She remembered what she had planned to say to him, about his situation, how she thought it was an issue, but not a problem. But she was sitting next to him on his sofa in his apartment at nine-thirty at night, wearing a smart new green V-neck sweater that she had bought for this very occasion. If she had thought it was a problem or even an issue, what was she doing there? She decided not to say anything unless he asked her. And why would he ask her?
“And you say you're not going back to Cuba?” she asked.
“Not until frogs grow hair,” he said, and took the cup from her hands.
Diane decided to go straight to the cinema the next morning and skip the interrogation from Rachel. She spent the morning listening to Miss Dorothy Vail complain about her bursitis, tracking down the plumber, and contacting surviving members of the Hollywood blacklist for a panel discussion. She arrived at Rachel's apartment at two o'clock, wanting only a shower.
“Diane! Come meet my book group,” Rachel called when Diane entered the apartment. A group of sleek women in tight pants, low-cut shiny sleeveless tops and serious jewelry were arranged languidly on the living room furniture, as if posing for an advertisement for an Italian liqueur.
“Oh, you told us about her,” said a woman with long blond hair, capped teeth, full stage makeup and a bare midriff on display. “This is your older sister, the one who never got married.”
Diane smiled. As a single woman, you often found it necessary to walk around armed and a bit mysterious, if only not to spend your days receiving instructions, criticism and pep talks, no matter how well-meaning. Of course, Rachel's friends had never been the well-meaning kind.
“So how come you never got married?” asked another camera-ready wife.
Diane wondered if people who asked this wanted her to burst into tears in front of them, and if she did, whether it would shorten the conversation.
“Well, there must be something terribly wrong with me.” Diane walked past them, smiling; she wished she could shine her flashlight in their eyes.
She was out of clean clothing in every category. She'd rather buy new clothing than ask Rachel how to use the washing machine. Surely Rachel had no idea, and would give the laundry to Marcelina, and Diane couldn't bear to be dependent on her sister's help. She could wait to ask Marcelina when Rachel wasn't around. But Rachel was always around! Of course, it was her home.
Diane went to the scary, crusty maid's bath, where surely no one before her had ever taken a shower, and began to wash her hair. She had spent the night with Vladimir, connecting on various levels, not thinking about his wife in Cuba. Vladimir was attentive, but he wasn't particularly interested in kissing, she was disappointed to discover. She wondered if this was an issue or a problem.
Rachel was sitting on the pullout sofa when Diane returned from the shower in a towel. “So where'd you go last night?”
“Out,” she said, meaning, “Get out of my room.” But Rachel was planted.
“I think you were out with that guy.”
“What guy?”
“The architect,” Rachel said. “The married one.”
Rachel wasn't moving. Diane hunted for clean underpants in her luggage, knowing that there were none to be had. Such a simple thing, clean clothing.
Cheryl arrived, wearing burgundy lipstick and a halter top. “You didn't come home last night,” she said, looking at Diane's body as she pulled on the underpants, which happened to be ripped and sad-looking, as well as dingy.
“Diane has a crush!” Rachel told her daughter.
All her life Diane had waited for Rachel to be punished for her indiscretions. It never happened.
Cheryl squealed. “Who? Who is he? Is he cute?”
“Your mother was always immature,” Diane told Cheryl. “But I expect more of you.” She found a bathrobe, which she pulled on over the towel.
“Lara said he's gorgeous, with long black hair.”
“Eeuuw!” Cheryl was up and moving again. “I hate long hair on guys!”
“Me too,” said Rachel. “But look at your aunt!”
Cheryl left the room, bored by now.
“How was it?” Rachel asked.
“This has to stop,” Diane warned.
“Ooh, I knew it! I could tell the minute you walked in! I'm calling Lara!”
“You're barking up the wrong tree,” Diane warned.
“Okay, okay, so it wasn't the Russian architect,” she said. “It was somebody else, then. So how was he?”
Inside Rachel beat the heart of a tabloid; Diane had never shared anything of value with her. She dressed and ran into the street with her hair in wet tangles; if she hustled, she might have time to buy underpants before her appointment with Paul Zazlow. On the way downtown, she called her friend Claire. She needed to line up another sofa bed.
JANUARY
VLADIMIR HAULED HIMSELF out of bed. It was January 1, his birthday— which, as luck would have it, was also María's birthday. Every year, he tried to focus on his new goals for the New Year, and got snagged on the fact of it. Sometimes he thought about how pleasant his life would be without the heaviness dragging him down. He could come and go, organize and protest, marry or just date, talk and disagree, without feeling ashamed, wrong, guilty, illegal. Was this too much to ask? On the other hand, every day he woke up not in Cuba was a gift.
During the run-up to Christmas, five separate Cubans, some of them living in the United States since the sixties who really should have known better, had sent him “Feliz Pascua” messages. Pascua was Easter. You really had to hand it to Fidel Castro, who had managed to eradicate nearly five hundred years’ worth of Catholicism in a single generation. But how was it possible to live in the United States for forty years and not know what the holiday celebrated on December 25 was called?
At the ink-black end of the day, he met Bebo and three friends in a café off Kennedy Boulevard in West New York, New Jersey, to talk about a protest for the anniversary of the Black Spring crackdown of March 18, 2003. Vladimir started the meeting by describing a terrific idea to come out of Holland, where activists placed seventy-five typewriters in front of the Cuban Mission to the Hague, one for each of the dissidents arrested. Each machine was loaded with a single page typed with the name of a dissident and the number of years he'd received in prison for crimes against the State, such as writing independent journalism, sharing books with others, composing poetry.
“We should make a portable jail and stand in it on Lexington Avenue,” Bebo suggested.
“We'd probably need a permit for that,” Vladimir said. “My experience with the City of New York has taught me that there's always a permit issue.”
“Well, clearly, you would know better,” Bebo said with sudden heat, and turned to look out the window. Had Bebo taken offense at Vladimir's mention of his experience? As if he'd been pointing out Bebo's lack of experience? That wasn't what he'd meant at all.
Miguel, an artist, suggested making a cage out of light and protesting at night—no permit necessary. Ernesto, a lawyer, suggested that they wear the black-and-white-striped uniform of convicts—he'd seen some as Halloween costumes at a party store. Oscar, a Spanish teacher, suggested they stage a hunger strike in front of the Cuban Mission.
Ernesto said it wouldn't bother him; the food he'd been eating lately was execrable. There followed a conversation about the intrinsic worth of Cuban food in Union City West New York and Manhattan. No restaurant could compare with Miguel's mother's food; moreover, there was nothing special about any of the so-called Cuban restaurants, including the ones in Manhattan. In fact, Manhattan itself was overrated. You couldn't compare it to Havana.
Speaking of Havana: Oscar announced that the sister of someone he knew was going back in a week. This was a tricky proposition ethically, Vladimir said. If you had gained U.S. residency or citizenship by claiming that you were being persecuted politically, how could you go back? Each man at the table took the time to announce that he had never gone back, nor would he ever
, as long as the hijo de puta was around. But taking advantage of others going back to send letters, medicines or presents to those left behind was something else entirely, Oscar said. If it was morally reprehensible to take advantage of someone else doing a morally reprehensible thing, then so be it, Miguel announced with a slap to the table that made the cups and glasses jump. If he could make a material difference in the lives of his mother, brother, nieces and nephews by sending them medicine, food and clothing, he would gladly have it on his conscience.
Vladimir had hit the limits of his patience.
“Look, do we agree on the premise that the protest should be silent?”
“I don't know how we can enforce that,” Bebo said, “although I think it would play well in the media.”
Vladimir suddenly remembered that he'd made a date with Diane.
He made excuses and propelled himself through the icy streets of West New York, the fluorescent-lit shabbiness of Port Authority, and the empty rattling bleakness of the off-hours downtown local.
“What's ‘early’ for you?” Diane said accusingly when he arrived in her messy office. “I've been waiting here for three hours.”
He was hit with a wave of fatigue. Another norteamericana with a watch. He sat in her desk chair and looked over her scattered commotion. He could help her create a system to streamline the paperwork, but he had a feeling she was one of those people who are proud of their mess. This kind of person spends more time searching for her important papers than working on them.
“I'm here now,” he said carefully. “Is it too late to see a movie?”
“You can see the next show of Rear Window. I've seen it about twelve times, once this afternoon. But you go watch. I have other things to do.”
“So let's skip it,” he said. “What would you like to eat?”
“I got too hungry, I'm sorry. I had a sandwich, I couldn't wait.”
It hadn't been a good beginning with Diane. It felt off, somehow. Diane was a good person, but it was clear she wanted more than was available, in terms of time, attention, affection, energy. He was often at this juncture with a woman, but it usually took a few months to get to it. With Diane, it had happened right away: they had only been seeing each other for two weeks.
“I'm sorry. I worked all day on Cinema II, and I lost track of time.”
“I guess as a client I should be glad. May I see?”
He rolled out his sketches. She came close to him, put an arm around his chest, and looked over his shoulder. She seemed less annoyed.
“I've been thinking about the movie theater as a sequence of spaces. You go out into public space to have a collective, but private experience.”
She kissed his cheek, cast a lovely blue-eyed glance at him, and he pointed to a sketch.
“From the big street you stop in front of a small space, the tickets box.”
“The box office,” she suggested.
He nodded. “Then you pass into a bigger space: the lobby and the snack bar. Then you go through doors onto a narrow hall, and pass through more doors into a big space, the theater, where you sit on a small space, your seat, to get intimate with the people in the screen on a grand scale, while you ignore the people sitting next to you.”
“If you're lucky enough to sit next to people who don't receive phone calls or kick your chair.”
“Right. So I was thinking that perhaps it's the combination of big and small, intimate and grand, that makes the movies so powerful and popular.”
She kissed him on the mouth. “This is what you did this afternoon?”
“That and answer hate mail from Cuba,” he lied. “Most movie theaters are burgundy, navy or gray. Why not go all the way with black velvet chairs?”
“Very interesting,” she said. “Who's sending you hate mail?”
He sighed. “Former friends.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes, but not now. I'm actually quite hungry.” He glanced at her. “Would you like to watch me eat something?”
On a slushy gray Tuesday the following week, Diane took the Metro-North train into Manhattan from Glenwood, a dreary, generic suburb in Westchester with no real town. There, her friend Claire, whom she'd known since seventh grade, lived with her Big and Tall husband and bland suburban children on a cul-de-sac in a newly constructed Tudor mansion perched on a high, grassy mound. In spite of the many bedrooms, Diane was sleeping on a sofa bed in one of the living rooms—perhaps so that she wouldn't get too comfortable.
Claire's husband, Robert—a man whose taste in cinema was limited to the collected works of Bruce Willis—demanded all Claire's attention and time. Claire fed the children, and then fed Robert. Robert didn't cry when the ketchup was put on the wrong side of the plate, but on Diane's second night in residence, he demanded to know why they were out of beer.
“Because you've been drinking it all?” Diane joked, and saw Robert's face darken. That was the last family dinner for Diane; she was out as much as possible. Even so, she could imagine her suitcase of dirty laundry in the den igniting a row in her absence. Robert liked his underclothes ironed, so whatever time Claire spent with Diane was clearly wasted.
More and more people boarded the train; after the last Westchester stop, people had to stand. Not everyone in the suburbs was married, and not everything outside Manhattan was the suburbs. Perhaps she should leave New York City altogether. It was much too soon to show up at Vladimir's door with a suitcase, no matter how small. He seemed to be receding even as she got closer to him. He was consumed by work and she had every right to expect him to be: he was her architect, after all. Cuban politics seemed to spill over into every area of his life. He interested her, but perhaps the politics was too much. She wondered if she interested him. He didn't give much away.
There was a time when this topic would have been fuel for a lively conversation with Claire, over coffee. Claire used to be interested, even after her marriage. But somehow, boy problems at the age of almost forty had become too embarrassing to discuss out loud, more embarrassing even than boy problems had been in the seventh grade. Diane remembered the last time she mentioned to Lara the strange behavior of a man she was seeing. Without missing a beat, and looking her straight in the eye, Lara changed the subject.
You're impatient? Diane wanted to scream. Try living this life, the same damn thing over and over. Nothing, nothing, nobody! Eighteen months of bad first dates alternating with Soup for One. And then: A prospect! Excitement! A living male, stimulating and unavailable! Clearly there was some lesson Diane was supposed to be learning. Whatever it was, it eluded her. Discussing it publicly only left her open to pity, criticism or matchmaking. It was unseemly that she was still making the rounds.
At Grand Central, she realized that she'd left her keys in West-chester.
Paul Zazlow darted across the street to meet her. With the shock of straight dark brown hair flopping across his forehead, the cheekbones that could cut paper and an air of combined haste and languor, he reminded her of the young Alain Delon. The tight-fitting pale gray suits and shiny black shoes added to the illusion, and initially, as they toured the lower end of Manhattan properties with fatal flaws, she'd felt as if she were in a small European movie full of intrigue and possibilities. A month into the process, with three deals that had fallen through, Diane was impatient with him, although it wasn't his fault.
“Nice sweater,” he said as he opened the lobby door.
“Sarcasm?” She'd worn the green sweater nearly every day for two weeks.
“No, it's beautiful. And fragrant.”
“Paul. I can't handle one more night on a sofa bed without some kind of hope.”
“I have a feeling in my bones today.”
Paul often had this feeling in his bones. The building had been a children's hospital in the nineteenth century; it was now a marble-paved luxury rental with historical plaques in the lobby. They waited for the elevator.
The apartment was a studio triplex, Pa
ul noted.
“A what?”
“That must be a misprint. Let's take a look.”
Upstairs, there was a landing pad, about ten feet by ten feet, with a spiral staircase to another level, which was eight by eight, but had a tiny bathroom. Up another spiral staircase sat a doll's kitchen and a four-by-four space—perhaps for a single chair to overlook the levels below. It was a studio triplex.
“I don't think I could have a complete thought in this space,” Diane said.
Normally Paul countered ambivalence or criticism with some unique asset she hadn't noticed, but apparently he couldn't argue with that.
An hour later, they were in a pirate's kitchen on the Upper West Side, where a picturesque chest overflowing with gold coins, jewel-studded medallions and strands of pearls sat on the counter next to the fridge. A mermaid was painted on the door.
“This is to rent or to buy,” Paul read from a sheet.
“Can I buy the place with sunken treasure, matey?”
“You've got to get realistic, Diane,” Paul said, leaning against the mast. “You're not going to find what you want at the price you want. You'll have to make some compromises. Take out the nets and the sails and this could be a great kitchen. Think what Vladimir could do with this space.”
What did Paul know about her and Vladimir? She ignored the insinuation.
“Where's the stove?” she asked. “There's no stove?”
At the office, her mother called to make plans for Uncle Mort's birthday.
Diane cut her off. “I don't think so.”
“Are you still upset about that?”
Diane didn't respond.
“What about Saturday night? We're having the Steins over for dinner, you know how much they love you.”
“Can't do it, I have plans.”
“And Sunday morning? We could come to Westchester, take you and Claire and the kids out for brunch?”
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