A Change of Skin (24 page)

Have you harvested the fruit of your labors?

*   *   *

Δ   A paved road appeared.

“There, you see?” you said, looking at Franz. “It
is
to the right.”

Franz nodded and swung off to the right and you moved along an avenue of eucalyptus trees. All of you felt the presence of the animals ahead before you saw them, even before you heard their bellowing, smelled them. You sensed some obstacle ahead. The pavement ended and Franz slowed. Dust swirled up and you closed your window.

*   *   *

Δ   You rubbed the back of Javier's neck and laughed, Pussycat, “You know, you really thought I would be a virgin! It made me laugh. But I laughed with you, Proffy, not at you. What do you think? It was my first act of emancipation, as they say. I don't even remember his face.” You ran your fingers through Javier's thinning hair. “No joke, I don't remember anything, but absolutely nothing, about him. Imagine: I had just shaken free from my family and that nut wanted to tie me down again! You can't trust anyone, Proffy. ‘Don't date anyone except me. Don't leave the house without phoning me. Wait for me after your classes.' And he was studying veterinary medicine. Good God. He intended to spend the rest of his life nursing lap dogs. Well, that was still part of the nest, and when I found out what I needed to know, I jumped out once and for all and got rid of my new puppy. I didn't miss him. After all, sex in itself isn't much. Everything depends on the other person. As long as I didn't have someone special, no sex was okay with me. I certainly wasn't going to let it throw me. Nor anything else, for that matter. Now with you, it's fun. You know how to take me.”

“You women tell us how we should take you,” said Javier. You unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off his body.

“Which women?” You loosened his shoelaces and pulled off his shoes.

“All of you. Don't you realize that we live in a great matriarchy?”

You rubbed Javier's feet and then took off your blouse and stretch pants.

“Of course, it doesn't seem that way,” Javier went on. “Every man tells himself that he is
muy macho,
all balls, virile…”

Javier pushed the hair back from your eyes so that he could see your face as you leaned over him and kissed him. You gave him a hug.

“These sheets are cold. Well, at least that means they wash them once in a while.”

Javier sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his pants. “Doesn't it bother you that we always meet in motel rooms?”

“Are you nuts?” you said, tickling him. “My, what a soft tummy.”

Javier covered his stomach with the sheet. “We might go to Acapulco some weekend.”

“No, that's not secluded enough.”

“Where, then?”

You thought about it for a moment, Isabel, while Javier looked at you, prone, tan, surrounded by the smoke you exhaled through your nostrils. The smoke swirled down as far as your navel. He touched you.

“Oh, Barbados. Trinidad. Jamaica. Bermuda.”

“Mexican women make believe that they are dominated by their men. But in reality…”

“God, what are you talking about?” You rubbed his ear. You turned your back to him and with one arm pulled him down.

“In reality it's the women who do the dominating. I sometimes think that Mexican women themselves invented the myth of the
macho
male simply to deceive their men about what was happening, to offer them a kind of compensation for their subjugation to their daughters, their mothers, their wives, all the devouring women who impose their values on us, the only values that really count here.”

“You may be right. Father said he was an atheist, but I was sent to the nuns' school.”

“An example. Let the men have their fun. Wear your face of martyrdom in public, but in private die laughing.”

You laughed. “Let's make some fun now.” With your hand you touched him, caressed him, invited him. “Oh, there's only one Mexico,” you said as he took your breasts. “Our little mother of Guadalupe.” Your legs and his laced together. “There's nothing so cool as our Mexican music.” You slid down his legs. “Our brave Boy Heroes.” With your buttocks you pushed his legs apart. “We may be poor, but we have heart.” You were tight against him now, back to back. “Go on and laugh, Javier. Don't I sound just like your precious television? Now I'll change channels. Captain Jackson of the CIA arrives in Singapore.” Javier chuckled. “A thick net of intrigue envelops this mysterious port, a rendezvous of world espionage.” You turned quickly and rubbed your nose against his. “Jackson is blond, tall, muscular, and he lights his cigarettes staring without blinking into the eyes of the enemy.” Your breasts were becoming hot under his hands. “If we don't destroy the threat to the free world here, the enemy will soon be at our door, Jackson says. He points to a map of explosive Southeast Asia, the little countries ready to fall like a row of dominoes.” Your thighs were damp from the movement. “And now the commercial. Señora, don't let your children develop dangerous incestuous complexes. Use the pre-sterilized Baby Suckett. Don't nurse your infant. Avoid tired tits. Maintain your endowment erect, firm, and fully packed. Your breasts have rights, too. Listen to what Jayne Mansfield advises.”

“Isabel, Isabel.”

“Ayyy, papacito.”

“Is it good, my love?”

“It's good, good.”

“Listen to me. So it won't stop. It's like the first time.”

“Don't talk. Let me concentrate.”

“Let me do it, Ligeia.”

“Yes, darling. Keep on. Keep on.”

“I don't want to begin all over each time…”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“In, out, slowly, slowly.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“And now…”

“Yes.”

“Now no more.”

Javier moved off of your body and fell face down on the pillow as if he were hiding. You remained as you were. Javier looked at you from the corner of his eye. You did not turn your head, did not seek him.

“Isabel,” he murmured.

“Not so good, Javier?”

“No, my love. Not so good. This miserable room. We can't go on this way, Isabel. Now we'll go back to Mexico City and it will be motel rooms again, the cold sheets and the cold walls. The telephone beside the bed. The taxi waiting for us outside. The window with a curtain of orange stripes. Bah. When I think about the places we've met on the road to Toluca, I feel sick. Maybe…”

“I know. Yes, Javier!”

“Yes what?”

“We'll rent a little apartment!”

“An apartment?”

“Of course, darling, and I have it picked out already! A really cool studio in Coyoacán. You won't believe it when you see it. We'll…”

“But Isabel, I didn't mean…”

“Look, it's right over a pop-art store. I'll decorate it.”

“But I…”

“It's really only a studio. One huge room, a little bath, and a kitchen. Oh, it's terrific, Javier! I'll have them wax the floor as soon as we get back.”

“Isabel, I meant…”

“Paint the beams and whitewash the walls. Yellow curtains, good thick ones, for the big window. It looks out on the plaza of Chimalistac.”

“But I was thinking that…”

“I'll track down some light cedar furniture and have the cushions made of blue Indian-head cotton. We'll need some tables, wrought-iron and glass. I'll buy some papier-mâché Judas figures downstairs in the pop-art store and hang them around the walls. A sofa that converts into a bed. You'll bring your books and I'll buy an antique writing table I saw in San Angel. It's a colonial table of marquetry, with drawers and all sorts of things. You can keep your writing there, eh?”

“But how much is all this going to cost?”

“Cost? Well, figure it yourself. Furniture, curtains, material for the cushions, paint, varnish, wax, ashtrays, utensils for the kitchen, light, gas, telephone … I'd say about forty thousand pesos.”

“A motel room is only thirty pesos, Isabel. Well, at least we will save on food. We won't be eating out.”

“Oh, yes, we will. I like to show you off and I don't know how to cook. I like to broil my steaks at Delmonico's, Javier, to cook my Dutch tongue on Jena and my
quenelles
in La Lorraine…” You laughed. Then you went on, “No, I don't mean it. I don't care about fancy restaurants. The important thing is to be with you, and it doesn't matter where. There's another point … we won't waste so much time. Oh, yes, a record player. I can't live without a record player.”

“Live?”

“Two or three nights a week, silly. And if one of us wants to be alone, the other takes off. Don't you like to be alone now and then?”

You rubbed your chin, put on a record, and began to whirl slowly.

“Trini López at PJ's. Recorded live.
If I had a hammer
…”

You went into the bathroom and closed the door behind you. Javier sat alone on the bed. He tapped his stomach reflectively. Water began to run loudly.

“Isabel?”

You did not answer.

“Isabel!” he raised his voice.

“What?” you said from the bathroom.

“I didn't expect you to suggest an apartment. I was hoping that…”

“I can't hear you, Javier. I'll be out in a second.”

“You're tired of it now. You have other things to do. Okay, I understand. Yes. Thanks anyhow…”

I'd hammer in the morning …

“… ‘You're older than I am. Your life is settled, you don't want to change it. Your character, too. I can understand … Thanks, thanks for everything. It was nice while it lasted. I'll never forget you…' Oh, shit.”

If I had a bell …

“‘… Oh, I knew it couldn't go on. I never had any illusions…'”

I'd ring it in the morning …

“‘… But I didn't just make you up. I touched you and you were real…'”

It's the bell of freedom …

“A motel room on the road to Toluca, Isabel. With the taxi waiting outside. Is that all?”

“I'm coming right out. Be a little patient.”

“The same old thing? Believing that now it is different?”

The record ended. Javier listened to the gurgle and bubble of the water running from the faucets and in the bowl of the toilet.

You came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. With one hand you shook out your wet hair.

“What were you saying?”

Javier covered his lower abdomen. You hummed to yourself as you worked your hair into a ponytail and tied it with a yellow ribbon. You threw your hair forward over your head again, the hairpins between your teeth. When you finished putting your hair up, you rubbed your head with both hands and looked for your lipstick in the disorder of the dresser top. You pursed your lips to paint them orange.

“Isabel, when we were at Xochicalco today…” Javier began quietly.

You stopped with the lipstick raised to your mouth. “No, Javier.”

“Yes, no. None of you ever understand.”

“Just no.” You got up, dropping the towel.

“But listen to me.”

“I told you no.” You retrieved the towel and folded it like a wet, heavy whip.

“I want to talk with you about Xochicalco. About what we saw this morning.”

“I know what you want to talk about. No, it bores me.” You slapped Javier's legs with the wet towel.

“Stop it, Isabel.” Javier drew his legs back. Laughing, you slapped his buttocks. “Stop it, it hurts.” He hunched up, chin to his knees, and closed his eyes.

“The silly things you say hurt more. Who wants to hear about Xochicalco? What's Xochicalco to me?” You knelt on the bed beside him and tickled his waist. “What a tummy you have.”

Javier opened his eyes. “Why did you open that door this morning?”

“Which door?”

“The car door.” Javier did not look at you.

“Because you were talking to me, not to Betty, who I suppose is used to you.”

“What? What did I say?”

“The same thing you say so often. You need love without love. You prefer desire without desire. No, you weren't talking to Betty. You were talking to me.” You put your mouth to Javier's ear and whispered: “Do you know what you call me when we make love?”

Javier hid his face in the pillow. “Forgive me. Please, forgive me.”

You laughed and jerked the sheet off him.

“Stop it!” he cried sharply. “I tell you I don't like it.”

“I'm not allowed to see it except when it's stiff and hard? I'd like to see it taking a little nap sometime.”

“Then here, and stop talking.”

You moved between his legs and laughed. “Baby,” you said. “Big baby. What do you really think? Go on, chatter all you want to, I don't really care. My darling. Do you know something? Today I've found out that you tell fibs.”

*   *   *

Δ   “No, it was true. I made love to you twice because I thought that you had understood. You had to understand, for not long afterward you repeated it. They sent me along with the secretariat to a conference in London. A Modigliani show was on at the Tate.”

You agreed to meet there after the morning plenary session and Javier said goodbye to you, to Elizabeth with the falsely gray hair and the heavy eyebrows and the thick lips and the Chanel suit with its torero jacket embroidered with pearls. He arrived at the Tate at two in the afternoon and did not look for you immediately. He studied the paintings with a certain distraction, seeking first a spontaneous reaction to those women with long necks and eyes lacking the cornea, with dark pubes and thin lips, women he had always associated with the twenties but who now he realized were the living women of Thessaly, Mycenae, and Crete, lank and linear; and now it all came back suddenly and without warning, the smells and lights and sounds of the time spent in Greece. Those women of Modigliani's, fixed in their frames, gave off scents of hyacinth and hibiscus, sounds of draymen's horses clomping along the pavement, of carpenters' hammers, the light of the sun filtering through to the bottom of the sea. The orange of the fishing boats, the blue of the Chapel of St. Nicholas, the white of the stairs and pedestals at Mykonos, the ocher and red of the warrior-saint altar-pieces, the Naples yellow of the windmills; once again the haze of incense, the smells of smoking pigs with their bellies open, of donkeys lying dead beneath vultures and flies, of frying chitterlings in the impenetrable kitchens, of garlic, olives, cheese. Javier turned with the feeling that he was being stared through as if his body were transparent, and there they were, the English girls who had come here to see themselves in the Italian mirror, today's women with loose dark hair and low-cut sweaters and red, green, black stockings of filigree, looking with their black and green eyes at their own images reflected in the paintings. The models had returned to life and were visiting themselves. And behind them, the woman, her hair dyed black now and loose like that of the nude woman on the blue cushion in the painting at her back, her eyebrows plucked thin, her lips painted narrow, her mascara-weighted lashes curling around her clear eyes, her neck made longer by the frill of lace that extended to her waist. She herself had contrived that out-of-date get up, the dress as loose and shapeless as a tunic, falling from her shoulders like a pen stroke. In her smile was readiness, in her eyes was nostalgia. Her long pale hands were joined at the level of her hips with a kind of self-consciousness, the knowledge that they could serve to hide or isolate or protect the sacred parts of a body that belonged to herself and to him at the same time.