Prime Meridian

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “What makes you think you had a chance?” Marta replied.

  “I better go to the sanitation clinic. Wouldn’t want to give your kids rabies,” Amelia said, brushing past her sister and rushing out of the apartment.

  On the stairs, she found the rat she had released from the trap. It was dead. Her efforts had been in vain.

  Amelia kicked the corpse away and marched outside.

  Mars, Scene 4

  INT. CELL — NIGHT

  SPACE EXPLORER sits in a cell. Outside, it is night and the nights on Mars are unlike the nights on Earth: pitch-black darkness, the eerie silence of the red-hued sand plains. Despite her extraordinary location, the girl’s cell is mundane. Iron bars, a rectangular window. This is all that we can spare. The budget is limited.

  In the distance, there is laughter from the SPACE EXPLORER’s captors, who are celebrating their triumph. Drinking, music.

  The EVIL HENCHMAN stops in front of the SPACE EXPLORER’s cell to taunt her. She replies that THE HERO will save her. THE EVIL HENCHMAN laughs. Let him try!

  SPACE EXPLORER is unflappable. She believes in THE HERO.

  Although, perhaps she should not. Her story has been traced with carbon paper, in broad strokes, but carbon paper rips easily. And the writer of this script remembers pulling the carbon paper through the typewriter when he was a child, the discordant notes when he banged on the keys, the holes he poked in the paper so that it looked like the night sky needled with stars.

  But the stars have shifted. This makes sense in an ever-expanding universe, but it brings no comfort to the writer to feel them moving away from the palm of his hand.

  9

  “Why did you stop making movies?” Amelia asked.

  “I got old.”

  “I looked up your filmography. You were still in your thirties.”

  “Your thirties is old when all you do is show your breasts to the camera,” Lucía said.

  Her turban was peach-colored, her dress pink. She wore a heavy seashell necklace and her nails had been freshly done, perhaps on account of the upcoming holidays. Despite her retirement from show business, she always managed to look like she was hoping someone would take her picture and ask for an autograph.

  “I saw what happened to other actresses. There were certain people — Silvia Pinal, María Félix — who were able to remain somewhat relevant during the 80s. But for most of us, it was raunchy sex comedies and bit parts. Perhaps I might have been able to make it in soaps, but the television screen is so small. Televisa! After the marquees!”

  Lucía lifted both of her hands, as if framing Amelia with them, as if she were holding a camera. Then she let them fall down on her lap again.

  “So, I cashed in my chips and married well. I thought it was more dignified than shaking my ass in a negligee until the cellulite got the better of me and they kicked me off the set. You probably don’t think that’s very feminist of me.”

  “I don’t think anything of it,” Amelia said.

  Lucía reached for the dish full of pomegranate seeds and offered them to Amelia. The routine of these visits was the most soothing part of Amelia’s week. She had learned to appreciate Lucía’s company, where before she had endured it.

  “People criticized me, once. For everything. Every single choice you make is micro-analyzed when you’re a woman. When you’re a man, you can fuck up as many times as you want. Nobody asked Mauricio Garcés why he made shit films. But then you get old and nobody cares. Nobody knows you, anymore.”

  It was difficult to recognize Lucía. Age and whatever plastic surgery she had purchased had altered her face irrevocably. But the look in her eyes was the same look Amelia had seen in the posters, in the film stills, on screen in a dark and smoky cabaret where doomed lovers met.

  “What was your best role?” Amelia asked.

  “Nahum’s movie. The one he didn’t make.”

  “The Viking movie?”

  Lucía shook her head. “The Mars movie. Before the script grew bloated and was butchered. I didn’t know it then, of course. I knew little. But even if the story was laughable, he could get a good angle. There’s that scene where I’m in prison. You recall it? Pure chiaroscuro. You only need to watch that moment, those five seconds. You don’t need to watch the rest of the movie. In fact, it’s better if you don’t.”

  “Why not?” Amelia asked with a chuckle.

  “Because then you can make it up in your mind. For example, I always pretend I get out of that prison cell on my own. I just walk out.”

  Lucía’s eyes brightened. If someone had shot a close-up, then she might have resembled the actress who had adorned posters and lobby cards.

  “You said Nahum wasn’t nice.”

  “Who is nice, Amelia?” Lucía stated, as if waving away an annoying buzzard. “Nice is such a toothless word. Do you want to have your gravestone say, ‘Here lies Amelia. She was nice’? Come, come.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “You suppose right. When my memoir is published, I imagine people will say I was a bitch, but they were not there, were they? They didn’t have to make my choices. It’s always easy to tell someone they should have picked Option B.”

  “So, what was Option B?”

  Amelia expected the actress to launch into one of her elaborate anecdotes. Her face certainly seemed disposed toward conversation. Then it was like a curtain had been drawn and the light in Lucía’s eyes dimmed a little.

  “I forget,” Lucía said. “It’s been so long one forgets.”

  ***

  “José’s working as a professional stalker,” Pili said, just like that, like she had found out it would be raining tomorrow.

  “You are kidding me,” Amelia replied.

  “No. You can hire them online. They’ll stalk anyone you want.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Nothing worth any money is legal.”

  They were wedged in the back of a large restaurant, right by a noisy group of licenciados out to lunch. Pili was paying back the money she owed Amelia and taking her out to eat as a Christmas gift. For now, the Bhagavad was forgotten. They could have a regular meal, not a beggar’s banquet.

  “Well, it sounds awful.”

  “I thought I’d mention it. Just in case, you know, you’re still looking for something.”

  “I’m fine right now. In fact, I was going to say I should pay for this,” Amelia added.

  “You got another client on Friendrr?”

  I think I’m a professional mistress, Amelia thought. But despite Lucía’s assurances that she should not worry about being perceived as ‘nice,’ she did not want to chance Pili’s disapproval.

  “Yeah.”

  “Fabulous. That means we can go out for New Year’s, right? I have the perfect idea. It’s —”

  “I’m going out that night.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re going to stay home and eat grapes.”

  “I’m not. Really. I have something planned.”

  They parted ways outside the restaurant. On the other side of the street sat half a dozen people with signs at their feet advertising their skills: carpenter, plumber. There was even one computer programmer. Amelia pretended they were invisible, ghosts of the city. It was a possibility. The whole metropolis was haunted.

  And she was good at pretending.

  When she texted Elías “Merry Christmas” and he did not text back, she pretended it did not bother her. The day after, she went to his apartment.

  It was pristine, perfect. The lack of photos, of personality, the whiff of the showroom catalogue, enhanced the allure of the space. She could feign this belonged to her because it was not obvious it belonged to anyone.

  She walked from the kitchen to the bedroom and back, finally standing before the window. The sign enticing people to fly to Mars glowed in the distance. She thought about calling Pili and drinking Elías’ booze together, but that would break the illusion that this was her home. And she would have to explain why
she had the key to this place.

  Amelia went into the bathroom and ran a bath. On Christmas Eve, the taps at her apartment had gone dry and her sister had cursed for thirty minutes straight, asking how they were supposed to cook. Now, Amelia sank into the warm water. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine she was floating in the darkness of space.

  When she stepped out, she left no trace of herself. When Elías texted her on December 29, it was to say he was on a red-eye flight and he had everything figured out for New Year’s Eve. She slipped into the dress he’d bought her, did her makeup, and left her apartment with a few sparse words, which was all that was needed, since things were extra-dicey with her sister.

  The teenagers in the courtyard were already drunk by the time she walked by them. Instead of beating a piñata, they were wrecking a television set. A few of them hooted at Amelia when they caught sight of her, but she quickened her pace and made it to the spot where a car awaited.

  The rest of the night was what Elías had promised: good food, good drinks, dancing at a club that charged a ridiculous amount for a table. At midnight, streamers and balloons fell from the ceiling. Each New Year’s Eve she spent at home, just like Pili had said, eating 12 grapes before the TV set in a mockery of festivity. Other than that, there were her sister’s superstitious traditions: sweeping the floor at the stroke of midnight to empty the apartment of negative thoughts or tossing lentils outside their door. None of that now.

  The clinking of glasses with real champagne, the whole thing — not just the alcohol — went to her head as she kissed Elías on the lips.

  When she lay down on his bed, too tired to even bother with the zipper of her dress, she looked at the ceiling and stretched out her arm, pointing up.

  “We had stars. Do you remember?” she asked him.

  “What?” Elías muttered.

  “In your old apartment.”

  She turned her head and saw recognition dawning on his face. He nodded, slipping off his jacket and lying down.

  “I remember. You painted them,” he said.

  “It was to help hide the mold,” she recalled.

  “Yes. In the corner of the room. That place was too damp.”

  “You had leaks everywhere. We had to leave pots and pans and dishes all around.”

  She rubbed a foot against his thigh, absentmindedly, more present in the past than in the now. Back in the grubby apartment, the water making music as it hit the dishes. Gold and silver stars. It had been a lark, one afternoon, and Elías had humored her, even helped paint a few of the stars himself.

  “You printed all those photographs. Photos with an analogue camera, like any good hipster,” she said, sitting up and trying to reach the zipper of her dress. It was stuck.

  “It was the feel of it, of the negatives and the dark room, that I liked,” he replied, a hand on her back, undoing the zipper for her in one fluid swoop.

  Amelia pulled down the dress, frowning, her hands resting on the bed.

  “What did you do with my pictures? Do you still have them somewhere?” she asked.

  “Yes, in Monterrey. Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems like such an intimate thing to keep. Like a piece of somebody.”

  “Sympathetic magic,” Elías whispered, running a finger along her spine.

  She thought of the tossing of the lentils, the wearing of yellow or red underwear, washing one’s hands with sugar, and the myriad of remedies at the Market of Sonora. All of it was rubbish, but he… he’d had some true magic. It hovered there, under his fingertips, something that wasn’t love anymore, yet persisted.

  ***

  A phone ringing. Amelia cracked her eyes open, trying to re-member where she’d left her purse, but Elías answered.

  “Hello? Oh, hey. Yeah, Happy New Year’s to you, too. No, it’s got no charge. No, it’s….”

  Elías was standing up. Elías was going out of the bedroom. Amelia shoved away the covers and sat at the foot of the bed. When he returned, he had that apologetic look on his face she knew well.

  “That was my father,” he said.

  “I figured. Keeping his eye on you, as usual,” Amelia said, finding her underwear and stockings. Her dress was crumpled in a corner and it had a stain near the waist. Spilled champagne.

  When they’d dated, Elías played at independence. Half-heartedly. Dad paid all the bills, after all, but he played in good faith. He told himself they were at the brink of freedom.

  Now, he played at something entirely different.

  “I have an early Epiphany present for you.”

  As Elías spoke, he opened the door to the closet and took out a box, laying it on the bed and opening it for Amelia to inspect the contents. It was a set of clothes. Slim, black trousers, a gray blouse. She ran a hand along the fabric.

  “Did you give your fiancée a present, too?” Amelia asked. “Was it also clothing, or did you pick something else?”

  “You don’t like the clothes?”

  “That’s not what I asked,” she said, raising her head and staring at him.

  A rueful look on his face. He did not appear older most days, but that morning, he was his full 25 years, older still, not at all the boy she’d gone out with. He’d looked very much the Hero when she’d first spotted him and now he did not seem the Villain, but he could not save maidens from dragons or girls from space pirates.

  He had settled into the man he would be. That was what she saw that morning.

  Whom had she settled into? Had she?

  “My father picked her present. I had no say in it,” he assured her.

  “I guess you don’t get a say in anything.”

  She fastened her bra and proceeded to put on the change of clothes he’d bought for her, leisurely. She had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

  “Amelia,” he said sharply, “you know I care about you. My father wants me back in Monterrey, but I want nothing of him.”

  “Except for his cash.”

  “What would you have me do? I was going to break off the engagement, but he doesn’t listen to me, just goes on and on, and when I brought it up —”

  She stood up and touched his lips before she kissed him very lightly. “I know,” she replied.

  “No, you don’t,” he said and he held her tight. And she should, she would move away in a minute. She was tidally locked. She was but a speck orbiting him and it didn’t even matter now whether she could, would, would not, should not move aside.

  10

  The gang had once again laid claim to the subway’s entrance. Amelia ended up sharing a car with a man and a life-sized me-chanical mariachi. It was just the torso, skillfully painted, but he had a hat and held a guitar in his hands. She couldn’t help but ask the man about it.

  “It’s for bars,” the man said. “It has integrated speakers and can play hundreds of songs. It’s better than any flesh-and-blood musician. I also have one that looks like Pedro Infante and another like Jorge Negrete. Say, I’ll give you my card.”

  She tried to tell him it was fine, that she wasn’t looking for a singing torso, but he pressed the card against her hand. She tossed it away before she walked into Lucía’s house where the holidays had made no dent. No lights nor trees, not even a poinsettia plant to mark the season. Lucía herself wore a white turban and had scattered photos on the table.

  “I’m picking pictures to go with my book,” Lucía declared. “I’m sure people will like that sort of thing. But they’re all jumbled, and I have boxes and boxes of them. This was from 1974. It was the dress I did not wear to the Arieles, since I didn’t bother asking for an invitation and stayed home. You know who won the Ariel that year? Katy-Fucking-Jurado. ”

  Amelia inspected the photo and smiled. Then she looked down at the table, grabbing a couple of other snapshots. One was a self-portrait, but the other showed young Lucía with Nahum. He was lighting her cigarette and she was smiling a perfect smile.

  “Can I ask,” Amelia said, “you and th
is guy…?”

  “Fucked?” Lucía said with a chuckle. “Who didn’t fuck him, darling? Who didn’t fuck me, for that matter? But he was married. I spun elaborate fantasies about how he was going to leave her, but those men never dump their wives. Not for little actresses who say ‘I love you’ a bit too honestly, anyway.”

  “But you would have worked with him again, on that Viking movie.”

  “That was after. Ages after! It seemed like that back then. Time just slowed to a standstill. Now, time goes so fast. I can’t keep track of anything, anymore. So, yes, afterward I might have worked with him. Things were different.”

  “I don’t know if things can ever be different between some people,” Amelia said.

  Lucía laughed her full laughter. She was old, and she was strong and steady. Amelia wished she could be that steady. She wished she didn’t jitter and jump, unable to sit still for five minutes, her foot nervously thumping against the floor.

  “You have troubles with someone?” Lucía asked.

  “It’s nothing. Probably the least of my worries.”

  “What’s the biggest worry? Mars, my dear?”

  “Mars, yes,” Amelia said, blushing. She hated thinking that she was so easy to read, that Lucía knew her so well. But then, what else did she talk about? Nothing but Mars and she did not talk about Elías with anyone. Everything about the Red Planet, not a word about the man, all truths committed to her mind. If she’d kept a diary, perhaps it might have helped, but it would have been ridiculous tripe.

  “Mars is fine, I suppose. We all must nurse our little madnesses. Look at me here, with all these pictures,” Lucía said, pointing at the photographs. “But I was pretty, wasn’t I? Look at this. Now, this was a face. Light it, frame it, let the world admire it.”