by Carmen Rita
“Hola, chiquitita.” Cat leaned upward for a peck on the cheek.
“Ay, woman.” Sofia dropped her bags near Cat on her bench, then plopped herself down on her chair with un-self-conscious force. “Whew!”
They smiled at each other.
“Thank you so, so, sooo much for meeting me,” Sofia said.
“Of course, hon—”
“Here you go, a clean margarita.” The server set down Cat’s drink, sweaty already with condensation and possibly from being so near the amazing breasts of the woman serving them. Both women’s eyes went wide at the drink, and the twin mountains in their faces.
“Okay, well, I gotta have me one o’ dose!” A native of New Jersey, Sofia slipped into urban patois fluidly.
Cat raised her brows. Gracias a Dios she’s drinking with me.
“Sure, and, ladies, let me know if you want me to bring you any chips, mm-kay?”
“Oh yes, chips por favor.” Sofia waited until she was out of earshot to say, “Man, did you see that rack on her? Amazing.”
“Ah, to be young.”
“I’m not that old, and mine don’t look like that.”
“True, true,” Cat agreed.
“Though my sister’s got an awesome set o’ tetas. Man, they’re like gravity-defying boobs, and her waist . . .” Sofia rolled her eyes.
“Oh, girl, tetas are overrated. Trust me, when you get older, your sister will be envying you.”
“These things?” Sofia pulled her jacket open to reveal maybe B-size breasts held up by a snug tank.
“Hey! I got the same and I’m so glad.”
“Right, because otherwise, clothes don’t fit.”
“Exactamundo.”
The server was back. Sofia and Cat made eye contact over her breasts as she leaned down to serve the other margarita and some chips. Both smiled and raised a brow at their shared wonder and appreciation. They ordered some appetizers and refocused.
“So, first of all, thank you so so much for being here,” Sofia gushed.
“Oh no, no, you’re welcome, of course.”
Sofia fawned and Cat self-deprecated. They both ate and drank heartily, particularly for women on television—Cat still getting called in for pilots and tests. Both wore a size six and bonded over being told by producers to lose ten pounds—size two or four was much more preferred in their very blanco business. The women ended up swearing allegiance and toasting to their ample asses and the joy of keeping those friendly pounds on. Cultural solidarity—fight the white patriarchy with plump, Latin behinds. After two margaritas each they were toasty.
“Okay, so let me just tell you . . .” Sofia was slurring a bit as she reached out to hold Cat’s arm across the table. “Let me just tell you how much it meant to me to see your face on television.”
“Aww.” Cat was taken by surprise.
“No, really, I gotta tell you.”
“Okay.” Cat perked up to show Sofia she was paying sincere attention.
“I didn’t think there was a place for us out there, in that space, ya know? And just, and just, seeing you and that you were—I mean are—a proud and loud Latina and just owning it, ya know?”
“Thanks.” Cat meant it. She was flattered, but at the same time she was ambivalent. She was grateful, particularly as she grew up and then came up in the business, that there had been no one who looked like her, only “secret” ones like Linda Carter and Raquel Welch. But she also felt a huge chasm between herself and this maybe-ten-years-younger (or maybe twelve) woman who was of a different generation. She felt beyond her sell-by date. Outdated. Both feelings sat inside her. The margaritas made it a bit better, but also bitter. And then Sofia started crying.
“Cat, I mean it. You are the reason I do what I do. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t seen you . . . just know that, okay? Just know that.”
“Ay, hon. Thank you. I mean it. Thanks.” Cat now felt honored. And yet, still, beyond her expiration date. She felt her own eyes well up, but it wasn’t out of pride or empathy. It was that she felt she had let down this fellow Latina whom she’d inspired by not keeping her show. By getting canceled. By realizing that this wasn’t really what she wanted to do. That maybe she had been a fraud, an imposter. Well, she did want to do it—have her own show—but she also dreaded doing it again. How could she stop, though, when she had to be out there helping more women, representing the people who most folks thought only cleaned their houses, answered phones, and handed them their burger and fries.
Sofia and Cat then spent the next twenty minutes playing Did-You-Know-Blank-Is-Latino? From there they moved quickly to which-macho-did-your-mother-have-a-crush-on? Then on to the history of their families and why Cousin Tito has so many moles.
Knowing it was late, Cat secretly hoped that Sofia wouldn’t want to go yet. It had been forever since Cat had been out this late, and they had great rapport. But Cat also didn’t want to seem like a loser with no one to go home to and no job to wake up to in the morning.
“Listen, mama,” Sofia said. “I have, like, a late call-in tomorrow, so, wanna do one more drink downstairs, at the bar?”
“Love that.” Cat hadn’t felt this tingle of possibility in much too long. Maybe she’d actually meet someone, a man to fulfill that last to-do on her list: having a family. That made her nervous. But it was the same good nervous that fluttered in her belly before the control room said “Go!” in her ear for live TV. Cat was jazzed—if buzzed—to her fingertips.
Two hours later, the restaurant was far from the empty, hollow place Cat had walked into. Here was the hustle and noise that she had reveled in years ago. Those nights of hers that ran late into the sun rising in the morning. Nights that Cat danced on tables, smoked hand-rolled substances, and put her tongue in many mouths. But that was when she was right out of college, frustrated at how slowly her life was moving and stunted by work that limited her ability to shine as brightly as she wanted to. Once she turned onto the television track, Cat was waking up at the time she used to come home after a night out. Many times, she’d be in a cab flowing freely up and around the city streets at four in the morning on her way to the studio, and she’d take in the few people they’d pass. They were split between two groups: those who were heading to where they made their living, like Cat, and those stumbling home after a night of adventure. To Cat those nights hadn’t always been good, but they were her own adventures. She would gaze at those late-to-bedders with nostalgia. The little beast inside her that was not so tightly wound saw them as familiars, friends in kind. But the hardworking, don’t-stop-’til-you-get-to-the-top spirit would whisper, “Oh no, Cat. Those days are gone for a reason. Thank the Lord they are behind you.”
“The same, please.” Cat signaled for two more drinks, feeling oddly puffed up with the confidence that alcohol gives. Also, Sofia’s time with her had made Cat feel appreciated, important, a trailblazer. So unlike how the media world made her feel, especially her former bosses and the producers she’d work with here and there. Their job was to make you feel as small as possible, until they really needed you. Then they crowned you queen of the world. Until the next up took your throne. But those days seemed over. Might as well suck these drinks and this night down while she could.
“Cat—this is Tom.” Sofia practically had to yell due to the noise. In the brief time it had taken Cat to get the bartender’s attention, Sofia had managed to turn on her bar stool and signal with her body an open invitation to surrounding men. In thirty seconds she’d met two. She pulled a young man toward Cat, parting the crush of bodies now behind their bar stools. Tom was a six-foot, cacao-colored young man, all shoulders and smile. His nubby sweater hinted at brains. Cat gulped. Yum.
“Oh, hi, Tom,” she said, and held out her hand formally.
He ignored it, instead gently taking her extended arm to draw her closer and give her a peck on the cheek.
“Oh!”
“Sorry—” Tom politely drew back a bit, showing his palm i
n supplication.
“No, no, it’s okay.” Cat blushed and waved her reaction away. Silly her. He was gorgeous. And young, maybe late twenties. When was the last time a man had kissed her cheek who wasn’t a cousin saying hola?
“So, Cat, Tom is friends with Clark here,” said Sofia.
“Hi, Clark.” This one was just getting a handshake. Handsome in a hipster Kennedy way, Clark didn’t seem as naturally warm to her as did his buddy. Cat had a knack for reading people quickly and accurately.
“My buddy givin’ you a hard time?” Clark feigned concern, but to Cat it rang of “Sorry, ma’am.” Tom was relaxed but blushing. He’d already moved his body to Cat’s right, angling himself sideways into the bar to lean and close the distance between them. She noted this gesture and felt warm. He’d settled in already.
“Nah, not at all. It’s how we roll,” replied Cat.
“We? What’s ‘we’?” asked Clark.
“Mexicana.”
“Ah! Me too. Dominican,” Tom said with authentic pride. An accent wasn’t there, so Cat assumed second generation, just like her.
“No me digas?” She drew her free hand up to her chest, eyes wide.
“Si, de veras.”
They smiled at each other and locked eyes.
Tom followed up quickly with, “But don’t go farther than that with me in Spanish porque mi espanol stinks!”
Cat chuckled. “Deal!” She raised her hand for an urban-hand-slap-shake. Tom smoothly joined in. They even sealed the deal with an awkward fist pump. It was a nerd meeting. Tom may have been several years younger than Cat, but that only made her more brazen.
Sofia and Clark were tight in conversation while Cat and Tom turned to bonding on their shared experiences of other Latinos finding them not Latin enough. For him, it was his skin color and his mother’s side of the family practically disowning her for marrying a darker man. For Cat, it was her talking “white” and the people who still couldn’t believe that she could do what she did because, shouldn’t she be cleaning floors?
“Wait—what do you do?” he asked.
“Oh, um.” He hadn’t recognized her, though a couple of folks at the bar had given knowing smiles. She felt the familiar female urge to downplay herself. “I do TV.”
“TV? Like what TV? Producing?” The usual assumption of folks who didn’t watch television.
“Nope.” Cat chewed on an ice cube from her now-empty glass number four. “On air.”
“Wait, you’re, like, on TV?”
“Yup,” she said with a pursed-lip smile.
“Wow, okay, that is so cool!”
Cat’s cheeks warmed. “Well, ya—I mean, I guess,” spilled out.
“So, like, where can I see you?”
Her stomach dropped. “I . . . don’t have my show anymore.”
“Aw. Sorry about that.” Tom signaled the bartender for a fresh margarita for them both. Cat noted his pity fixer-upper. Was that nice, or was he just trying to totally get her drunk? But she already was drunk. Very.
“No, no, no . . . It’s all good. Ya know. Just doing some pilots now and figuring out what’s next.”
Tom slowly allowed a smooth grin to cross his face. His eyes twinkled with mischievousness.
“Okay, I just have to see this right now.” He started scrolling and typing on his phone.
“Aw, man!” She remained playful as he Googled her.
“Nope! Gotta do this.” Two seconds later, he peered intently at his screen, looked at Cat, who was not in full studio makeup and hair, though not bare-faced, then back at his screen and back at the woman next to him. “Wow. That is so cool.”
“Okay, okay. Moving on!” Cat waved her hand around as if swatting a mosquito. She turned cool. Tom noticed. He carefully nestled his phone back into his front pocket and seemed to resolve silently not to look at it again.
“Moving on,” he agreed. “So, what’s next for you?”
“I don’t know.” Their glasses were set down, sweaty and cold. Cat knew she should have stopped a drink ago, but where did she have to be? “It seems like TV news is dying, and it wasn’t the best fit anyway.”
“For you or for them?”
“For me, I think. I just need to cover something else . . . or, do something else.”
“Well, from what I saw, you seem great at it. Would be a waste to not have you on a screen somehow.”
Cat thought he was being aggressively flirtatious, but when she looked at his face, all she saw was a kind smile.
“Yeah, well, do you watch TV?”
“You mean, like news?”
“Sure—or just TV in general.”
“I don’t own a TV.”
Cat groaned and dropped her head in defeat. “That’s what I mean! Caramba.”
“I do have other screens. It’s not like I never watch videos, it’s just not on a television.” Tom drew out the word television as if it were a relic.
It was a relic, Cat thought.
“The tele-vi-sion,” she mimicked him gently. “Okay. Since you’re the future of media consumption, what do you think is happening . . . like, now.” The buzz in her head was getting louder and she couldn’t necessarily feel her lips or tongue anymore.
“Well, I’m a quant guy—”
“Wait, you’re a data dude?”
“A ‘data dude’? Well, if you put it that way, yes.”
Cat’s reporting on high-frequency trading and data engineering had just come in handy.
“But I’m not like a hedge-fund dude. I’m with a start-up incubator.”
“Thank God for that.” Cat was not fond of the numbers guys she reported on whose work was to just figure out ways to make money off exploiting trading gaps or market fluctuations. They didn’t make anything, just took what slipped from folks’ fingers or what passed someone by.
“Clark’s the Wall Street guy. I’m just tryin’ to hang to find out what we can work on together.”
Cat nodded. She was starting to hit a wall.
Tom noticed and picked up the pace. “Why not get yourself into one of those new online networks over at the big search guys?”
They talked shop for another half hour, as the bar stayed tight and crowded, bodies started to sweat, and Sofia was ready to call it a night.
“Hon, I love you—looooove you,” Sofia drawled as she took Cat’s hands in hers and gave her an encompassing embrace and sloppy cheek kiss.
“Love you too, chica.” Cat noticed over her shoulder that Clark had disappeared. “Wait—where’s the dude?”
“Oh, he’s out. It’s fine, fine.” Sofia slung her purse over her shoulder. Cat noticed how young and disheveled she looked in the moment.
“But, you gonna take a cab?”
“Oh yeah, yeah . . . Ciao, Tom,” Sofia slurred and hugged him as well.
Cat was concerned, not that her protégée couldn’t make it home, but about the situation that she herself was in right now—still in the bar, drunk, with a very attractive, much younger black man. Her mother would drop dead. Hmm.
“Okay, linda.” Cat smiled sweetly. “Thanks for hanging out.”
“No, no, no.” Sofia geared herself up with each no. “Thank you, mama.” She came closer again, placing a hand on Cat’s thigh to steady herself. “You are the best and you are the reason I do what I do, okay? Don’t forget it.” Cat was being lectured on self-esteem by a twenty-something. She both loved and hated this girl for it.
“I won’t. And, thank you.”
“Mmmwah!” Sofia threw Cat a loud hand kiss. She still wasn’t smiling—she was the warmest unsmiley person Cat had ever seen—but Cat sensed that Sofia knew she’d given her a gift tonight. She’d let Cat hang loose. Filled her with compliments. Shed tears. Left her with a whole lotta man.
“She’s wonderful,” Cat mumbled.
Tom smiled. “Wanna continue our chat about your taking over the world at another spot?” He certainly had pizzazz.
“Yes.” Cat signaled to cl
ose out her tab.
“No, no.” Tom handed the bartender his own card.
“You bugger.”
“C’mon now . . .” He winked as he signed the receipts.
“In that case, I’ve got even better tequila at my place.” Tonight, Cat felt her inner beast was winning.
Tom raised his strong brow.
Cat doubled down: “Maybe we should go there?”
“Yes.” He closed his wallet with gusto. “Let’s.”
As he let Cat take his thick arm, which he bent like the gent he seemed to be, Cat thought: My mother would just die right now. Die. Actually, everyone would freak out. Anybody seeing me leave? She scanned the room on their way out. Nope. And so what if they did. She needed this.
Cat and Tom had barely made it through the door before his arms, like steel girders, gently encircled her and she responded with pent-up lusty fury. Cat’s clothes shed in record time while Tom did his best to be gentlemanly, and happily match his host’s desire. It wasn’t work on his part so much as their passion surprised him—Cat nearly blinded by her needs, it would take longer for her to feel surprise.
A few hours later, Cat awoke nude and, from the waist down, feeling an accomplishment that she’d waited far too long in her life for. But that fallback feeling dropped away for awe. She was amazed at what she’d just done. What she’d just felt. It tasted like freedom. It tasted real and alive and awake. Wow.
Of course, from the neck up, what she was feeling was pain. Six margaritas’ worth of pain. Her previous max was maybe two. As she fumbled for her robe to get her to her goal of pain relievers and water in the kitchen, she looked at the mound of man in her bed. Hills and valleys of dark muscle. Undeniably beautiful. Thank you, Jesus.
Chapter 17
“Hon, I really miss you.” Gabi broke the sound of her and her husband’s typing and sniffed. They sat across the room from each other at home as they had for years now, each at their computer, working. Or, at least Gabi was working. “Let’s just go out, you and me—” She noticed what looked like a flash of alarm run across her husband’s face. They had a sitter lined up that night, which was rare, to cover for an engagement party thrown by new friends. Though Gabi noted to herself that the woman was the kind of friend who would be pissed at her bailing on the engagement party for her future marriage to save her own, current marriage. The situation between her and Bert felt too urgent to Gabi. For whom the bell tolls. It tolls for me.