Viridiana placed the comb down and stopped in front of him, pushing the hair out of her face so she could take a good look at him. Gregory looked back up at her, his eyes fixed on her own.
“It’s like I told you. I’m twenty-nine and my life is slipping away.”
She made an offhand gesture. “That’s very sad.”
He placed his hands on her waist, drawing her close.
“It’s the whole story and you know it’s true.”
“I’m not going to be your shill,” she said, but she was already dithering and he knew it.
“No, that’s done,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s over and done. That’s the whole reason why Daisy and I fought, that’s why we grew apart. I wanted out. I want out.”
That’s what she desired, too. Out. Out of this town, this state, out into the world.
“So, then?” he asked, his voice smooth as silk. His left hand was splayed against her back but the right one had found her breast. “You believe me?”
“Of things despaired of,” she whispered, a shiver running down her spine.
“What?”
“Yes, yes, alright.”
“You mean it?”
She nodded and to prove it, she kissed him wholeheartedly, fiercely. She thought she’d drown without Gregory and clung to him tight. She couldn’t let go now, she didn’t want to. Her heart wouldn’t take it. Without him, what did she have? Nothing but that damned and endless desert outside that wanted to eat her alive.
* * *
Two days they spent like that, between kisses and caresses and murmurings, moving between her room and his. Two days with the portable radio on, listening to music, dancing to slow songs, the same way people must dance in the big city discotheques. Or else, laying on the bed, his hands skimming her skin. There were a couple of things she wouldn’t do, but in many ways she was willing to oblige, especially when his breath was hot against her ear telling her sweet words.
Two days she put off her trip into town, but the evening of the third day, Daisy opened Viridiana’s door and waltzed in, not even a courtesy knock. Viridiana was sitting on the bed and she had the tape recorder on her lap. Viridiana tried to quickly stuff it away from sight.
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to listen to your silly tapes. There’s nothing there that’s valuable,” Daisy said, leaning against Viridiana’s desk.
“Then maybe you wouldn’t mind giving mine back.”
“No. That’s the valuable part, silly.”
Daisy looked out Viridiana’s window but there was nothing to see there unless you liked staring at the generator.
“I want to make sure we are okay with each other, that we understand each other. I know you don’t like me right now, but one day you will understand that what I am giving you is a good education,” Daisy said.
Viridiana wondered exactly what kind of “education” Daisy had given Gregory. She didn’t doubt it had happened as he said, that he had been the younger, more inexperienced party and then he’d met Daisy and he hadn’t stood a chance. He’d been a tiny fly stumbling onto a great web and the jaws of a vicious spider.
“Seduction and manipulation are tools you should always have in your arsenal. Besides, Lawrence is an easy mark.”
Daisy turned around and looked at Viridiana with this big smile on her face, like she expected they were fast friends again. Gregory had decamped for his own room, saying he needed a shower, and now Viridiana wondered if he’d timed it on purpose, so Daisy could have a go at her. She frowned.
“You should know. I bet you have a lot to say about marks,” Viridiana replied.
Daisy did not seem put off by the curt response. In fact, her smile seemed to expand, to go from a placid imitation of a smile to the authentic item.
“You think we are very different, don’t you? That I don’t understand you? You think you’re the victim here, poor little thing. We’re not so different,” Daisy declared. “I know what it’s like to claw your way up a steep cliff. It was a brutal, lonely climb.”
“Not that lonely. How did you meet him?” Viridiana asked. “How long ago?”
“You really want to hear that old story? Ten years ago.”
He’d said he had met Daisy when he was more or less Viridiana’s age, meaning Gregory had spoken truthfully about that. He couldn’t have been that jaded at nineteen. He couldn’t have been that bad. Viridiana bet that much of Gregory’s current predicament was due to Daisy and Daisy alone. She had ruined his life and now intended to ruin Viridiana’s.
Viridiana stared at Daisy and Daisy sat down at the foot of the bed.
“He tried to pull a little con on me. A little thing, an amateur’s ploy. I saw through him immediately. And I wanted him immediately. I wanted him very badly. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted someone quite as much as I wanted him. He wanted me back. It was thrilling.”
Daisy traced a line across Viridiana’s bedsheets, as if indicating the path Gregory had walked in his quest for her.
“Of course, I didn’t relent immediately. I made him sweat for it, I made him guess. He ran in circles chasing me. He loves the chase. That’s probably why he wants you. Because he doesn’t quite have you yet. Once he does, he’ll probably vanish in three seconds flat,” Daisy said.
“He didn’t vanish from your life, did he?”
“No. But it’s not the same thing at all. We had a lot more gluing us together. Greed, for one.”
“Now, you don’t.”
“You’re right. But now I don’t want him anymore.”
“Maybe it’s the other way around.”
Daisy leaned forward and reached forward, catching Viridiana’s face between her hands. “You’re such a tiny girl. All you are missing is a pretty yellow bow in your hair and you’ll be ripe for a picture book. Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood? What do you think?”
“What’s your point?” Viridiana asked, pushing her hands away, but Daisy caught Viridiana’s hand in turn, clasping it tight. Too tight. She dug her nails into Viridiana’s skin.
“Happy endings have a price, Viridiana. Hansel and Gretel don’t get to escape the witch’s house until they’ve pushed her in the oven, and you don’t get to run off with him until you’ve paid the toll and the toll is Lawrence Landry.”
“Let go.”
“Your mark, Viridiana. Lawrence is your mark. Stop stalling and do it. Gregory can carry you to the fairyland you so desperately desire but I need to have what’s mine,” Daisy said, releasing Viridiana.
Chapter 19
Viridiana stood on the beach where the fishermen dragged the sharks. She had hoped to see their boats by the shore. They had left already, gone to find the day’s catch. She was greeted instead by the boy she’d seen the last time. He was sitting under the shade of the shack. He raised his head when he spotted her and realizing it was no one of importance, he returned his attention to the net he was mending.
She needed time to think and she couldn’t think inside the house. Either Daisy would ambush her, or Gregory would place bruising kisses down her neck, and it was the fourth day and Viridiana knew she couldn’t put this off. So she’d gone to the seashore, to look at the shark meat laid out to dry like linen. The music from a little radio in the shack filled the air with the distorted voice of Camilo Sesto. The sea seemed to be painted with a brush, flat and lifeless.
What to do, now?
I’m going to lie.
I’m going to tell the truth.
Neither sentence had any meaning. The sea might have meaning, it might be the only thing left with meaning.
A fish had been left stranded by the tide between the crevice of a few rocks and a gull was pecking its eyes, even though the fish was still alive. It stirred and tried to flap its tail.
Another omen. No doubt a bad one. Viridiana turned away from the sea. The sea didn’t have answers. Neither did the desert.
When Viridiana did make it into t
own she veered towards her mother’s store. It was near closing time and her mother lifted her head tiredly from behind the counter, her hands stilling on the cash register. She had her hair back in a bun, a few strands escaping it.
“Hey,” Viridiana said.
“Hello,” her mother said, counting change and carefully putting it back in the cash register, then turning to a notebook and writing down a figure.
“You need help with anything?”
“No.”
Viridiana looked at the curtain behind the counter, which hid the back of the shop and its bathroom. With her eyes closed she could describe the pattern of the curtain, its exact shade of yellow, its texture. She could describe the soap in the bathroom or the plastic flowers placed under a tiny portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which hanged by that bathroom.
Yet she felt like a stranger that evening, like this was the first time she’d walked into the shop.
She had gone to the beach for solace, for answers, for sympathy, and found none against the jagged rocks. Now she turned to her mother. She could tell her the whole thing, everything that had happened since she’d moved in with the tourists. She could tell her about Daisy and Gregory, and the men who’d paid them a visit. She could and maybe Marta would make it better.
She might. She really might.
Viridiana cleared her throat.
“Mom, I was thinking—”
“I’ve heard what you’ve been up to,” Marta said.
“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.
“Alejandro’s been talking about you and that American. You’re sleeping together, he says. And everyone in town has heard about it,” her mother shook her head. “Alejandro says that’s why the man fired him.”
“Lawrence,” Viridiana said. “He’s told people I’m sleeping with Lawrence? He’s lying. He’s mad at me and he’s lying. You believe him?”
Marta stared at Viridiana, and Viridiana couldn’t help it, she thought of Gregory. Gregory’s kisses on her lips, his hands on her thighs, his tongue exploring her. Guilty as charged, she thought, even though the man they had pointed at was the wrong one.
She blushed, but out of anger and not out of shame. That fucking bastard, talking about her behind her back.
“People have seen you,” her mother said. “Walking around with him, eating with him.”
“It’s not a sin.”
“Your stepfather is upset, our friends are gossiping. You shouldn’t come by for dinner for a couple of weeks.”
“You believe them!”
“I don’t believe them,” her mother said. “I believe my eyes. I know you and I know there’s something going on with you. I can guess what it is.”
Viridiana swallowed. People said her mother had been pretty when she’d been young, but Viridiana couldn’t see how. Her face was narrow and her mouth was bracketed with lines. Her mother’s eyes were hard as obsidian blades, ready to cut her into tiny pieces, but when she spoke Marta sounded tired. And she also sounded… indifferent. Like this discussion didn’t even matter much. Or she’d expected it for a long time now.
Viridiana supposed it made sense. That her mother had prepared herself for disappointment a long time ago, that she had mapped the ways things would go wrong with Viridiana. She’ll fuck up because she’s the daughter of a fuck up. There it came, of course, the mention of her father, right on cue.
“I was like you, once,” her mother said. “I wanted to have the whole wide world. What did it get me? It got me your father and he certainly didn’t have the world in his pocket. This man, he’s sweet talking you.”
“I’m not in any relationship with Lawrence Landry,” Viridiana said. She didn’t even know if she was in a relationship with Gregory, for all the caresses he bestowed on her. When he was holding her, when he was right next to Viridiana, she was ready to believe the sky was green and the grass was blue, but when she had a chance to take a breath it all felt crooked. And there was Daisy. Was he really over her like he said? Even if he was, would Daisy let them go? What about the men who were trying to collect from Daisy and Gregory?
“Mama, I’m not with Lawrence,” she repeated.
Marta looked right through Viridiana. Like grandma had done before she died, when she forgot people’s names and confused Viridiana with her dead sister, when she sat in front of the TV set for hours, observing people in black and white musicals dancing to old tunes. The cloying scenes with Ginger Rogers, the melodramas with Dolores del Río.
Two years gone, her grandmother, and only now did Viridiana realize how much Marta looked like the dead woman.
Marta was silent.
“It doesn’t matter if I am or not,” Viridiana said, wanting to laugh. “You all want me to be guilty so you can punish me. You think I’m a brat, it serves me right.”
Her younger brothers and sisters could do no wrong.
They were not tainted.
It was her, blighted plant. Born bad and twisted.
“I told you to stay in the shop, to work here during the summer, to—”
“I didn’t.”
Marta’s face was a mixture of pity and contempt. Pity must have won because she sighed, pushing back a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’ll talk to your stepfather, I’ll have a chat with—”
“Don’t bother,” Viridiana said, shrugging. “You’re right. He’s my lover. Big deal, huh?”
Her mother was old. She was not yet forty and she was old, like a washing cloth that has lost its colors. Rinsed and dried in the hot Baja California air. Viridiana wondered if she’d look like that one day, if she’d have a similar conversation with her own child.
But no, no. Not like this.
She wouldn’t be like this.
A customer came in and Viridiana took the chance to get out quickly, heading to the hotel. Carmen was working the front desk. She was a nice enough lady with buck teeth and a big grin. She smiled when Viridiana approached her.
They exchanged pleasantries.
“Hey, Carmen, can you do me a favor? Can you ring Mr. Landry and tell him I’m down in the lobby?”
“Sure, alright, let me see,” Carmen said. “Landry.”
“Do we have any messages? Room 12,” said a man
It was the slim man who had gone to visit Daisy and Gregory. Henry. He leaned against the front desk looking from Carmen to Viridiana. Carmen was distracted by a phone call and picked up the receiver and held up a finger indicating it would only take a minute.
Viridiana looked at the man and he returned the look.
He reached into his jacket.
She wondered if he had a gun with him. He must have. Would he wield it against her? Maybe it was a knife. Maybe he was about to take it out and stab her right there, in the lobby.
“Do you have a light?” he asked, as he took out a pack of cigarettes.
“I… I don’t. Maybe, over at the bar,” she said, gesturing in that direction, hoping he would go away. But he didn’t move an inch.
“It’s good to hear that. Young people, these days, they have such bad habits. They start drinking and smoking when they’re still babies. And they keep such bad company. Such bad friends.”
He spoke with the words of a concerned, fussy grandfather, but the guy was at most pushing forty. Besides, his tone was not that of a concerned relative. He had a cool, flat voice. The words didn’t match the speaker at all, which gave them an unpleasant edge.
“You have good friends, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Trustworthy. They wouldn’t lie. Or try to cheat someone would, they?”
Viridiana did not know what to say. She elected to stare at him. Every muscle in her body was tense and if Carmen got off the phone she might have noticed that Viridiana looked like she was about to collapse from the strain of standing.
Yet she stood and she nodded at the man. She must. She found inside of her not the courage,
but the sheer willpower to do it.
I’m Liz Taylor when she first meets Rex Burton in Cleopatra, she told herself. I stand upright. I stand strong.
“Are you waiting for a friend?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“A good friend.”
“Not really.”
“You think I pry, don’t you? That I’m not a gentleman,” the thin man said. “I assure you, I am a gentleman.”
That’s what he said. What she heard in her head, loud and clear, what she read in his eyes was entirely different. Where’s that money? The three of you better hurry. I am losing my patience.
Maybe that’s why the thin man worked for whoever he worked for. Because he could ask those questions without asking, because his circuitous phrases and his measured voice were more unnerving than a kick to the gut and open threats.
“I think you’re a gentleman,” she said.
She didn’t even know what she was saying, but she must have telegraphed the right idea because he tucked away his pack of cigarettes and nodded at her.
Carmen was off the phone and had finally dipped into the tiny wooden bins on the wall behind her where all the messages were stacked.
“No, no messages,” Carmen said.
“Too bad,” said the man, but he didn’t bother looking at Carmen. His eyes were fixed on Viridiana.
“Can I help you with anything else?”
“Make sure you are taking care of yourself,” he said, still looking at Viridiana.
The man walked away without another word. Carmen grumbled something about rude people, then picked up the phone.
“Yes? Mr. Landry? There’s someone for you in the lobby.”
Carmen handed the phone to Viridiana. She pressed the receiver against her ear and exhaled. “Lawrence? It’s Viridiana. I’m wondering if you had a minute.”
“Sure. I’ll be right down,” he said.
Viridiana gently placed the receiver back in its cradle. She thought of how she was going to talk to him, how she could explain this whole thing. Funny, she hadn’t figured that out yet although she should have. At the beach she thought nothing. She merely stood at the shore, dreamy and melancholic, which was not unusual for her. On the way to the hotel she had not paused to collect herself.
Untamed Shore Page 20