Becoming Marta

by Canales, Lorea

She conceived of a will where she demanded that the executor have her gutted, emptying out her viscera in a tub just like this one. She remembered a Goya drawing in which a group of cannibals quartered their enemies. “Let them exhibit me; let them make me stand out. I don’t want to be buried in a coffin or burned.” The bureaucratic impossibility of her request was apparent to her. It would be a crime to quarter her, even postmortem. The government would look after her body. “At least I can donate my organs.” For a moment the image of her body divvied up, living in the bodies of strangers, filled her with happiness.

  She started gnawing on her index finger. She pulled out a piece of skin and dropped it in the water. The tiny flap disappeared in the shadows between her legs. She kept gnawing until she drew blood and then dipped her finger in the water, hoping to dye it completely red. She wanted it to flow out of her in a crimson tide, like the wound of a lanced bull. But the blood ceased flowing almost immediately. The wound was not sufficiently deep.

  She yanked at her hair. It came out easily and entwined around her fingers.

  Disappointed and intact, she got out of the tub. She wrapped herself in a large, thick, white cotton towel and lit a joint before getting dressed. She knew she’d be late for Larry’s dinner, but she needed to relax.

  She wanted to cut her hair but found only cuticle scissors.

  53

  The Dinner

  Mau put on a decadent forest-green wool plaid sports coat. It had red silk lapels with a small yellow-diamond pattern.

  “The only things missing are velour slippers, a pipe, and a snifter of cognac,” said Adriana. Beauty and the beast, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror while applying ChapStick. As always she wore no makeup.

  “Will she know we’re together?” Mau said nervously. It had been nearly three months since he last saw Marta.

  “Yes. Definitely,” Adriana said after thinking about it for a moment. “She’s in touch with Larry. I’m sure he’s said something about it.”

  Mau felt a little calmer. He didn’t want a confrontation with Marta. Much to his surprise he hadn’t missed her. Adriana and photography had filled his life in unexpected ways. He was afraid to hurt Marta, but more afraid that she would hurt them. He’d searched for her earlier that afternoon, hoping to talk, but she had checked out of the hotel. On the way back, passing Bergdorf Goodman he’d spotted the jacket and bought it.

  Larry’s apartment was on Seventy-Seventh Street in a building designed at the beginning of the twentieth century to house studios for artists. It had triple-height ceilings and an impressive view of the American Museum of Natural History. Since the apartment featured a wall of windows and the space was bright and open, Larry did not have any art out. That surprised Mau.

  “What would a place like this go for?” he asked Adriana in a low voice.

  “I don’t have a clue. A lot. Although, knowing Larry, he bought it twenty years ago when it sold for a song.”

  Larry, dressed in a white silk Mao shirt, greeted them with a hug. “Come in, come in, I’ll introduce you.”

  Alejandra von Thurlow wore brown velvet pants, Yves Saint Laurent ankle boots, and a gold sequined jacket. Her blond hair cascaded down in soft waves. Matteo, her husband, a Dutchman with cobalt-blue eyes and jet-black hair, was well over six feet tall and a sailing aficionado. By contrast, Paula di Gianni Mata was short, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she had black eyes and a husky voice. Adriana recognized Paula from the show and started chatting with her.

  “Larry tells me you’ll be showing in Venice. You must stay at my home,” Paula said with a slight Italian accent. “I’ll probably go to the Biennial, but even if I’m not there, there’s always someone at the palazzo.”

  Adriana thanked her, knowing full well she wouldn’t be staying there.

  “Larry told me your nativity photos are very good. Did you know that my gran-gran-gran-trisavolo Cosimo was the man who commissioned Fra Angelico to paint the convent in Fiesole?”

  Ah, of course, a Medici, thought Adriana.

  “I’m interested in that photo.”

  “It’s done if you’d like to see it. Mau helped me with it.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Him,” Adriana said, pointing to Mau, who was holding a champagne glass and discussing sailing with Matteo. She didn’t know what to add, whether to say “my boyfriend” or “the artist.” Until now she’d introduced him as a friend or even her “assistant,” but she could no longer refer to him that way.

  Little by little the other guests arrived. Larry had managed to get three prospects for Marta: Vincent Raddlefinger, heir to an old Swiss watch-making family; Claudio Montemayor, son of the Argentine ex–finance minister and owner of a chain of hotels; and Paulo Contatore, an Italo-Spaniard nephew of Berlusconi, who had made a fortune in real estate. Larry was proud of the turnout, but Marta had not yet arrived, and it was already nine thirty.

  “Fuck, Larry, I know the guest of honor hasn’t arrived, but I need to be in Dubai tomorrow. Do you mind if we start eating?” said a desperate Claudio.

  “Not at all. It’s late, so we might as well be seated.”

  In his twenty years as a gallery owner, this had only happened once before. That had been with Ana Mendieta, and only because she died. She better be dead, Larry thought.

  Larry had planned a Mexican menu. Marta arrived a few minutes after the huitlacoche soup was served. Mau looked up. She was smoking, and her hair was all but gone; only a few blond strands covered her head. Her eyes, which she’d taken pains to make up, were sunken, as though her brain had sucked them in, and she was thinner than ever. Even so she was beautiful. She had on a black diamond bracelet adorned with skulls. Apart from that, Marta wore a fitted black leather dress and navy-blue Converse sneakers.

  “Sorry I’m late. Perdón, Larry,” she said, kissing his cheek and taking her place at the table. “You’ll never believe what happened, the silliest thing. I could not find my shoes!” She put her sneakers on the table. “Only two days ago I bought the perfect pair for this dress: black leather Miu Miu platforms with a red rose on top. They were adorable, but I’m not sure where I put them. Ever since I moved into the apartment, I have such a fucking mess. The cleaning lady comes, of course, but she doesn’t tidy up. Perhaps someone can recommend a good nana, Mexican-style, one who knows how to put things in their place.”

  Everyone stared at her, not knowing what to say.

  Larry intervened, hoping to regain some of the normalcy that had reigned until that moment.

  “Marta, allow me to introduce you. Well, you know Mau and Adriana.”

  Marta flashed a fake smile. Mau could not tell if she was joking or serious. While Larry introduced her to the others, Marta drank furiously and played with her cigarette. She looked totally anachronistic, like a silent-era movie star, with her pale face and corpse eyes.

  She’s a panther, thought Larry, not a colt. A panther, a dangerous animal that cannot be kept in captivity. I made a mistake.

  Yawning without even covering her mouth, Marta stared at Vincent. “Vincent?” she said suddenly, pronouncing it in French as “Vansant.”

  “Oui?” he replied automatically, used to answering in five languages without giving it any thought.

  “Do you remember me from Lausanne?”

  Vincent looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. From the recesses of his memory, he called up the image of the girl she’d been fifteen years ago. He felt a knot in his throat that he tried to swallow down with a gulp of wine.

  “What type of Mexican dinner doesn’t have tequila?” Marta said in an inappropriately loud voice. “C’mon, get out a bottle.”

  “Marta,” said Mau, wanting to make her see how out of place she’d been.

  “What, dude? Like the good old days, right? Shots for everyone. Let’s inject some fun into this party!”

  She got up from the table and went into the kitchen. They could hear her opening and closing cabinet d
oors.

  Mau looked at Adriana, who nodded in agreement.

  “I’m sorry, Larry, I think she’s not well. I’m going to take her home.” Mau got up from the table and said his good-byes. “I’ll see you later,” he said to Adriana, giving her a quick peck on the mouth.

  “Do you want me to come along?” she offered.

  “No, it’s better that you stay.”

  He went to the kitchen and grabbed her by the arm. He was angry, but he also knew that when Marta was like this, the only thing she responded to was force.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” said Marta, as though they were going to move the party elsewhere.

  “To your place, where else? So you can feel better.”

  A driver was waiting for them outside.

  “To your place,” Mau said.

  “No!” she yelled. “Don’t take me home—anywhere but there.”

  Mauricio insisted. The driver looked at them, confused.

  “I am the one paying you. Take us to Box,” said Marta, throwing her keys out the window.

  “No,” Mau said, looking the driver in the eye. “Don’t you see she’s not well?”

  The driver nodded and drove toward Fifth Avenue.

  “If anyone’s not well, it’s you,” said Marta. “Since when do you kiss the help’s daughter, huh? I saw you with Adriana. Have you sunk so low?”

  Mau felt like telling her to shut up, but he didn’t want to provoke her. The important thing was to calm her and make sure she got some sleep. Once they got to her place, he’d make her tea, and they’d settle in to watch a movie together. Sooner or later he had to calm her.

  The car dropped them off at the Plaza Hotel. Mau went to the front desk and asked that they open the apartment.

  “No, don’t let him in!” Marta yelled at the doorman, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  Remaining calm, Mau approached the doorman and whispered, “Look at her. She’s not well. I just want to take her up so she can rest. We don’t have the keys.”

  “He wants to rape me! Call the cops!” Marta screamed.

  The doorman didn’t move. He’d never seen Mau before. On the other hand, the girl clearly needed help. Mau opened his wallet and handed over three twenty-dollar bills.

  “All right, man, I’m trusting you.”

  The three of them took the elevator, and the concierge opened the door. Pile after pile of clothes, shoes, bags, and garbage were strewn across the floor, sofa, and table. The kitchen counter overflowed with shoeboxes and cigarette butts. The smell of stale sweat permeated the room, as though it had settled into the polyester fabric of her workout clothes, intensifying the effect with an acidic and penetrating note.

  Marta cleared some room on the sofa; she sat there shaking and smoking, letting the ashes fall on the floor.

  “What the fuck?” said Mau, picking up the clothes before realizing the futility.

  “I don’t have any booze because I no longer drink alone.” Marta started to cry.

  “You can’t stay here,” said Mau.

  Mauricio held her gently, escorting her back downstairs and through the lobby. He was no longer worried that she’d try to escape. The bellhop hailed a taxi.

  “What am I going to do with you?” asked Mau, looking her directly in the eyes.

  “Toss me out like garbage,” Marta answered in a girlish tone, staring out the cab window. After a long pause Marta, who had now become serious, said, “That’s what I’d say to my mother when I was a girl. She’d hug me and say, ‘How could I throw you in the garbage? You are my little treasure, the most beautiful thing in the world.’ Well, I’m not beautiful anymore, so now you can toss me out.”

  “How can I toss you in the garbage,” he said, holding her, “when you are my best friend?”

  They walked up the narrow stairway to the fifth-floor apartment. Adriana was waiting for them, sitting at the dining room table. To keep busy, she’d pulled out a pencil and was drawing what she saw: the apartment door, covered in a thousand coats of paint, and its three locks; the bedroom door ajar and framing the futon, covered in a white comforter; the foyer table with the cockscomb and the mail.

  “What’s she doing here?” said Marta as soon as she walked in.

  “I live here,” answered Adriana.

  “We live together,” Mau said.

  “Oh, I see, as roommates. Or are you lovers?” Marta cackled, collapsing onto a chair and lighting a cigarette. “Can you pour me a tequila? My blood sugar is low.”

  “No smoking in here,” Adriana said.

  Frightened, Mau turned to look at her, but he read Adriana’s expression: This is my house, and she is going to respect me. No one is going to start trouble in here. Mau stayed quiet, waiting for Marta’s reaction. She put out her cigarette on the table.

  A few minutes passed. No one moved. No one said a thing. Finally, Mau headed for the bedroom and said, “I’m going to bring you some sweatpants and a T-shirt so you’ll be more comfortable. Would you like some tea? We don’t have a sofa, so I’ll sleep on the floor tonight, and you two can crash on the futon. Okay?”

  “No,” said Adriana. “You two can share the futon; I prefer to sleep on the floor.”

  Marta got up and started looking around the apartment. She went over to the table by the entrance. She examined the desk and the computer. There was a metal shelf in the corner that held the cameras, tripods, a light box, and flashes. Marta sat on the floor by a large red cardboard box, where Adriana and Mau stored all the pictures they had taken. One by one she looked at the Polaroids, the contact sheets, the digital prints, the ones Mau had done in the darkroom, and the ones he had enlarged: Adriana’s breasts like two moons; drops of water or sweat on someone’s back; Mau, naked in black and white, posing like a Greek statue; Adriana’s legs spread open, her genitals covered by an apple that had been bitten; Adriana’s mouth as a flower vase; Adriana’s ass like a flower vase; a hand pinching a nipple; Adriana in profile, lounging on the floor, splashed with red wine—hundreds of variations on the same theme. There was a particularly nice one of Mau’s back covered with a handwritten poem.

  Mau and Adriana watched in silence while Marta examined their bodies, their lives. When she was done, Marta went to the door and left.

  “What should I do?” said Mau, looking for support from Adriana.

  “Sleep; let’s both sleep. Tomorrow you can call her father and see what they want to do. She can’t go on like this.”

  “No, she can’t,” said Mau. “You wouldn’t believe her place.”

  He went to the kitchen for a bottle of wine. A few drinks would help him to sleep. He should have gone after her. I hope she went to bed, he thought. Why didn’t I stop her?

  54

  Fortune

  Marti was about to leave for work when they told her that Lucy, the cleaning girl from Pedro’s office, was in the kitchen, waiting for her. She instructed them to invite Lucy to the breakfast room and offer her coffee.

  “It’s a delicate matter,” Lucy warned Marti.

  Seated at the table with her hands folded on her lap, Lucy told Marti, after much beating around the bush, that the previous morning a young woman came to the office looking for Pedro. The woman was not a tenant or anyone she had ever seen before, so she became curious. Lucy explained, a little embarrassed, that she could overhear the conversation from the coffee station near the back of the office. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but she wasn’t about to cover her ears either. She was in the middle of her cleaning routine, and they did not notice her. Lucy heard the woman say she was pregnant and tell the boss not to worry, that she had no intention of blackmailing him. She’d already decided not to have the child, but she needed money for the procedure. She knew a doctor who would take care of it. The woman told Pedro that she would never have come to him if she could manage it on her own, but she needed the money and, after all, it was his responsibility. Plus she thought Pedro had the right to know what happened to
the embryo.

  “Señora Marti, please forgive me, but I had to tell you. Your father, may he rest in peace, was more than a boss to us. Twenty years I’ve worked for your family. I prayed all night until the Virgin answered me. It’s a living being, you know? I thought, The Señora will know what to do. You have a right to know, too.” Lucy looked down at her folded hands, which were still in her lap, before adding, “I don’t know if you are aware of this, but my sister Eusebia raised her seven children and five more that her husband brought home over the years. ‘I can’t help my lusty nature,’ her husband would say, ‘but I’m not going to abandon defenseless children.’ She raised them as her own. My nephew Luis, who was your husband’s driver, is one of those children.”

  “Thank you, Lucy,” Marti said, making a mental note to send her a present the next day. “We’re going to help out this girl, don’t you worry.”

  Marti remained seated in the breakfast room until Pedro arrived. There was no time to lose. They needed to act immediately.

  Marti was happy. God had given her an opportunity, and she knew how to act on it. He’d left the door ajar, and she had pushed it open. Wasn’t life all about learning to recognize opportunities and knowing when to seize them?

  Pedro clearly had no clue about these matters. But she had grown up watching her father make money. Every day when he came home for lunch, he’d discuss opportunities with her mother. Marti would hear about plans to open a train station and how it made sense to buy land nearby, or that they were about to build a road and it would be smart to invest in it. When she tried to discuss such matters with Pedro, he looked at her sheepishly.

  “Why do you concern yourself with these things? I’ve put more than half of the money into dollars. That’s why we pay experts, right? Let the professionals take care of our money. You don’t have to work anymore. Enjoy it.”

  Obviously, if she wanted something done she’d have to do it herself. Her husband had already gotten involved with this wench. It was up to her to rescue the child. If I can save one life, my life will have meant something, she thought.