a while. We can start again—you know, when he and his wife separate.’
‘If,’ says Rico. He lights a cigarette and flicks the match onto the ground. ‘Look, forget Carlos. He’s no good for you.’
‘You don’t really believe that.’ You roll your eyes. ‘He’s your friend.’
‘That’s right. I know him better than anyone, so you should listen to me. He’s a fool.’
‘And I’m a fool, too. I miss him terribly.’
‘Don’t miss him,’ he says. �
��Forget him. He’s a fool and he’s a Mexican.’
‘What’s wrong with being a Mexican? You’re a Mexican.’
‘Listen to me.’ Rico shakes his head. ‘You know what Mexicans are like? Mexicans work in McDonald’s.’
You choke back a laugh and inhale a mouthful of vodka. ‘I’m serious. Every time you think you miss Carlos, remember that. He’s a Mexican. Mexicans work at McDonald’s. Mexicans bus tables at restaurants. Mexicans clean hotel rooms. Mexicans sell oranges on the street. Keep away from them.’
‘You’re ridiculous.’
‘Listen to what I’m telling you. You don’t want to fall in love with a Mexican.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re not from here. You don’t understand. He’s not for you.’
‘Whatever you say.’ Rico is right: you don’t understand. But you both clink glasses, drinking to not falling in love with Mexicans. It’s too late, of course. You have fallen in love with a Mexican. The weekend Carlos spent in Mexico City, you were miserable. The day you flew to Los Angeles, you had your first argument with him, over the phone. You told him you were tired of all the sneaking around. You said you were tired of waking up in bed alone. He told you he loved you, and then you were both quiet for a long time.
The day after you return from LA, you get sick. You feel too miserable to leave the house. Carlos is desperate to see you, he says, so after work he comes down to Chelsea, to your apartment.
You answer the door wearing your robe, a flaking tissue pressed to your nose. Carlos is standing in the hallway looking boyish and concerned, clutching a towering bunch of red and pink roses.
Everything’s overwhelming: the flowers, the sight of him, the aching in your joints. You leave the roses to soak in the kitchen sink and go back to bed. He strips off, climbs into bed alongside you. Propped against the ridged board of his body, you’re not too weak for sex. The two of you stick together with sweat and saliva.
You don’t talk about your conversation with Rico in Los Angeles. Carlos is as ardent and desperate as ever. He tells you how much he loves you, right before he glances at the clock on the nightstand and says he has to go. Valeria has invited people over to dinner, and he’s going to be late.
His visit lasts barely over an hour.
The roses are beautiful. Their stems are two feet long. Nobody’s ever given you this many roses before, not even Mitchell. He sent you two dozen after you procured a prostitute for Big Daddy Vat the conference in Rome. Really, it was the concierge who got the prostitute, but you deserved the roses: Big Daddy V kept following you around for the rest of the conference, wanting you to find out if he could get AIDS from a blow job.
When Carlos’s roses begin to wither you pluck off a few handfuls of petals and save them in a glass dish. You don’t like pot pourri, but you’re reluctant to let these roses go.
*
Carlos asks to meet you at the Oak Bar for a drink after work. You both have other places to go tonight, so you’re drinking quickly, hurrying through the vodka and the conversation.
He says you have to stop seeing each other for a while. Rico and his therapist are badgering him. He has to give his marriage another chance. He has to make an effort.
‘I really have to,’ he says, moving coasters around the table with one finger. ‘I don’t want to, but I have to try.’
You nod, as though you were expecting this. You don’t allow your face to crumple. You don’t throw your drink in his face. In truth, you are not surprised. The separation was taking too long. It needed to be quick and brutal, like hot wax stripping away hair. Maybe you should have refused to sleep with him, the way Anne Boleyn strung along Henry VIII. But how could you say no? Not after that kiss in the Plaza doorway, the one that melted your brain away to nothing. Now you’re back at the Plaza—on the inside now; in a bar where no kissing will take place.
Carlos has a story to tell you. Ten years ago he was seeing a girl called Julieta. They’d been going out together for years. Her family knew his family, and everyone thought they’d get married. But Julieta was killed in a car accident. He didn’t hear the news for almost two days, because nobody could find him. He was away, on the Pacific coast, with another woman.
‘Everyone found out about it. Everyone knew,’ he says. ‘They were all angry with me. They were trying to arrange the funeral, but they couldn’t find me. I didn’t have a cell phone, and I hadn’t told anyone where we were going. My maid let Rico into my apartment, and he found some notes I’d made about places in Puerto Vallarta. He managed to track me down and tell me what had happened.’
Valeria, he explains, was Julieta’s best friend.
‘She was more angry than anyone else,’ he says. ‘She didn’t want to forgive me. But eventually, we became friends again. And then we became more than friends. I think she felt sorry for me, in a way. Nobody could forget this bad thing I’d done. Nobody would forgive me.’
‘And that’s why you got married?’
‘People expected it. Our families, I mean. And I was getting older; it was time. We were good together, good friends. I thought I’d grown out of all this. Being in love. Passion. Romance.’ The word ‘romance’ rolls out, sweet and unironic. He gives you a rueful smile.
‘Is that what it means to grow up? Giving up passion and romance?’
‘I don’t know.’ He peers into his glass, tilting the dregs from left to right. ‘I thought I’d settled down. Become a man, not Master Carlitos any more. But instead I feel guilty about Julieta and guilty about Valeria and guilty about you ….’
‘Don’t feel guilty about me.’ You’re number three now; you realise, in the line of wounded women. The first one died, the second one was betrayed by her husband. You can’t compete with them. You’re in bronze-medal position, a distant third—tied, perhaps, with the girl on his dirty weekend in Puerto Vallarta.
‘I feel guilty all the time. There’s something wrong with me—I’m not happy being married, and I’m not happy being in love. She’s not happy, I’m not happy, you’re not happy.’
‘You’ve made me happy,’ you tell him; your voice is shrill with sadness, disappointment. He leans forwards and grips your hands between his.
‘Tell me you’ll wait,’ he says. ‘I want to have children with you. Tell me you won’t have children with anyone else. Promise me.’
It’s a ridiculous thing to promise, but he won’t let you leave until you do. You’re both crying when you make the promise. In the street, you kiss him, climb into a cab; you’re already late for the showcase at CBGB tonight, and then you have to make it to Don Hill’s by nine. As the cab jerks away, you twist your head to stare through the streaky back window at Carlos. He’s standing there, watching you go, his eyes as dark as the evening. Even when you can’t see him or the Plaza anymore, you’re still looking, trying to fix the moment in your mind.
Several times over the next week, late at night, you call Carlos’s office number just to hear the sound of his voice. You cry and mope. You sniff the pot pourri. You even write a bad poem, one with lines like ‘streets littered with oblivious kisses’ and ‘a summer scored with goodbyes’, and tuck it into The Rough Guide to Mexico: this you buy to torment yourself, and because you want to see Puerto Vallarta on a map. A month later, Veronica Clark tells you she’s going to Tulum over Thanksgiving and you present her with the book—the poem removed, shredded, and flushed down the toilet.
The fall and winter trudge by. Your life returns to normal: emails and meetings, drinking, picking up the dry-cleaning. Carlos doesn’t get in touch and you stop calling his voicemail at night. You try to avoid anything to do with Mexico, but Mexico is everywhere. Travel ads in magazines, Once Upon a Time in Mexico at the video store. A new Mexican restaurant in the East Village. An article in the Times Magazine about sex trafficking across the border. Bottles of tequila and Mexican flags everywhere you look. Mexicans working in McDonald’s, Mexicans busing tables at restaurants.
Early in the n
ew year, work changes. Rico argues with his boss and leaves the company. Mitchell gets fired. For months, you discover, he’s been carrying on an S&M relationship at the office—that is, in his office and on the conference room table—with his boss’s executive assistant. This isn’t why he’s fired: it’s because she complained to HR that he was harassing her, refusing to accept the end of their relationship. Mitchell tells you it’s because he earns way too much. He says you have to get out of the business while you’re still young enough to change careers. He’s going to sell his apartment and move to Berlin and do something that involves art and smoking.
You decide to take his advice and go back to London, where you can work for a friend who’s a concert promoter. You’re tired of the record business and you’re tired of New York. In London, there are almost no Mexicans. All the lowpaid restaurant workers are European teenagers who need money for nightclubbing and drugs.
The Friday night before you leave the States, you’re up late packing the last few boxes. You’re still padding around the apartment, brushing your teeth and looking for a magazine to read in bed, when the telephone rings. It’s Carlos.
He says your name, and he sounds breathless, a little upset. You pull the toothbrush from your mouth.
‘I just wanted to know that you’re all right,’ he says.
‘I’m all right.’ A rope of anxiety coils in your belly. You feel sick, excited.
‘I just wanted to know.’
‘I’m moving back to London.’ You speak quickly, sensing that he’s about to hang up. ‘Next week.’
‘Good, good.’
‘And you’re all right?’ You want him to keep talking. You want to hear his voice. You want to hear his breathing, heavy and steady, at the other end of the line. He sounds like he’s been drinking.
‘Me? Yes. You’re moving back to London, we’re moving back to Mexico City.’
‘Oh.’ A glob of toothpaste drips from your mouth, and you rub it into the rug with your toe. You’re leaving the rug here. You may roll it up and leave it on the street corner for someone to take. When you carried out a box of coat hangers and the broken DVD player, they’d disappeared by the morning.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 133