As they cross Union Street, Sylvia smiles at her. “You know, I live back up the hill on Washington.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry, I thought I had. Anyway, I wanted to see how you’d take the hills. Tells you a lot about a person.”
Inez is shocked by Sylvia’s comment. “So what did you find out about me?”
“That you can be both cautious and wild. By the way, would you like to come in and have a glass of wine?”
Inez is surprised by how appealing the idea sounds. She finds much about the reporter, whatever her beat, intriguing. Further, she’s surprised by the way she’s been feeling with the reporter. In a word, girlish. Something she hasn’t felt in ages. It’s enough to make her laugh out loud.
“So?” Sylvia asks.
“Oh, I better not.”
“There’s the cautious response. Come see how the other half lives.”
“What other half?”
“Those of us living the unconventional single life.”
“All right. Just for a few minutes.”
IN the time it’s taken Inez to park and get to apartment number seven, her new friend, Sylvia, has changed clothes. The reporter is barefoot now, in dungarees and a man’s broadcloth shirt with long tails. Her toenails are painted red. Several sticks of incense are burning. Atop a radiator shelf a trio of African violets, with shiny leaves and small, immaculate blooms, are sprouting out of old coffee cans. Sylvia’s furnishings are a blend of splintering wicker and discarded crates. A love seat, covered in a frayed paisley fabric, looks as if it might goose someone with a roving spring. Low-slung brick and plywood bookshelves snake around the bottom of the walls in the main room. Why did it take her so long to realize? How dense is she? Sylvia is a bohemian. A gypsy. A beatnik. Inez becomes suddenly mindful of what’s in her purse and then chuckles to herself. Is that something she really needs to worry about? What’s to lose? Twenty-odd dollars and a couple of department-store charge cards. Ashamed of her thought, Inez offers her hostess a meek smile.
“Sit wherever you like,” Sylvia says.
The invitation comes across as a curious dare. Inez decides against an overstuffed armchair she might have trouble getting out of and chooses a straight-back chair. At which point, Sylvia goes wild with industry. She pulls a wicker basket chair up close to Inez and drags over a wooden crate, painted forest green, to serve as a side table. Then she bustles into the kitchen nook. Inez watches her pour burgundy from a hulking gallon bottle into a quart carafe. As Sylvia bends over to select a few records on the hi-fi, the tails of her striped shirt slide up her back. Inez finds herself staring at the reporter’s round bottom.
“You have a nice place, Sylvia,” she says. “It has a lot of character.”
“You think it’s odd, don’t you?” Sylvia says, pulling an album out of its sleeve.
“No, no, not at all.” Inez takes out her compact and has a quick look at herself—her skin looks flushed but there’s not a lot to do about it. She puts away the compact and peeks at her watch—in little more than an hour Joey will be out of school. At seven years old, in the third grade now after skipping the second, he’s her little man. Inez visualizes his walk home, crossing Anza with the school patrol, then up the steep Thirty-sixth Avenue hill to the stoplight on Geary Boulevard, where Anna, walking up from Presidio Junior High, will meet him.
Sylvia stands and straightens her shirt. “You must be wondering what you’re doing here.”
“You asked me to come up, so I came,” says Inez, offering a wry smile.
The first record drops and the needle makes contact. Ravel. His string quartet. A lovely choice.
“You like Ravel, Sylvia?”
“Yes, but I don’t know anything about him.” Sylvia smiles, sheepishly.
“There’s not that much to know.”
Sylvia bows her head. “I’m nervous having you here, Inez. I debated with myself about what music to put on. Do I dare put on something I know little about for a master like you?”
“Please. Do you think I’m going to test you?” Inez says, her eyes brightening, amused.
Sylvia shrugs. “I’m sorry, I’m nervous. Put yourself in my position— I’m barely a reporter and you’re so talented. Not to speak of the fact that you’re just about the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You’re quite the flatterer, Sylvia.”
“That’s not true. The fact is, I’m flattered to be in your company.” Sylvia walks toward the kitchen nook. “Would you care for a glass of red wine? It’s inexpensive, but surprisingly good.”
“I’ll have a little glass.”
Sylvia returns from the kitchen with a couple of large glasses of wine.
“That’s enough wine to fell a peasant,” Inez says.
“You handled the sake well enough.” Sylvia touches the violinist’s shoulder as she hands her a glass of wine. “So, tell me about Ravel.”
“What can I tell you?” Inez carefully swirls the cheap wine around in the big tumbler and smiles at the thought of Jake doing the same with his pricey cognac. “I adore this quartet. It’s the only one Ravel wrote.”
“Have you played it?” Sylvia asks, holding her wineglass aloft like a rosy torch as she lowers herself into the wicker chair.
“Yes, of course.” Inez takes a sip of the wine. It’s not nearly as bad as she feared. “It’s as if Ravel has his own genetic timbre, a particular delicacy that really comes through in the quartet. At least I think it does.”
“If you say it does, it does. As my mother used to say, don’t equivocate. Especially when you’re talking about timbre.” Sylvia stretches the word out as if it’s a rare fruit she’s tasting. With her lips still puckered around the word, Sylvia winks at Inez.
The violinist, momentarily breathless, draws in a large draught of air. Who’d have guessed that the meek reporter who came to her door had so expansive a personality?
“It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it? What exactly is it that creates timbre, Inez?”
“Oh, so now you’re testing me.”
Sylvia stretches her legs out in front of her. “I’m only curious. Is it a matter of tonality?”
“Formally, I s’pose timbre depends on the layering of harmonics. But when I mentioned the word I wasn’t thinking formally.” Inez finds herself looking at the reporter’s bare feet, which are surprisingly well cared for, the nails glazed in red.
“Were you suggesting a metaphysical timbre?” Sylvia asks.
“Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Not at all. I’m just trying to keep up.”
Inez takes a swallow of wine.
“Inez,” Sylvia says, looking squarely at the violinist, “do you think two people who happen to be fond of each other create a particular timbre?”
“I’ve never heard the word used in that way.”
“But it’s not out of the question?”
Inez nods and gulps at her wine.
“Tell me some more about Ravel,” says Sylvia.
“What’s to tell you?” Inez says, listening to the sweet lilt of the first violin. “The music has a certain childlike quality, don’t you think? But at the same time it’s fastidious. Much as the man is supposed to have been. They say he collected figurines and mechanical, clockwork toys. Stravinsky called him ‘the Swiss watchmaker.’ Apparently, he was queer.”
Sylvia laughs.
“What?”
“Just how you said that.”
What did she say? Sylvia is smiling at her. It’s a curious smile. Shy. Flirtatious. It’s almost as if the gypsy girl with the pedicure is trying to woo her. Embarrassed, Inez takes a couple more gulps of wine. There is no almost about it. She slurps more of her wine. Without thinking, she’s finished her glass, poured it down as if she were drinking juice, and Sylvia’s there with the carafe to refill it. It is really nothing more than a large jelly jar. Her strange host has got her drinking wine out of a jelly jar.
S
ylvia raises her jar in a toast: “To good cheap wine, to ‘the Swiss watchmaker,’ and to beautiful Inez.”
“Thank you,” Inez says and allows Sylvia to clink her glass, which, given its thickness, makes a flat thud sound.
Sylvia eases back into the wicker chair across from her.
Inez wonders whether she’s lost her will or purposely suspended it. Why isn’t she standing up right now and offering a definitive good-bye? What happens if she returns Sylvia’s smile?
“I hope I haven’t embarrassed you,” Sylvia says.
“Who said anything about being embarrassed?” Inez realizes that she has turned away from Sylvia and is looking at the bare hardwood floor. She lifts her head and forces herself to meet Sylvia’s eyes.
Sylvia smiles shyly. “So the fact that I have a crush on you doesn’t make you feel odd?”
“I should leave.”
“Why?”
“I should.”
“Who says you should?”
“I think I should.” Her instinct is to look at the floor again, but not to get up and leave.
“Have you ever loved a woman, Inez?”
Inez repeats the question in her head—Have you ever, have you ever, have you ever?—until she makes herself dizzy. Who’d have expected so forward a seduction? Who’d have expected a seduction at all?
“Are you angry with me?” Sylvia asks, drawing her lips into a pout.
“Yes, I’m furious with you.” Inez says it in jest but feels a shiver of fright.
“Thank you for not leaving.”
“I have to go soon.”
“I hope not.”
They sit silently for a moment, listening to the third movement of the Ravel, the Très lent, as it weaves measures of strings and light twigs into a gentle basket. With that, the phonograph needle skitters to the inner edge of the vinyl, lifts stiffly, and returns to the perimeter, waiting while the next LP drops. The overture to Stravinsky’s Petroushka. Who’d have believed that composers could be stacked on top of each other like this? Any girl with a cheap hi-fi can construct her own hierarchy of composers, one record after another. Inez thinks she should stand up, prepare to leave, but she has no will for it.
“Would you mind turning over the Ravel?” she says.
“Don’t you like the Stravinsky?” Sylvia says, a little hurt.
“No, I love Petroushka.”
“I was so excited when you mentioned Stravinsky before. I couldn’t wait to see your surprise when the record dropped.”
“I guess I’m from the old school; I like to finish one thing before I move on to the next.”
“Of course. I’ll turn over the Ravel.”
Sylvia sits for a quiet moment before getting up to flip the record. There is something defiant in Sylvia’s pose. It is as if she is intent on demonstrating her poise. Look at me, she seems to be saying; I dare you to see me as homely. And if this is her dare, she’s right; you’d have to subscribe to a very narrow notion of beauty to ignore Sylvia’s lovely green eyes, her shrugging cuteness, the way her short hair frames her sweet, determined face. But why should Inez care a wit about the reporter’s looks? What does it mean that Sylvia has become more enchanting by the moment?
Sylvia finally bounds toward the hi-fi, which is stacked on a heavy wooden crate. Inez notices the ease with which Sylvia crouches, and, again, the shape of her bottom in the dungarees. Women’s bottoms have never been of particular interest to her, but here she is, captivated. Sylvia glances at her over her shoulder and Inez feels herself blush. The Ravel reenters the room as if it were meant to orchestrate the moment.
Inez is amused by the strange seduction. The whole thing feels curiously safe, as if she were watching the proceedings through a department-store window. She’s more or less relaxed now. The Ravel helps. She listens to the lyric rise of the theme and wonders what it would be like to be reborn French, swaddled in a blanket of such lush and sensuous emotion, the violins woven through the muscle of the viola, the bones of the cello. How can something so graceful, she wonders, be so penetrating?
Sylvia, her glass of wine tilted against her chin, looks wistfully at Inez. “Have you ever been tempted by a woman?”
“Are you trying to tempt me?”
Sylvia’s eyes fall. “I doubt that I can tempt you,” she says. “You are so beautiful.”
“I really better leave.”
“Please, don’t.”
Inez stands up. She knows that it’s time to walk out the door, but the coziness of the absurd apartment has wrapped itself around her. As much as anything, she’s pleased to be in somebody else’s reality, to have even the briefest vacation from her self-absorption, to feel her shell dissolve, if only momentarily. Whatever happens in this apartment gets to stay here, just like the wicker furniture and the shelf of African violets.
“I’m not sure what you’re after, Sylvia.”
“I’m not either.”
Part of the problem is that she’s had too much to drink. “I’ve got to use your bathroom. May I?”
“By all means.”
Inez steps deliberately, as if along a dotted line, to the bathroom, where she sits for a long while on the toilet seat, studying a framed photograph on the wall. It’s of a red enamel door with a brass knocker. Once she’s peed and considered the paleness of her thighs, she looks again at the photo. Where is the door from? Clearly, it isn’t in America. She’s never seen a red quite like the red of this door. A Chinese red, perhaps, with a bit more orange in it? What would it be like to walk through that door? What would she enter?
Inez considers her face in the mirror. Her cheeks are no longer flushed, but she looks strange to herself, like a painterly distortion of a woman she once knew. Inez checks her watch—it’s just after three. Joey is out of school by now, and up the hill to Geary. Anna has met him and walked him by the Chinese grocery on Thirty-seventh Avenue where he’s bought penny candy or, if he had a nickel to spare, a pack of baseball cards. Inez reminds herself that Joey has a house key should Anna be delayed at school. As far as Inez knows, this has never happened. Soon enough both kids will be safe at home eating graham crackers and the lime Jell-O she made this morning in Pyrex cups. A while later, Joey will start on his chocolate-covered banana.
By the time she returns to the living room, Inez has forgotten about the idea of leaving. She refills her jelly jar with the cheap burgundy and sits where Sylvia had sat earlier, in the wicker basket chair. She laughs out loud at the sight of Sylvia, half swallowed in the overstuffed chair.
“There’s room here,” Sylvia says. “You don’t have to sit over there.”
Inez shakes her head. “No, I need to keep an eye on you. I’m not sure what you’re up to.”
“Please, sit here.”
“No, I want to look at you.” Once Inez realizes that she can have a hand in the seduction, she’s no longer frightened. Sylvia closes her eyes. Inez can hear her breathing, or imagines she can hear breathing, across the little room. It is as if the business had begun, as if her hands were already touching Sylvia. But she is still sitting in the basket chair, sipping wine, emptying the jelly jar again.
When Sylvia opens her eyes, she looks like the most innocent girl in the world. Inez wonders if she’s capable of taking this woman’s heart, of offering her own? Does she have anything left to offer?
“Come over here,” Sylvia says again.
“You sure seem to want me beside you.”
“Yes.”
Inez takes a wide, drunken turn around the coffee table and plops indelicately beside Sylvia. Inez tries to catch her breath. The two of them are silent. The whole world has stopped breathing. The moment exists in a vacuum. Inez flings her head back and feels the wine inside her, which she pictures as hot mercury, swirling to a roving pulse. Sylvia bends toward her and nuzzles the tip of her pointy nose against Inez’s neck— the smallest touch, yet the sensation is so acute. Whatever armor has protected her and spared her from feeling anything for so lo
ng is gone now. Her mouth is open and hungry for everything.
Sylvia leads Inez by the hand into the bedroom, and she’s surprised to see the small bed, a single bed. Inez lies down dutifully, and Sylvia lights a single candle on the dresser and then squeezes close beside her. Look at us, Inez thinks, we’re two in a grave. This is the way her mind has gone soft.
She’d forgotten about the rapture of the mouth. How, when she opens her mouth to Sylvia, her entire body, though still clothed, opens, and the shy kisses quickly give way to a fierce appetite. A forty-year-old woman is not supposed to lose her head kissing a girl. Sylvia tastes like wine and berries. Inez is out of her mind with a girl.
As she begins to slip out of her clothes, she worries about her scars, the badge of her childbearing, and what Sylvia will think. Can she leave her camisole on? For the first time since entering Sylvia’s apartment, her body’s anthem, a single pitch, the lonely F above middle C, rises with her breathing. Her first instinct is to curl into a ball on the bed, to present herself in her usual condition, as a woman in a shell.
What surprises her next is Sylvia’s bashfulness. She’d seemed so bold at first, unbuttoning her red-striped shirt and flinging it across the room. Now in a pretty brassiere dotted with pink flowerets, she turns her back to Inez, seeming less coy than shy. Perhaps the two of them should curl up on the tiny bed together and figure out how to make love the way snails do.
“It’s strange,” Sylvia says, “undressing in the light of the day. Maybe we should slip under the covers first.”
Inez sits up for a moment, then stands. She bounces forward a moment on the balls of her feet. “I want to see you, Sylvia.”
Beautiful Inez Page 11