Nor is she curious in the least to see these ominous nipples shrink and point. They’re so big; each would take a willing mouthful to gather it in for proper suction. Lyria can’t see what Antonio sees but she has no doubt his mouth is willing. She suspects him pleased with this liaison in spite of his tired refrain on practicality. Moreover, the certitude of this hefty set may be fading. They’re big but must be sagging more this year than last, unless of course Mrs. Mayfair always sagged.
Who cares anyway? Lyria does not care, especially in light of these cheap, dazzling goods.
Who would avoid me but a fool? What normal male within a thousand miles would not like to feel my chichis or do the thing with his tongue? I am young and fresh and like ice crema over caga next to this mountain of whore fat. But does he even suggest, or try, or insist? No; I get a goose and quick feel. It’s disgusting.
Mrs. Mayfair, hardly an insensitive woman, snugs her nightie with two hands. She doesn’t mind Lyria staring; the human body is natural, and so are the wonderful gyrations within its reach. Furthermore, you don’t compile Mrs. Mayfair’s résumé in the ways of the world by precluding potential, especially if the one man who makes her come is involved—or his girlfriend. But this is hardly the place or time for idle fantasy. The one man is in a far more tawdry fix and must be processed on a higher plane, or a different plane, at any rate. Mrs. Mayfair surrenders her need for logic but cannot grasp the simple truth. Repeatedly she asks, “He cut a man’s head off?”
“Baldo. Not Antonio. But the police have taken Antonio.”
Mrs. Mayfair can neither calm down nor stop her head from shaking. “And then you went out for dinner?” She shifts on the edge of the bed and smoothes her hair to no avail. “I need a minute to think.” So she thinks. Lyria watches, avoiding the chest. Mrs. Mayfair’s idea rises on a moan and a half nod and emerges with a sudden reach for the phone. She jumps when Lyria cries, “¡Ay!”
“What?” Clutching her heart with both hands, she looks up in startled anticipation.
“¡Ay!”
“What?”
“¡Ay! ¡Ay! ¡Ay!”
“Child, you must tell me what’s wrong with you.”
Lyria grabs that which has caught her stare, which is not the dribble on the pillow but the entire pillow itself, which she shakes, and attests, “¡Ay!”
“What?”
“The pillowcase! Antonio left the pillowcase! It is full of the fisherman’s clothing!”
“Left it where?”
“At his place!”
Mrs. Mayfair then accomplishes three behaviors at odds with each other. She slumps into eerie calmness for one, as she blushes like a maiden for two, and makes the call she began making moments ago for three. She tells the man who answers—Lyria knows it is a man, because women like Mrs. Mayfair know men, only men—she will need counsel within the hour on a matter of dire urgency. Lyria wonders if dire is a sexual term but thinks it unlikely. Not now. That would be too much. How could she?
Mrs. Mayfair says she will be in touch directly but now must hurry to gather information. In the meantime, “Mr. Butkus must be found. I hope I make myself clear!” She hangs up and holds her face in her hands briefly before insisting, “We must hurry. Wait here.”
She rushes to the bathroom for a pee, a tooth brushing and a ten-minute shower that fogs the mirror over the dresser. She calls out that she won’t be a minute, and in twelve more minutes is very close to achieving dry hair. Lyria approaches the door to check room-cleaning progress on the eighteenth floor. Who can worry about cleaning rooms on the twelfth floor at a time like this?
Slowly opening the door for a peak out, she faces Maria, the eighteenth-floor maid. Lyria smiles and frowns. It’s her turn to blush, which she presents as a hot flash with a semi-swoon, indicating severely urgent symptoms including nausea, headaches, dizziness and fainting spells. She mumbles that it’s because of her time and perhaps a touch of the flu; please, don’t come near.
“Who are you talking to?” Mrs. Mayfair calls.
“Please. I may be contagious.”
Maria leans aside for a look inside, so Lyria tells her she only stopped here to return this guest’s shoes from the lost and found but now she may need to go home for fear of falling deathly ill or worse, making a guest sick.
“Who are you talking to?” Mrs. Mayfair steps out of the bathroom, speaking loudly over the hair dryer. “Ah. Good. What is your name?”
“Her name is Maria.”
“Maria. Can you clean … um … um …” She waives her hands and says, “Please forgive me, dear. What is your name?”
“My name is Lyria.”
“Can you clean Lyria’s rooms today? She’s not feeling well and neither am I, so we’re going together to get well. Comprendez? Here’s some money for your trouble.” Mrs. Mayfair doesn’t count the bills she pulls from her purse, but Maria and Lyria do. Twenties. Three of them. Dollars.
Denial disgorges from the ages and Lyria’s gut, but she swallows it back down as Maria brightens with understanding, faith, trust, dedication, application, concentration, and the rest. “Yes. I clean. Very clean. Very, very clean. You will see.”
“Thank you. Thank you. You go clean. We’re very busy.” And out the door Maria goes, until Lyria opens it again and calls to Maria that her cart is stocked and ready on twelve. Maria returns and hands a twenty to Lyria, who reaches to take it but stops; she feels the pain but refuses with insistence that the money is for Maria, to be sure.
Back in the room Mrs. Mayfair’s hair is extremely close to dry and should need no more than another minute or two to hold the spray net. Her face is mostly corrected and improving with great gobs of ghastly red lipstick, a liberal troweling of foundation, a tuck-pointing of eyeliner, a smear of rouge to simulate facial circulation, and a trace of shadow for the coy suggestion. She turns around modestly to face the closet and drop her nightie so she can dress. Lyria assesses the back end, which doesn’t sag nearly as much as one might expect.
Mrs. Mayfair turns back and says, “It’s not true that one size fits all, but here. You can wrap this snug and it should look fine.” Lyria stares. “You can’t very well walk out of here in your maid’s uniform, can you?”
“I have my dress downstairs.”
“Tsk. Tsk.”
Lyria is certain this tsk tsk will not translate, so she asks instead, “They will not see me in this?”
Mrs. Mayfair says, “Put it on,” as she rummages for extra sunglasses, a sun hat, and a scarf. Lyria complies, soon looking like a starlet incognito. “Well, it’s still you, but if we go together, and I keep talking, and you keep your face on me, we can be through the lobby in no time. Okay?”
“Sí.”
In two minutes that span ages they’re in a taxi. Mrs. Mayfair lays a hand on Lyria’s thigh and leans forward to ask the driver, “Do you speak English?”
“Oh, no,” the driver laughs. “Hablo poquito. Hablo poquito Español tambien.” He laughs again.
She removes her hand and speaks lowly to Lyria. “We’re compromised by leaving together. Maria compromises us. But I don’t know how else to do this without some compromise.”
“What is compromise?” Lyria asks.
Mrs. Mayfair whispers, “It’s what every day comes down to. We’ve been seen. Others can say we’re together. I want you to tell him to drop us off at a commercial establishment that’s walking distance to the place. You know, where what’s-his-name lives.”
Just like a floozy, Lyria thinks; she is in his grasp one day but can’t remember his name the next. Still, she does seem concerned. So Lyria sits up and asks the driver to let them off at the dry goods shop on Juarez Avenue. In a few minutes they arrive.
Two steps onto the curb Lyria removes the sun hat and glasses, leaving Mrs. Mayfair as the single object of all the staring eyes, or at least the object of most of the staring eyes; some widen on the unlikely, dark-skinned figure who for some reason carries a broad-brimmed hat and Hollywood
sunglasses in the blaring sun. Down a hill and into an alley and down that they walk, until Lyria points out the place. Mrs. Mayfair checks fore and aft like a mother prepared to defend her young if anyone is looking. But the coast is clear, so they enter the humble casa together, and there it is, lying on the floor where it was casually tossed.
“What do we do with it?” Lyria asks. “Antonio was going to burn it this morning, but they took him away.”
“Burn it where?”
Lyria shrugs and points to the dusty ground outside. Mrs. Mayfair shakes her head and sinks again into deep thought. She paces the small abode in puzzlement and wonder. The puzzle is how best to dispose of the evidence. Awe derives from seeing the private side of her private stud. Stepping to a hammock, she feels the mesh and pushes as one might press a mattress for firmness. The hammock won’t resist, so she turns and sits, whooping when the hammock lets her fall a foot before catching her. “This one is for Baldo. That one is for Antonio,” Lyria explains, thinking Mrs. Mayfair might like to test the hammock of her lover. Oddly enough, she does, rising with difficulty, going to Antonio’s hammock, easing onto it and lying back. Lyria sits in Baldo’s hammock with waning tolerance.
“I don’t know how you people do it,” Mrs. Mayfair says.
Lyria feels the sting of condescending distinction. She wishes for a pinga to plug the old whore’s head right now; but then what satisfaction would that bring, and to whom? “Ah!” Mrs. Mayfair announces when a heel snags in the mesh that nearly flops her to the floor. Righting herself and standing in the vertical world of superior judgment, she says, “We need a bag or something.” Lyria finds two plastic grocery bags, and Mrs. Mayfair says, “We really shouldn’t stay here.”
They leave. Sure enough, as they head back the way they came, Mrs. Mayfair holds back, pulling Lyria’s arm and urgently whispering, “This way!” So they turn and hurry the other way.
“We can’t get out this way,” Lyria says as they round the corner at the bottom end of the alley. But they have no choice; the voices of men at the top end approach as the women did only minutes ago. Down on their knees on uncommonly common ground covered by fine dust that smells of cat piss, they struggle through a hole in the chain link fence. The dust actually softens the friction. The smell thickens on passage through the decrepit shrubbery that squeezes and snags their dresses. Mrs. Mayfair wiggles and whimpers but won’t complain, which conjures disgusting imagery but compensates for her prior superiority as well. Lyria wishes the whore cow would hush.
As if crawling through the black hole of social parity, they stand and adjust their visible selves. Shooing the dust and twigs, Lyria is ready to proceed. Mrs. Mayfair brushes her knees as if to brush away the holes in her nylons. Lyria smiles and nearly explains that some things cannot be brushed away, but she contains herself, because superiority is a two-way street. Instead of speaking from the high ground, she simply replaces her sun hat and glasses.
Still adjusting within and without, they hurry on, winging up the street like birds of a feather. Mrs. Mayfair carries the pillowcase in the plastic shopping bags. Where to? Mrs. Mayfair knows the world; Lyria knows the neighborhood. Together they lead and follow on their way to salvation for their common love.
At the corner, Mrs. Mayfair says, “We need a telephone.”
Lyria looks neither left nor right but leads the way across, explaining that such luxuries are not common to the neighborhood, that a larga distancia place is only three blocks up and two blocks over, but it’s very expensive and not a good connection and conversations are easily overheard. In fact, no place would be better than the hotel for efficiency, privacy, and clarity.
Mrs. Mayfair looks back like a woman pursued, then takes the lead into another alley, a shady dead-end offering respite from the sun but little else for a modern woman. She sweats profusely but her foundation, shadow, and liner remain firmly in place. Lyria sees and wonders how she does that.
“I don’t know if this works here,” Mrs. Mayfair says, digging in her purse for her miniature telephone, the kind that cost ten times a normal telephone but gives you only a tenth of the size and weight. Turning it on, she urges, “Come on. Come on. Come on.” They must wait for a connection, she explains, showing Lyria the little window with its little pictures of ears and telephones, megaphones and phone books and many odd, squiggly lines. At least a pause and a bit of shade allow the elder to catch her breath. She holds it when Lyria steps intimately near, so close that their noses must turn aside to avoid collision.
Their eyes meet in the blur of shameful proximity. The elder’s are confused, the younger’s resolved. The younger proceeds into the elder, who is pressed against the wall more awkwardly than on that first press of the first boy ever attempting intimacy with the amazingly young, flamboyant, and beautiful Lena McSwain all those years ago. Now, in a shadowy alley in Mexico, the still flamboyant and beautiful Mrs. Mayfair gasps, “My dear …”
“Sh …” Lyria closes her eyes and raises a hand to cover Mrs. Mayfair’s eyes, yet they sense the men who moments ago entered the alley from the top and could only pass this way by squirming through the hedge at the bottom, just as the women have done.
“Oh, God,” Mrs. Mayfair whispers, dropping the prima facie bags among the trash littering the alleyway. “Oh, God.”
“Sh.” They breathe and wait.
“Why not just leave it here?” Mrs. Mayfair asks.
“Because we cannot,” Lyria advises, which is, of course, the reasonable response. Pressure eases as the manly footsteps fade, and a moment of awkward friction seeks graceful transition.
“Ah! We have a connection!” Mrs. Mayfair says, helping them along and punching many more little buttons than a normal telephone would require. While waiting, she explains to Lyria that Rudolph might be game as a red-nosed reindeer, but he’s also the best lawyer money can buy. “I don’t care if you’re in Texas or Timbuktu, Rudolph knows who to call.”
Lyria tries to see the relevance of Texas or reindeer, both of which she has seen in books. Christmas is approaching, but how does Texas or Timbuktu relate to Antonio’s fix, unless, of course …
“Rudolph Butkus, please. This is Lena Mayfair calling again, urgently, if you don’t mind. Yes. Yes. Thank you.” Covering the tiny talk hole with her garishly red-nailed finger, Mrs. Mayfair nods sanguinely, as if the fix is on; the lawyer is in. “Rudolph! Oh, darling, how are you?” So Mrs. Mayfair proceeds to gush sweet nothings and “remember whens” and “Oh, those were the days, I mean, really! Oh, don’t. No. No. Yes. Yes, I do. I do … Listen, Rudolph, I’m in a bit of a situation here …”
So Mrs. Mayfair begins anew, relating the details of the bit of the situation we find ourselves in.
Lyria listens as patiently as possible, which isn’t too patiently. A young person intimate with the neighborhood and its practical standards may see the benefit of lawyers and international phone calls at a time like this and may also understand the need for womanly wiles, but tawdry whimpering at such a time feels wrong. Antonio needs help now.
Mrs. Mayfair talks and talks and still has made no mention of liberty or money. Lyria is aggravated to hear such frivolous carrying on preempting what is so important. She shakes her head vigorously; Mrs. Mayfair should stop.
Mrs. Mayfair responds with concern to such a display; “Hold on, please.” She puts her finger over the tiny talk hole again and asks, “What, dear? What is it?”
But Lyria can’t say what it is, cannot simply blurt a demand for freedom or ask what the terrible cost will be. She laughs instead; if life was that easy she wouldn’t be a maid in a hotel, wiping black, curly hairs from toilet rims. Antonio this minute sits in a steel cage in a concrete jail surrounded by men with guns. His confinement is impervious and complete, save the wily ways of an aging puta gringa. So resistance fades. Lyria shakes off her wrong instinct to stop this last hope for salvation. Mrs. Mayfair proceeds, listening now to what will be done on the one end and what should be done on the o
ther. Instructions are simple and concise.
Mrs. Mayfair then sinks again into the sweet and gooey like a hapless monkey in swamp mud, signaling the ultimate promise that awaits between her legs for the powerful man on the other end, who is undoubtedly aided by recollection of unseemly past encounters. “Bye, love,” Mrs. M coos, pressing the tiny button victoriously.
Lyria picks up the plastic bags, and it’s done.
Putting her little phone away, Mrs. Mayfair straightens herself again as if another hedge has just been cleared. “We need to wait two hours. He needs two hours. He says he may only need a few minutes, but he wants two hours. He says we should find a place to wait. I suppose he could call me, but I don’t want to confuse things now. I mean, these things don’t work all the time and you never know. I mean, I do know it often doesn’t work. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do. I don’t want to think he’s going to call, and then have it not work. You understand, don’t you?”
Lyria nods sideways, indicating conditional understanding.
“Tell me, dear. Have you … have you had lunch?”
No, Lyria has not had lunch or breakfast or a glass of water, the mention of which recalls the weakness in her knees. Why does Mrs. Mayfair ask this question? When could she have had lunch? In the taxi when no one was looking? “No, I have not had lunch.”
Mrs. Mayfair nods; they must eat, and after a suitably poignant pause, she reminds Lyria of the special needs of a woman like herself, who is only here on a visit—this with a gentle touch to the forearm, woman to woman. A gringa is most susceptible to the perils of microorganism, making this particular situation one of trust and confidence. Even from ice cubes. So she will be most happy to treat, if Lyria can lead the way to a safe place, safe meaning one with a safe bill of fare, meaning sans the little squirmies, because Mrs. Mayfair feels they’re on the right track to a bail-out.
Toucan Whisper, Toucan Sing Page 11