A teenager in such an egregiously Catholic country could hardly be expected to ventilate a young man like Mrs. Mayfair can. Not that Mrs. Mayfair is simply available, but Antonio is not just any young man. Straining for resolution against the disbelief jamming her signals is the picture of Antonio describing the most private, least inhibited acts of love between a man and a woman, which seems neither practical nor fair nor necessary. Then again, we can’t be certain of what he said or did not disclose.
“Let me explain something to you.” Mrs. Mayfair touches Lyria with the fingers of both hands and breathes deeply, wondering how best to approach this delicate subject. First thinking euphemism best for the nerve now exposed, she shakes her head and clearly sees that beating around the bush will only widen the gap between them. No, she must come clean and state the case. But which case would best be stated, that she is a woman in her prime who is simply weak for a man in his?
Or that she simply loves him?
Or that she now understands the discomfort and difficulty such a liaison can cause?
Or that she was only trying to help by relieving the pressure on all fronts?
Or that she is willing to give it up, all of it, even the thing he does with his mouth? Moreover, that she will forswear his luscious lips enfolding exquisitely onto her own with perfection unmatched in the physical realm.
Or telling Lyria that she doesn’t exaggerate, but promises the utmost of the summit of the grandest mountain known to women, if you happen to be one who likes to climb; that Antonio is simply the maestro, with a jut jut jut and a feather light lick that is so delicate, so simple and undeniable that no other man on the face of the earth has yet to figure it out. Well, we can’t be certain that no other man has figured it out. Someone else may have. But none of the many men I know about have figured it out, except for this one and only. I mean, call him Latin rough and tumble and rest assured he is, but put that Billy goat gruff behind the first inch of wiggling tongue and you might as well call him Fred Astaire, because Lord, he can dance!
Obviously none of these cases can be presented to anyone’s advantage, except perhaps the one about perfection in dancing, if it can be packaged as something wonderful to anticipate. But maybe not, and Lyria must anticipate that scenario and the rest anyway. Left with nothing to explain because the big, blatant picture looms between them, Mrs. Mayfair merely withdraws her subtle touch once again and asks, “What are we going to do?”
They look askew at opposing angles for an awkward moment, until Lyria glances back to see a tear rolling down the aging cheek. “I do love him, you know. It’s not what you would call a romantic love, but more of a familiar, playful love. He is a sweet boy, and you’re a sweet girl. I could tell you I didn’t know, but I did. It’s typical of me to think you would share. But I’m not here so often. And I do take care of him, you know, in a way you might not.…”
Lyria reddens sufficiently to shut Mrs. Mayfair up, though the elder remains certain she has neither cleared the air nor eased the pain. Lyria wonders how a woman can spend such effort on makeup and then leave the tracks of her tears showing with no attempt to refinish. Lyria considers her own tears and how they may define the difference between two women.
Lyria last shed tears when her father died only a year after Antonio and Baldo’s father died, which is already many years ago. Maybe a child who doesn’t cry in so many years is abnormal, or maybe the sadness of life is subjugated to her strength, on which her survival has depended. Besides, crying is for children, and she’s a woman with a woman’s wisdom and a woman’s experience. She understands Antonio’s weakness but knows of no man more able to endure the rigors now upon him. For his resilience she should cry? No, Antonio did the right thing, because Baldo could neither comprehend nor process such difficulty. Even now the idea of a boy like Baldo, with such a handicap, in jail, isolated from love and understanding, confined in darkness; well, that could make her cry.
The salad arrives.
Mrs. Mayfair insists on sharing and divides the cold green strips into two portions. They eat, Lyria obliquely observing the rich gringa, who woofs the slimy shreds as easily as a woman at home in the world. But she seems too circumspect on the squiggles to really be at home. She seems at ease now simply because she’s familiar with eating slime, isn’t she?
Mrs. Mayfair dabs the corners of her mouth with her napkin and says, “This is so good. You must have it often.” Lyria smiles weakly. “It must be full of minerals.”
Lyria doesn’t look up from forking a small load of the green and slimy into the hopper. “Todos tiempos,” she says, leaning over for a look at Mrs. Mayfair’s watch. Hardly an hour to go, surrounded by gold and diamonds.
Mrs. Mayfair considers taking the watch off and presenting it as a gift to be worn proudly or sold at a fair price. But she lets that notion go the way of sexual explanation. A fair price can hardly be expected around here, and giving such jewelry is no better than sending cash to undeveloped countries. No, the downtrodden need conceptual guidance and hands-on instruction. An aging beauty queen can still yearn for penance and prove her commitment. She doesn’t need Lyria’s friendship, but anyone past a certain age knows that friendship is best. This isn’t a matter of guilt, because no woman here is guiltier than Antonio, or that other one, Baldo, for that matter. This is only an awkward moment in an otherwise delightful lunch. The waiter brings a whole grouper, a six-pounder as warranted by such a gem-studded watch, splayed and grilled.
“Oh, my!” Mrs. Mayfair says.
El Planchar del Capitán Mexicali comes next, eliciting another whimper. Mrs. Mayfair calls for extra plates, and they share. The enchiladas and burritos are only average tourist fare, but the fish is superb, enough so, Mrs. Mayfair feels, to ease tensions with the best remedy, something good-tasting and warm inside them. “Isn’t this yummy?” she asks.
“Compared to what?” Lyria asks back.
“Compared to the cold beans and tortillas some people are having for lunch,” Mrs. Mayfair says. “Listen, dear. We don’t have to be friends. We don’t have to be friendly. I only thought it would make things easier. We have some important work ahead of us, and I, for one, prefer a friendly atmosphere to a hostile one.”
Lyria looks down. “I’m sorry.” Then she looks up. “But how can I know that you won’t … When he gets out, that you won’t …”
“That I won’t what? Love him to death? Listen, dear. He’s your betrothed. Not mine. I’m leaving in a few days. I’m sure you wouldn’t begrudge a lonely woman her fond farewell in exchange for saving your fiancé from prison.”
Lyria can’t argue against such reason, nor can she appreciate the logical result.
“Like I say,” Mrs. Mayfair says, pulling a long, curved bone from between her lips, setting it on the edge, and licking her fingers. “I would think you would be relieved. Of the pressure, I mean.”
Lyria stops eating. “It is because of you that I have no pressure. The dam bursts into your head! It should be mine. Mine!”
“Oh, my. I thought … I mean, Antonio said, well, he didn’t exactly say it, but he gave me the impression you were … waiting!”
“No, Señora. I wait only for you to leave.”
“But I’m not here, dear. Twice a year I visit, but the rest of the time he’s all yours, and from what he tells me and, I don’t mind saying, dear, what he shows me, you’re waiting!”
Lyria fumes. “Waiting should be my say-so. Not his. As long as you give him what he needs, he won’t need me. So of course I wait. Alone!”
“You want him unfulfilled?”
“I will fill him! I want him to need me, to beg me, to demand satisfaction from me, not from you! I will fill him!”
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying, dear—”
“My name is Lyria. Lyria! Not dear.”
“Yes. If you don’t mind my saying, Lyria, I’ve had some experience with this sort of thing.”
“Oh, yes, I know.”
“
How can you know?”
Caught in the matrix of her own hostility, Lyria realizes she can’t know but can only surmise that a woman whose ears are grasped while her head is pumped full of pinga has tried this trick with many men. “I can know just as I know the sky will be blue tomorrow!”
Mrs. Mayfair dabs her mouth with her napkin. “Unless it’s hazy. Or overcast. In fact, Lyria, you can’t know and you don’t know. It’s obvious you don’t know, because a woman with experience knows she doesn’t need a year or six months to make a man crazy with need. A man like Antonio is good for The Grand Prix of Oaxtapec. He’s good again in forty-five minutes. Or twenty. You want him to sit in traffic? Come on, sweetheart. Wake up and smell the coffee.”
“What is grand prix? Is it a big pinga?”
“No. It is not a big pinga. It’s a race. All out, very fast with no holds barred. Do you get the picture?”
Lyria gets the picture all right and wants to order a big fat chorizo so Mrs. Mayfair can suck on The Grand Prix. Yet she wants to know more of what this woman of experience might tell her. Because she, Lyria, does not know. And experience can fool you. Her own experience closer to the earth is deeper and more dynamic than that of a pampered, rich gringa twice her age. Still, this decadent gringa is not stupid and must have learned a few things from the many men standing behind the many pingas she has known over the years. Lyria fumes, dabbling with her fork, picking at her frijoles and an enchilada.
Mrs. Mayfair passes the salsa and says, “I don’t know very much about cooking, but I think everything here is very good. Don’t you?”
Lyria picks and eats. “Okay,” she says at last. “What do I do?”
“What do you do? About what?”
“About Antonio. He treats me like a novitiate. He won’t look at me like a man should look at a woman. I wait for his face to redden and his hands to shake, but he is like stone. I think it is because you come here twice each year to relieve his pressure.”
“Honey, that boy has pressure for twice a morning, twice an evening and then some.”
“So what is wrong with me? I think he … loves me. I think he wants one day to … to marry me. Is he afraid? Maybe he is afraid I will look like my mother. He wants to see a picture of her when she was young. I think he is afraid that if she looked like me, then I will look like her.”
“You might,” Mrs. Mayfair says, finishing half a fillet and lifting the spine clear. “That’s why God invented plastic surgeons.”
“What has my madre to do with toy fish?”
Mrs. Mayfair stops eating and stares, then blushes for the innocence facing her. “No, dear. I mean, Lyria. Not a plastic sturgeon; a plastic surgeon.” She pulls her cheeks back and smoothes the skin on her neck. “They keep you young looking. That’s all a man wants. These are my own, by the way.” She hefts her breasts with the backs of her hands. “I wouldn’t have wished for them, but they have their advantages.”
Lyria looks at them and down at her own. “I have small ones.”
“You have lovely ones.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell. The boys are wild for you.”
“One boy is not. His brother gives me more of what a woman needs than he does. His brother is only sixteen. Almost sixteen.”
“His brother? You mean Baldo.”
“Yes, Baldo. He is a boy but very tall. Nice-looking but a boy. He wants to rub them at night. He thinks I’m sleeping.”
“They’re all boys, and he knows you’re not sleeping.”
“How do you know?”
“Please, let’s dispense with that. Why do you pretend you’re sleeping?”
Lyria thinks and then shrugs. “Wouldn’t you?”
Mrs. Mayfair laughs, “I think I’d rise and shine. Oh, my. Sixteen.”
“You think sixteen is good?”
“Lyria, dear. Sixteen can be a woman’s dream if it’s handled properly.”
“You mean asking him to grab my ears?”
“What?”
“You know, grab my ears for the pinga en la cabeza.”
“What? Is that what Antonio told you?”
Lyria nods.
Mrs. Mayfair fairly gasps, to think that Antonio could say such things to his girlfriend! She wants to tell Lyria that it’s not true, but Lyria believes it so, leaving Mrs. Mayfair no leeway around a flat denial. “It isn’t so. I mean it just isn’t so.”
Lyria seeks the elder’s eyes, to tell if she’s lying.
“I mean, Lyria, we did what a man and woman do, but it wasn’t nearly as rowdy as I hope it will be for you with him one day.”
“What day? I think you would like to be there with us.”
Mrs. Mayfair rocks her head from side to side. “You know, there was a time when I would have refused that on the spot, but I’d consider it now that I see what happens in fifty years. I don’t know what I wouldn’t consider, as long as it was fun and nobody got hurt. And I was fond of the people involved.”
“So, you are fifty?”
“No, I’m not. Not yet. But I think I will be before you’re forty.”
“Can I get you anything else?” The waiter waits.
Mrs. Mayfair hesitates on wrapping up the leftovers, it seems like such a schlep, but then wasting seems rude, and suggesting that Lyria take home the leftovers might be misconstrued. She asks Lyria with her eyes if the lunch is worth wrapping.
Lyria nods, “Si claro. ¿Porque no?”
Mrs. Mayfair orders grapefruit juice in a large glass with ice and reposado and encourages Lyria to try it as well. Lyria nods again, willing to learn what this woman knows. Soon it’s only twenty minutes until time to call, with a fair repast under their belts, a few fences mended, and the warmth of a smooth tequila easing them into the afternoon. Mrs. Mayfair makes the call.
Making a connection on the second try, she is told by Rudolph Butkus that contact has been made through proper channels, that a certain lawyer in town is available and on the case right now. He’s an old acquaintance of Mister Mayfair. Dialogue is underway but must proceed methodically, through proper channels. The young man in question is suspected of three additional heinous homicides and represents a windfall solution for several key parties involved. Solving these unresolved crimes further represents significant value to said parties, so solutions close to home will be quite dear. Processing will continue through tomorrow with efforts to establish a negotiated settlement, to see if justice can prevail.
Mrs. Mayfair offers listless gratitude and tells Rudolph Butkus to hold the line. She conveys the situation to Lyria, in the end bemoaning the inevitable night ahead, in jail. “Lyria, dear, I will spare no expense, but we can go no faster.”
Lyria begs to differ. “Mrs. Mayfair. They will kill him. He cannot stay the night. We must help him escape.”
“They won’t kill him. They’ll have no settlement if they do.”
“They will harm him terribly. You don’t know. They need him to be guilty.”
“Rudolph, the young man’s young lady is quite upset. She feels that a night … Yes. You do? You will?” Mrs. Mayfair responds to the lawyer’s assurance that he knows what will happen tonight.
He asserts further understanding, which Mrs. Mayfair will not repeat. “I won’t ask the nature of your involvement, Lena. But I suspect he’s Mexican, which makes things no less harsh in a Mexican jail. I should think him a bit of a man and likely tempered to it. Beyond that, we must remember the gravity of the charge, suspicion of murder. Getting him back on the street tomorrow morning will be pretty darn good, if we can manage it.”
“I’m sorry, Rudy. I just …”
“Yes. I know. You’re a tender heart.”
“Will I need to be there?”
“You must deposit a retainer with the lawyer, Señor Simón Salvador. He’ll review his fee schedule and the other expenses with you. He’s in contact with your husband, so some of these things may already be taken care of.”
“Thank you, Rud
olph.… I don’t know.… We’ll see.… Yes. Goodbye.… I don’t know. Perhaps.…”
Lyria gets the gist of Rudolph’s proposed meeting.
Mrs. Mayfair blushes and calls him a rascal but a dear one. She hangs up with grim resignation, on the verge of great sadness.
Lyria watches until Mrs. Mayfair regains composure and assures that “everything will be okay,” which it may not be. With nothing more to do or say, it’s time to go. They walk a block in silence, catch a cab, and ride two more silent blocks until Lyria shrieks that the plastic bag containing the pillowcase is still under the table.
¡Ay!
So they ride back for it and continue as they had, in silence. Mrs. Mayfair worries that Lyria will be fired. But she says nothing, in order to avoid unnecessary stress.
Lyria wonders how strange it would be to have Mrs. Mayfair at her wedding. But if Mrs. Mayfair doesn’t care, then she doesn’t mind either, because, for now, at any rate, she likes this aging woman and feels she has learned something. She can’t quite put her finger on it; so maybe the wisdom of experience has, as they say, rubbed off. Besides, if a young man is driven to ease the pressure as they all are driven, then better a puta of experience and taste than your average streetwalker.
When Mrs. Mayfair asks if today’s absence will mean trouble, Lyria shakes her head and smiles, wheezing and coughing, feeling her glands, slumping her shoulders and eyes. “I am sick,” she says. “I must not make the guests sick. I have stayed away for them.”
Then it’s time for Lyria to get out. Mrs. Mayfair touches her arm and says, “I had a lovely time with you today, Lyria. I’ll be heading down to the you-know-where in the morning, first thing, say ninish. You’re welcome to join me.”
Lyria doesn’t mean to stare but can’t help it, seeing something new in the nemesis of her love. In a gesture of trust she shakes her head. “No. I work. You get him out.”
Toucan Whisper, Toucan Sing Page 14