13
SHE DECIDED TOwear the yellow print dress with the bow at the neck. The color was vibrant and brightened her face, but it looked a little young. When she’d bought it, the dress had been perfect on the rack, but as often happened with Maite, when she put it on at home she had an entirely different opinion of the garment. It was garish, it exposed her knees, and no matter how hard she rubbed a pumice stone against her knees they always looked dirty.
She hadn’t worn it, stuffing it into the back of her closet. But it really was the nicest dress she owned and the most modern one. The rest of her wardrobe consisted of her drab office outfits, and her scant weekend wear was nondescript.
She clipped the tag off the dress, ruefully noting the price—my, she had spent too much on that. Then again it was a special-occasion dress. The problem was she didn’t have enough special occasions to wear it.
She carefully ironed the dress and hung it up while she busied herself with her makeup and her hair. Again the fear of artificial youthfulness assailed her. She didn’t want to look like a sad matriarch who rubs too much blush on her cheeks. Not that she looked exactly like a matriarch.
Thirty is not fifty, she told herself firmly, but in the back of her mind she remembered bits of conversation from some of the other office workers in her building, conversations she caught while seated at the counter of the nearby lonchería. Young men complaining a certain bar was filled with hags with saggy tits. Where could the trim, young cuts be found? And Maite, sinking in her seat, staring at her reflection in the mirrors behind the counter.
Thirty is not fifty,she repeated as she did her hair. At least she had good hair, even if her aunts had both gone partially bald at an early age. Would she face the same fate? Maite inspected her hairline.
Stop being silly, she whispered and continued with her preparations. She still needed to feed the cat in Leonora’s apartment, and she didn’t want to be late.
Cristóbalito had liked her hair. Tumbling down her back, so long it almost reached her waist in those days. When she lay naked in bed with him it could cover her breasts, as though she were Lady Godiva. Who’d want to see her naked now, though? Her skin was dry and her thighs—
No, she wasn’t going to be upset today. Today was a good day. Today was a day when things would happen, even if nothing ever happened to Maite. She was merely a weathervane, tossed from one point to another by indifferent winds, but now something was happening to her, and it wasn’t only the lunch with Emilio Lomelí, it was Leonora’s mysterious disappearance, Rubén asking her for assistance, it was the whole of it.
She was part of a story.
She must hurry. Maite decided not to feed the cat. She’d be late if she did. She was already late as it was. She’d worry about the cat later. It’s not as if she’d be gone for hours and hours.
She dashed out of her apartment and down the stairs. It would have been easier if she could take a cab, but she needed to watch her expenses and so it was public transit and a bit of a walk.
Emilio Lomelí lived in Polanco. She’d seldom been in that part of town. It was a neighborhood that had been for a number of years now the favorite destination for upper-crust Jewish families, American and British diplomats, and a growing contingent of affluent Mexicans who wanted to enjoy the delicatessens, European-style bakeries, and coffee shops not far from Chapultepec Park. This was the kind of place where you could order corned beef and red wine to be delivered to your home, or stop at Frascati’s for paella. Women attended fashion-show luncheons and charity benefits.
Everything was new in this area: there was no sign of moldy colonial palaces and old tezontle. Everything was beautiful. It was a pageant of prosperity, so far removed from the neighborhood where Maite had grown up that she might as well be a tourist on another planet.
Emilio Lomelí’s house was painted white, looking deceptively simple from the outside. Emilio opened the door and showed her in, and Maite swept her gaze up and down. The ceilings were extremely tall, and the walls were paneled in dark, rich oak. The space was very open, as though the architect had forgotten the meaning of the wordwall, the dining room flowing into the living room. Acrylic bubble chairs, a long, beautiful red velvet couch, a table big enough for eight, green glass vases filled with flowers…it all seemed plucked out of a catalogue. Maite’s atelier, which she’d thought quite adorable, now became shabby in comparison.
Emilio was like a jewel in a beautiful setting. He almost sparkled against the expensive furniture, his hair artfully slicked back, looking a bit like David Janssen inThe Fugitive. Only Emilio was much more handsome.
To keep from gawking at him, she set herself to admiring the photographs on the walls. These were all very large black-and-white images, close-ups really, of body parts, in silver frames. A woman’s eye, lips, a manicured nail. She couldn’t know if this was one woman or different women. The style of the photos anonymized them.
“Are these your photos?” she asked.
“Yes, it was a whole series. I exhibited it a few years ago,” he said, moving his arm and pointing from one end of the house to another. “I have my own darkroom upstairs.”
She glanced at the stairs. She wondered if he’d decorated the second floor with those same pictures, a multitude of eyes, ears, and lips. She wondered what his room looked like, whether the photos in there were bolder. Pictures of nipples and tongues and vulvas above the bed. Leonora’s nipples could be rendered in shades of gray. Her eye might be staring at Maite from that photo on the wall, the pupil completely dilated.
It was an odd thought, but it was the worddarkroomthat conjured it, which suggested secrets and the cover of the night. It meant nothing, and yet her mind leaped at it and was filled with the strangest, most fantastical thoughts when she heard certain words.
“The lunch is cold cuts and cheeses, I’m afraid. I have a cook come in a couple of days a week, but on weekends I keep it simple,” he said, carelessly gesturing toward a side table that was prepped with several plates.
“Oh, anything is fine, really,” she said and meant it. She was too nervous, wouldn’t be able to get down a single bite with him looking at her.
“Can I fix you a martini?” Emilio asked.
“Oh…” Maite said. She wasn’t the type of person who had a three-martini lunch. She’d never taken to drinking, and it wouldn’t have done at her office to come in plastered. Besides, as with the food, she wondered if the taste wouldn’t sit with her.
Emilio must have noticed her panicked expression. He smiled. “Would you prefer mineral water?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks. I was starting to feel like a terrible host,” he said, opening a bottle of Perrier and filling a glass for her.
Emilio had a smoothness about himself…the way he spoke and handed her the glass, like she’d seen men do in the movies and never experienced in real life. And his eyes! Amber-colored, like two jewels, matching his light brown hair with its few strands of gold glinting in the sunlight.
