She stilled to look at him. Wickedness beclouded her face.
“Let’s go to the bedroom.” Her voice trickled like thick caramel, then her gaze. “I want to see what you’ve prepared for me.”
He winced, waking up to reality with a shock, resisting the urge to retreat. Marco straightened his clothes with an absent air while his lover stood up, every inch female, and pulled him by the hand. She was flushed, hair in disarray, her half-naked body undulating in feline fluidity.
Like a sleepwalker, Marco allowed her to drag him to the bedroom, where a candle burned on the nightstand commanding the shadows. Above the bed, the reds on the painting shifted to golds and maroons at the whim of the flame. A thick black outline emphasized the furniture and objects, and in the antique mirror the forms gained depth as if the carved frame gave passage to another place.
She hesitated at the door, her eyes darting here and there in search of a clue, taking the time to inspect the furniture and the darkness in the corners. When she realized there was nothing in sight to satiate her curiosity, she turned to Marco with an interrogative expression.
“Where is it?” She smiled, increasingly puzzled.
For an instant, the breeze made the room flicker in a dance of shadows and yellow rays. Then everything froze again in the stagnated air.
Marco smiled uncertainly in return.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to do normal things? There you are. Tonight we’re not using anything, nor following a script.”
“What do you mean?” Disconcerted, she leaned against the door frame.
He felt cornered by the intensity of her gaze. He knew she liked to experience different things. Well, compared to what the two of them usually did, that was different.
“Tonight it’s just you and me,” he said. “No accessories. No masks.”
She remained silent. On her face flickered a range of emotions: astonishment, incredulity, finally disappointment. She could sense she was losing him. He had become increasingly apathetic and withdrawn. She wanted Marco, his body, his smile, his words, even those she couldn’t understand. For at his side she discovered herself. So she made a point in looking pretty for him. When she seduced him, it was a small victory in a battle that seemed already lost. More and more often, she had the feeling he didn’t see her. Not even the game, the only thing that still moved him, would entice Marco as before. Her heart trembled. His indifference had entered the bedroom. The last stop.
Marco read the disappointment on her face and wondered at which point she had become a discomfort. He didn’t know the answer. It had been like a draft sneaking through a crack in the window, then one day the house dawned cold. The thread uniting them wove together her desire and his pain. And her want gave him the measure of his own emptiness. It was unsettling. It was Mars with its harsh fire in the black sky. Despite the differences emerging between them, Marco thought it might work. He wanted it to work. He owed it to himself and to her: a chance. He had already relinquished too many things, and it was time to yank off that crust from his body.
New skin.
At that thought, Marco felt strangely calm. He believed it was a sign he’d be closer to her. He didn’t know in truth he had already distanced himself and severed the bond.
“Come with me,” he said, leading her to the bed.
The two rolled over the velvety spread and he covered her body with his. Their scent mingled with the lavender fragrance from the candle, their erratic breathing filled the absence of words. The caresses reinitiated, legs intertwined, lips united with renewed eagerness. They finished undressing and Marco sought her sex with his mouth. He laid a path of kisses that made her squirm, moaning ever so loudly.
All of a sudden, she forced him to stop.
“I want you inside me…”
She wriggled, lying on her stomach.
“Not like this,” he murmured as he grasped her hips.
She acceded mutely. Lifting herself, she placed her flattened hands and knees on the mattress. Then waited. Marco, however, held her by the waist and turned her around. They faced each other.
She chuckled.
“Is this really what you want, Marco?”
“Don’t you like it?”
He licked her neck, sliding the tip of his tongue down the cleft between the pale breasts and up again. When his eyes reached her face, they gleamed like a pair of obsidians. Dark, lustrous. It didn’t take much to convince her. She parted her legs, ready to receive him.
Marisa once said the present was what mattered, thought Marco. True. But now he was looking back. And, as soon as he positioned himself, he lost momentum. His concentration faltered. The energy escaped his body as if a dam gate had suddenly been opened. Emptied of everything, he was left with frustration and embarrassment.
Marco rolled to the side.
“I’m sorry, Mari…”
She sat up brusquely, her eyes flashing a spark of indignation.
“Mari? Who’s Mari?”
Marco closed his eyes. He felt drained, emptier than ever.
“I think you better get dressed, Camila.”
PART 3
Red:
Black and White Converge
One week later
Winter, July
1. Turning the Page
The Wheel of Fortune is shaking off some rust again. After a joyless summer and the disquiet of autumn, winter’s blank page unfolds. It’s July, time for vacation and for airing the house within and without. The wheel spins. The wheel spins spinning life. What’s up goes down. What’s down goes up.
For the first time in several months, Marisa felt optimistic about the future. When Doctor Spitzer declared her love for Marco was nothing more than a hormone cocktail, Marisa had doubts. She thought she would never get over Marco because he was perfect. Gradually, though, she realized her pain resulted not only from the loss of a real man, but above all from the loss of an idealization she had made of him.
If there was a devastating feeling, it was disappointment. Hers surpassed words. From the start, Marisa had admired Marco’s strength and integrity. But faced with the first obstacle, he proved himself weak and cowardly, turning his back to her when she needed him. He set a meeting at a downtown bar after her quarrel with her mom. An impersonal, noisy bar. He said beautiful words but had already distanced himself. Obviously Marco never intended to patch up the situation with her mother. His unexpected indifference toward her could only mean one thing: his feelings were fleeting. It was even possible he already had another relationship going on. With the nonchalance of someone changing clothes. With the disdain of someone who had never really cared for her. And that hurt the most.
What is like opening up to another person? Open up your heart and your body, dreams and thoughts. Dedicate time and energy, and the best part of yourself, the most generous, the most understanding, the most affectionate. And then hear one day: I’ve never loved you, it was a mistake. He didn’t say it with words, but the message was clear. The cliché. It’s not you, it’s me. What Marco meant was not that he wasn’t right for her. He meant she wasn’t right for him. She and her young age, her inexperience, her crazy mother. Probably Marco concluded it would be easier to find another woman and get on with life without that pile of trouble. Why take unnecessary risks? He was handsome, intelligent, successful, and could have anyone he wanted. She didn’t meet the expectations.
Marisa pictured him with a new girlfriend: a beautiful, well-dressed woman with an impressive career. She would live in her own penthouse, and in her brain would live an entire library to delight Marco. He would smile to her as the two enjoyed a candlelight dinner and admired the view from the penthouse. Then they would go to bed…
Those thoughts haunted Marisa, robbed her of sleep and appetite. She spent the summer on the beach, enveloped in her gloominess under the sun without really being there, fa
r too engrossed in her own wound. One night, unable to sleep, she went for a walk.
In the serene landscape flowed a canal with grassy banks. A frog croaked. On this side a path and a lamppost surrounded by moths in a ring o’ roses game. On the other, the back of a warehouse, its roof with two slanted panes pointed to the sky, and between them a white light that emitted star rays and drew in the dark water a specter made of shining dots. The specter danced.
Marisa reached the beach and strolled for hours by the water, listening to the velvety whisper of the sand under her footsteps, until the sea reflected the sky. She sat on a trunk and watched the world wake up: dew painted the houses, trees stretched out their branches, and creepers knitted lace on the sand. The sleepy azure was streaked by herons and brown bobby birds on their way for fishing. Whitecaps sprayed perfume in the air. Watching the sun cast its golden net on the waters, Marisa saw beauty until then ignored. Saw it within and without. Heard it within and without.
That was when she took a deep breath and let the sorrow flow without clinging to it any longer, for sorrow was a rock that dragged the soul to the bottom of the sea. And without resisting it either—accepting and facing it without fear. Sorrow thus flowed, it flowed out of her like a cloudy river clearing up as it followed its course. And, when she least expected, the last cloudy drop drained and Marco finally occupied his place in the past.
The day broke. In the ocean foam, Cocteau Twins’ verses twisted and untwisted and dispersed. A Kissed Out Red Floatboat. Want, indifference, love, hurt. The words diluted in the foam. Marisa no longer needed to conjure a prince charming to complete her.
The prince was inside her.
The prince was her.
The learning now would continue along other paths.
That was all. Everything was fine.
Follow your own self and the rest will follow.
When she returned to the city, the journalism course at college and new friends provided a welcomed change to routine. Life regained color. The situation at home, in the meantime, had greatly improved too. Marisa’s mother, already adapted to widowhood, was visiting relatives and getting together with her lady friends. The apartment became airy, and in the fluttering of the curtains there were no more shadows.
The Wheel of Fortune spun faster, faster…
One day her mother broke the news: an irresistible bargain, an intensive program. And she registered Marisa in a summer course in Miami for perfecting her English during two weeks. Unable to refrain herself, she persuaded Valentina’s mother to register her own daughter too (Ms. Adélia’s dislike had shifted to unconditional approval since Valentina helped her during Marisa’s nervous breakdown).
Valentina was studying sociology and, as they went to different colleges, the two saw each other less often. Still, they talked on the phone every day. Lately, as expected, the cherry in the conversation was the trip: they raved about the possibilities of study and personal growth.
In order to sharpen their English, they had decided no method was more efficient than on-site practice on Miami Beach. They dreamed of sea and margaritas in the shade of tiny paper parasols. The two entertained visions of Latinos with mysterious eyes and sculpted bodies swaying in salsa clubs. And their visions became even more calientes once they produced fake student IDs and got self-promoted to respectable twenty-one-year-old damsels, the legal age for alcoholic stupor in the United States.
They would travel in the second week of July. At five days from departure, while Marisa still frazzled to find the perfect bikini, Valentina had already packed: she temporarily put aside her anti-capitalist convictions and surrendered to the temptations of tourism. Valentina carried enough luggage for a whole semester, besides a minilibrary with dictionaries and tourist guides. She would come up with elaborate itineraries and submit them to Marisa’s appreciation.
“On the first Saturday, we leave early to visit the Hemingway House in Key West. In the afternoon we go shopping at the Bayside. In the evening, we do the round of the club circuit in Miami Beach until dawn. Then we have breakfast on the street and spend Sunday on the beach. That way we can get a tan while we sleep. Is this brilliant or what?” She would leaf through a guide and go on: “Hey, there’s a sex museum in South Beach! We can go there after our beach session.”
On that particular day, they idled in Valentina’s bedroom, which looked rather like a pop art gallery. In contrast with the colorful posters on the walls, a large black-and-white print hanging on the door depicted Marcel Duchamp’s work Fountain. Sprawled on fake leather yellow puffs, the two girls ate popcorn and listened to an old Roxy Music album. Brian Ferry sang how good it would be to fall in love. Could It Happen to Me?
“Oh, I wish I could find me a boyfriend there.” Marisa sipped her long-neck beer. “I’m tired of being single. To make things worse, it seems I only see couples everywhere I look. It’s sickening. Do you know what I miss the most? A man who gazes at me with gleaming eyes. All that first-date thrill, the first discoveries…”
“Yeah, there’s nothing like a first date. To spend the whole afternoon busy with clothes, accessories, makeup…”
“… to have your nails, hair and waxing done, exfoliate your body and apply a hundred different creams… cram yourself into a pair of jeans one size smaller than the regular, torture your feet on seven-inch high heels…”
Valentina turned up her activist nose.
“I refuse to wear anything uncomfortable just to please a guy. That’s pure lumbar thought.”
“Lumbar thought?”
“It’s a courtesy by Umberto Eco. He noticed the loose frock worn by medieval monks allowed them to forget their bodies and concentrate on the intellect and spirit. Compare that to yourself shoved inside a pair of pants that glue to your rear end. While medieval monks question the mysteries of the universe, you think about your pants.”
“What do you mean? I also question the mysteries of the universe.”
Marisa acted offended, to which Valentina clicked her tongue with a condescending tsc-tsc. It was so heartfelt it bordered obscene.
“Honey, you may even question them. But in the back of your mind are those pants.”
“Why in the back of my mind are those pants?”
“Because they squeeze everything and it’s impossible to forget them.” Valentina rolled her eyes at Marisa’s failure to realize such an obvious fact. “So you think about the pants and the pants brand, about your association with that brand and with the people who wear it. You belong to a tribe now and feel suddenly… oh so adventurous, rebellious, sophisticated, romantic, seductive, or whatever it is that the brand slogan dictates. You transfer your discernment and decision power to stylists and admen. And all that chain of gibberish constitutes the lumbar thought.”
“And what’s the conclusion?”
“You no longer think with your head. You think with your butt.”
Marisa stared at her and blinked a couple of times without knowing what to respond. At last she said: “I guess it’s a social phenomenon. Women want to be attractive at any cost. After all, aren’t they raised to get hold of a man? The ultimate goal in life. That’s why they compete so fiercely in that terrain. It’s the perpetuation of species logic: to get hold of one man in order to fecundate one egg and help them raise the child.”
“By the same logic, men can go out there and fecundate several women, the more the better. Very egalitarian indeed.”
“It’s the premise of masculine domination, Val.”
“Well, in the beginning of the world society was matriarchal, based on the partnership between women and men. The problem started when all tribes quit being nomadic and created private property.”
“The supreme religion.”
“Yeah. And we were caught in the middle of that. Since men can never tell for sure if a child is theirs or not, it’s necessary to repress women to prevent t
hem from generating illegitimate heirs.” Here Valentina got inflamed, gesticulating like a sociological wind rose: “We women are second-rate citizens, and to this day our heads are filled with all sorts of nonsense in order to perpetuate that repression. Activist Gloria Feldt noted the repression is already so internalized that today many doors open but few women walk through them.”
“It’s like a presentation I saw by some British mimes. In one of the sketches, a man in a suit with a briefcase tries to reach a pair of scissors dangling in the middle of the stage. He’s held by a string tied on his back and struggles like mad to get the scissors. Finally he manages to grasp them. He smiles triumphantly and opens the briefcase. Inside it, there’s a scissor collection.”
“That’s what conditioning does to people, Ma. And we women are conditioned to believe that the masculine can and should control the feminine. See what’s done to Mother Nature. In the grand scheme of things, women are consumers and objects of consumption, incubators and a mass of maneuver for the perpetuation of the patriarchal regimen.”
“Hmm. Virginia Woolf wrote in Orlando that no one objects to a woman thinking. As long as she thinks of a man… or pants, apparently.” Marisa gave an awkward chuckle. “But can I still wear my skinny jeans? I really look good in them.”
They laughed and made a toast. Love was beautiful, and so was Valentina when she said: “Yes, you can. If you want a boyfriend, that’s gonna be the time. Great possibilities, my dear.”
Marisa stared at her with hope. She began braiding a random lock of her hair.
“Why is that, Val?”
“Well, the least you can get in a sex museum is a well-endowed guy,” said Valentina with a wink. “If I were you, I’d take those seven-inch high heels in the suitcase too. Maybe your future boyfriend will already be waiting for you across the ocean…”
2. The Light Inside Your Eyes
Books, tablet, camera, MP3 player, speakers, shorts, pants, sweatpants, shirts, T-shirts, swimming trunks, socks, underwear, shoes, sneakers, flip-flops, personal hygiene items, shaver, pocketknife, earplugs, ATM machine, cleaner payment, hotel reservation, car rental, international driving license, congress registration, Jeff’s phone number, passport, dollars, a genie of the lamp for granting three wishes…
Red: A Love Story Page 19