But no: Storm reported an overflowing toilet in the ladies’ room. The photographer Diane had hired to commemorate the evening tripped over the red carpet, landing on his wrist; Angela took him to the Emergency Room at St. Vincent's in a cab.
Javier arrived, wearing one of his father's suits and the birthday sneakers.
Diane gave him a camera she kept in the office, and asked him to take photos as people walked down the red carpet.
“Like paparazzi,” he said with enthusiasm, trying to kiss her.
“No kissing or touching tonight,” she commanded, and as he was about to object she said, “No arguments.”
By six o'clock, a small crowd had gathered on either side of the red carpet to see who showed up. Dorothy arrived, a vision in red chiffon.
Javier snapped photos and shouted, “Dorothy! Miss Dorothy Vail, big star at MGM! Is it true about you and Leonardo DiCaprio?”
Miss Vail lit up on cue, and floated down the red carpet in a lingering fashion, waving to her fans. “Every word! It's all true!”
Estelle arrived in a wheelchair; she was wearing a red sailor suit and matching hat. Herb stood at her side looking immaculate and nautical in a blue blazer and white pants.
“Estelle! Estelle DeWinter!” Javier cried out. “Give us a smile!”
Dorothy immediately pulled Diane aside: Estelle was wearing red.
“Yes, she looks beautiful. And so do you.”
“She said she would be wearing yellow!” said Dorothy.
Lipsky had eaten half the chopped liver by the time the guests began to filter into the lobby. The klieg light lending a starstruck atmosphere to Bedford Street sparked and popped at six-fifteen, leaving a wisp of sulfurous smoke in the air and no light. Vladimir, Chris and Paul arrived together dressed in slick black suits. At least two hundred and fifty people showed up, including four major film directors, three famous movie stars, and ten lesser-known working actors, along with the mayor, Diane's parents, Rachel and Dennis, Lara and her husband and Claire, out for a rare night without husband or kids. During cocktails, Diane was in the midst of a circle made up of Gary and Mary Masters, who were the lone couple in black tie, Jan Mattias, and the cultural affairs commissioner of the City of New York, when Javier arrived and presented himself. Immediately, he was asked what kind of accent he had.
“There are no young Cubans,” Mary said accusingly. “So you must be a defector.”
“Yes, I am defecting, and this woman is my new country,” Javier announced, squeezing Diane's waist and kissing her cheek. Gary and Mary Masters nodded with frozen smiles on their faces, then wandered off to stare in disapproval from a distance. Thereafter the night was a blur. Obliquely, Diane saw Lara wagging her finger at Vladimir, Javier chatting animatedly with Rachel, Gene introducing himself to Vladimir, and Connie and Dorothy deep in conversation, pointing at her. All of it was out of her control. More than half the crowd went to see the new French feature, and a healthy number chose the Kurosawa retrospective.
And everyone had a wonderful time.
She bobbed on the ragged edge of consciousness after the party. She was sitting with Javier on the ravaged couch in her office with shoes off and feet up on the broken coffee table when Vladimir arrived.
They looked up at him expectantly.
“It was a great night, Diane,” Vladimir said.
“It's a beautiful theater, Vladimir.”
“Thank you.”
“It is, Dad.”
“You better take Diane home,” he told Javier. “She looks done out.”
“Done out?” Javier asked.
“Done in?” Vladimir asked.
“She is dead,” Diane agreed.
Vladimir sank into the sofa on the other side of her. He looked tired, too. “Perhaps you'll let me clean up this space for you now that the main work is done.”
“I can't handle more construction.”
“Not construction. Carpet, paint. Shelves for your things. This couch is a horror show.”
“You have no idea,” she said, falling sideways onto Javier's lap. Vladimir made a noise of objection as she put her feet up on his lap. Perhaps Javier cast a conspiratorial look at his father, but she couldn't really be sure—she immediately dropped into sleep.
The conversation shifted into Spanish.
“I'm taking drawing,” Javier said.
“Good,” Vladimir said. “You can never draw too much.”
“Diane and I may go to a museum this weekend. Maybe you'd like to come.”
“I wouldn't want to intrude.”
“She wants things to be normal.”
“Normal is probably not possible.”
“Nevertheless. She wants things to be as normal as possible.”
Vladimir thought about this. Diane's feet were heavy on his thighs. She was an inconvenient woman, a selfish woman, a slob, perhaps a slut. But she meant well. “I'll check my schedule.”
“Diane wants us to spend time together. I mean, you and me. Separate from her. Without, eh, trouble.”
“That would be nice.”
The film had been refreshing, a great escape. He was as proud of the theater as he'd ever been with a project; he wasn't fond of the movies as a rule, but if ever he had to see a film, this was the place to do it. He could see himself coming here, with or without Javier.
Paul and Chris stood at the threshold, taking in the sight of the two of them on the couch with Diane lying across their laps.
“Not another French movie,” said Paul.
OCTOBER
SOMETIMES THE MOVIES can disappoint you. Diane thought of all the many old, obscure and/or foreign films to which she'd dragged people and for which she had not been forgiven. Rocco and His Brothers, for example, a 1960 Visconti effort that started out well enough and then turned into preposterous schmaltz; or the five-hour documentary about the Sinai Campaign shot in the desert in real time; or the Belgian film about people addicted to removing upholstery buttons from strangers’ furniture with their knees. Diane spent her life in the dark, so she was willing to take chances. But some people only saw one movie a year, so it had to be the movie that everyone was talking about.
As part of her “How to End a Picture” series, she had scheduled Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Bertrand Blier, 1978), in which a husband (Gérard Depardieu) at his wits’ end with his wife's depression approaches a total stranger in a restaurant (Patrick Dewaere) to beg him to be her lover and cheer her up. Reluctantly, the stranger lets himself be dragged into their lives, but he can't help the wife (Carole Laure), either; she knits and cleans and cries. The men become friends; they agree that the wife would be happier if she had a child, but she doesn't conceive with either one of them. When the three become counselors at a summer camp, the wife finally finds personal and erotic satisfaction with a thirteen-year-old camper. When she becomes pregnant by him, she moves in to care for him and his aging father, as their maid, in a classic French maid's outfit: a French ending, if ever there was one. Sometimes, movies made no sense, but the French ones, anyhow, were so light and casually elegant that it didn't exactly matter—they were like mini French vacations, after which you went back to your heavy, unfashionable life with its moral accountability and undistinguished food.
Rachel had found out about Javier from Bobby Wald, her new best friend. She had alerted Connie by saying, “Hey, I think Diane may finally get to go to the prom!”
“Darling, do what you want,” Diane's mother told her on the phone. “But remember that you don't always do what's good for you.”
Well, what did she expect her mother to say?
Her father picked up on the other extension. “Are you happy?”
“Very.”
“Well, finally! I'm so glad for you.”
“I did think it was strange that you never introduced us to the father,” Connie said. “So he must not have been very important. You know, before I married your dad, I dated his best friend, who was also his cousin. And look how we
ll that turned out!”
It was one of their courtship stories, how Connie had dropped something under the table during a double date, and Gene had leaned down to pick it up. They'd had a little tête-à-tête under the table, and she'd given him her phone number. Over the years, there had been disagreement over what she dropped. Gene said it was a glove. Connie insisted it was a handkerchief. “I would never have dropped a white glove on the floor,” she always said.
“Let's meet this guy,” Diane's father said. “If you like him, I bet we'll like him. He's how old?”
Diane agreed in theory to this meeting, but continued to avoid scheduling it.
Sometimes a movie can survive a terrible ending because the rest of it hangs together so beautifully. Take Woman of the Year (George Stevens, 1942), with an ending tacked on by the studio in spite of furious protest from screenwriters Ring Lardner, Jr. and Michael Kanin. The film is remembered in spite of the vindictive ending, which puts Katharine Hepburn “in her place” in the kitchen, thereby undercutting the spirit and premise of the strong-willed-career-woman picture.
Endings were not on Diane's mind, however.
On a chilly night in early October, Diane brought Javier to an old-fashioned deli to introduce him to cream soda, pickles and hot pastrami on rye. He took a sip of soda through a straw, and his face opened wide in appreciation.
“Diane! This is amazing!”
As they ate their sandwiches, he taught her a whole series of Spanish curses that fanned out from the basic formation “I shit on your mother.”
“I shit in the heart of your mother,” she repeated in Spanish, and Javier dissolved into laughter. Apparently, she spoke Spanish with a German accent. She continued repeating what he told her in Spanish: “I shit in the heart of your mother the whore.” “I shit in the heart of your mother the epileptic.” She practiced diligently, amused by the waiters, who lingered by their table to laugh at her. It was nice that Javier believed that she could learn Spanish.
Sometimes, when they were walking down the street, people passing did a double take, scanning her face, Javier's face, making calculations and, no doubt, passing judgment. Had she supposed this would be easy? Had she supposed that their togetherness wouldn't provoke commentary? And would Javier one day look at her and think her old and unattractive?
Javier pushed aside his plate and took out his electronic game.
He grinned at her; he was completely present. He really, truly seemed besotted with her. She didn't feel old around him; she felt young around him. How she aged would be something else entirely.
When a new song came on the radio, Javier asked, “Who are they?”
“They are Donna Summer,” she responded.
One day, when he already knew all there was to know about delis and disco, he would find someone else with something new to teach him. In the meantime, they walked west on Twelfth Street with their arms wrapped around each other beneath a large, yellow moon, and he explained the difference between ser and estar. The evening was cool and promising, and she had that back-to-school feeling.
Vladimir sat in a sterile, fluorescent-lit room in the Greater New York Federal Building on Hudson Street, waiting to be fingerprinted for his citizenship application. He'd received an unexpected phone call that morning from his mother, from Madrid. She'd managed to get out of Cuba using an invitation letter from the Preservation Society of Spain. As astonishing as it was that the Ministry of the Interior hadn't compared notes with the Ministry of Culture to deny her an Exit Visa, especially during this time of lockdown, it was even more astonishing that she hadn't told anyone that she was leaving. If Alicia Padrón could keep a secret, then anything was possible.
The strength of the despot was waning; another operation couldn't be far away. Most likely, it would kill him. The dictator had weighed so heavily upon Vladimir, for so many years; even if the monster was never brought to justice, the mere idea of putting Castro in the past tense was an appealing one.
“So why have there been no protests?” Paul had asked the previous evening, as Vladimir was closing his computer down for the night. Sometimes he felt like he was lecturing Paul, but Paul had more questions than a talk show host. Paul should thank his lucky stars that Vladimir had the patience to sit and educate him. Not that he appeared to be learning anything.
“When a feudal lord falls, people wait to see if he dies or survives,” Vladimir said. “Whoever comes after him—Raúl, Alarcón, whoever—won't have the power or charisma to distract everyone from the hunger, the repression, the bankrupt economy and all the vast failures of the Revolution.”
“When will it happen?”
“Once the new regime shows its weakness, then you can expect a change.”
Chris and Paul had been a great help to him in the previous month. They had taken him out to lunch, dinner and a photography show; one weekday, they had distracted him with tennis matches in Flushing Meadows. Chris was very attentive to his shifts in mood. Occasionally, Vladimir would remember what had occurred just recently, and find himself pulling his hair and growling. At these moments, Chris would come by to give him a mint, a steady hand on the shoulder and a sympathetic nod. There was really nothing else to be done. He had found a new site, uChess.com, where you could play in real time. When he had a bad moment, he would sign up for a five-minute game, which went by so fast it was almost like aerobic exercise—much more satisfying than these games that went on for weeks.
“What do you think Raúl will do?” Paul asked.
“When Raúl was placed provisionally in power, instead of trying to endear himself to the public, what did he do?”
Vladimir waited: his pupil had no response.
“He sent out the troops and the police, he called in the Army reservists. So we can expect that this is what he'll do once Castro dies. If he tightens the grip further, then there may be a revolt. Or he may take power and start making concessions. I think we can hope for a velvet revolution.”
“Too hot,” Paul said. “A linen revolution, perhaps.”
Paul was the only one who wanted to talk about Cuba lately. All Vladimir's Cuban friends checked the news constantly; they were sick of the waiting and had nothing to say to one another until it happened. And all Javier wanted to talk about was America.
Magnus had stopped asking questions about the Revolution. He had moved on to Zen, and was now talking about sitting meditation all day long.
“Magnus, I have an idea,” Vladimir had told him the previous day. “Why don't you practice your quiet contemplation while you're in the studio, and talk about it when you go home?”
Even Chris laughed at that one. I'd be grateful to have a partner like me, Vladimir thought.
An official mispronounced his name. Vladimir rose and walked into a back office. Everything was digital now: he put his fingers on a glass, one by one, and watched as the computer ran through millions of fingerprints in a database to see if he was wanted anywhere. He held his breath with each finger and both palms. He wasn't wanted. The processing usually took between ten months and a year; they told him he would receive something in the mail. When he became an American, perhaps another layer of worry and anger would dissolve. When he became an American, he could petition to bring his mother to America as a permanent legal resident. And his son as well—it might be faster than having Javier himself apply for legal residency. As he left the building, looking forward to that day, Vladimir did a double take—he thought he saw the island of Cuba on a passing T-shirt. At the very least, he was imprinted. Perhaps Diane was right: he was obsessed.
Three blocks away, he entered a juice bar and ordered a mango-banana-strawberry shake for the third day in a row. Nobody needed to know about this expensive new ritual. A woman on line in front of him, with straight blond hair falling on bare shoulders, began talking to him. She was on Rollerblades—young, but not a teenager. For God's sake! He wouldn't even think about it.
Her shake arrived, and she lingered, chatting. She asked
about his accent. He decided not to hold it against her: she was attractive. Before he'd even paid for his shake, she asked about his marital status.
“Well, my wife will not give me a divorce,” he said, without thinking.
He felt his face flush, his mouth go dry. He almost took it back.
But she was brimming over with questions: “How long have you been married? Do you live with her?”
He thought a moment. “No, she lives in Cuba.”
“In Cuba? Do you ever see her?”
“Not in twelve years. Thirteen now.”
“Wow,” she said, eyes wide, a complication junkie ready for anything.
He took a sip of the shake, wondering if he should tell her the real story. The liquid was thick, intense and delicious; he was right, he did deserve a shake a day. Why not? As addictions went, it was pretty harmless, and since he was taking advantage of the fresh weather to walk to work, it livened up the journey. This juice girl was very nice, but probably not a serious person. If he was wrong about that, he could deal with it later.
He pulled out a chair for her and sat down next to it.
“And what about you?”
The trees were changing, turning colors, dropping leaves everywhere. It was arresting, disconcerting. School was unimaginably exciting. For his political science class, Javier had written an essay, packed with personal examples, about the definition of a dictatorship. The professor had corrected his spelling and grammar, but had given him an A, and asked him to read it aloud to the class. Afterwards, many of the kids had looked at him with something like respect, and one, Nurbu, a Tibetan American also learning English, had engaged him in conversation. Soon they were eating lunch together in the cafeteria. Diane encouraged him to bring Nurbu to the movies, but begged him not to tell Nurbu about their living situation, for obvious reasons.
The third week of school, Javier received a letter from Paco, sent from Paco's father's e-mail address; it accused him of being a coward and antisocial scum in the service of Imperialism for staying in America. He read on with increasing detachment, doubtful that Paco had taken the time to crank out such an elaborate denunciation. Somebody else had written it; perhaps Paco's father.
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