Gringa (14 page)

Abilene was glad to go out on the street. The evening air was fresh and cool, and Adele seemed eager for the meeting. Abilene wondered if Sylvia Britton might not be a diversion from the steady misery of Daniel's work.

The man who had known Sylvia was waiting in the shabby little lobby in the near dark. Adele asked if he would like to go somewhere and have a drink with them. He looked at Adele and Abilene with suspicion, and with what Abilene decided was a certain greediness of expression. Of course he will want something, she thought. “I'll tell you what I know just now,” he said in English. “The clerk said you would pay.” He was very good-looking.

Adele gave him some money and told him they would rather speak in Spanish. Carefully, he folded the money away into his wallet, and tucked it into his pants.

“I knew her from the dances. I met her in Acapulco, dancing the line in the red light district.” He looked pleased with himself. “I go once a year. I am saving my money to go there and live.”

“Was she a good dancer?” Abilene asked.

“Oh yes, she could dance. She stood out, among all the whores and boys, and she was drunk. I told her I was going back to Mexico on the morning bus, and she said she was too. She thought it was a coincidence. So that was how I met her. I showed her this hotel. She said she wanted a hotel for Mexicans, in a safe neighborhood.”

“Did you get to know her well?” Adele said.

The young man smoothed his hair with his hand. “I only saw her two other times. We went to dance. I took her to a place with the rocky roll. American music.”

“Yes,” Adele said. “You know where to go, don't you? Did you come back and stay with her here?”

“Oh no, not in her hotel.”

“At your place, then?”

He appeared to be making some decision. He stood up abruptly and said, “She was just a gringa. She was an old one, too, maybe thirty. I didn't really like her. She laughed too much.”

“But you came to look for her, didn't you?” Abilene asked. The man's eyes turned to her for the first time.

“She borrowed money from me!” he said loudly. “I came to get my money.”

Adele reached out and touched him. He put his hand on top of hers, lightly, on his arm. “She owed me money.”

“I'm surprised,” Abilene said.

He pulled his hand away from Adele. “Because I am a hardworking Indian, and she was a gringa! I tell you, she took my money. She said she was waiting for a check from home to arrive. Now I think she lied to me. She took my money to make fun of me.”

“Thank you for talking to us,” Adele said.

Abilene asked, “What's your name?”

He looked around nervously. “I go to work very early. Now I go home. That girl was no good, even if she was your sister!” He hurried away.

“What did you expect?” Nando asked. He wouldn't take the tip Adele offered. “He has to be hard up, to ask you for money. There's nothing he knows, except how to make a little money from American girls. He was furious when I told him the woman was dead. She did owe him. I'm sure that's why he agreed to talk to you. She owed us rent, too.”

“Your father didn't tell me,” Adele said.

“Why would he?” Nando shrugged. “Who would pay it?”

“I will. You look it up, and I'll bring the money tomorrow night.”

It took Nando a few moments to find the file. He wrote the figure down on a scrap of paper. “She didn't pay her rent for the last two weeks.”

“Why didn't your father throw her out?”

“She seemed desperate. She said her check was late. She had long explanations that changed with every telling. I said get rid of her, but my father said no, half the rooms were empty, let her stay. He only cut off her maid service.” Nando seemed to think that was funny. “I don't think my father will like it if you pay.”

“I will give you the money. By the time he knows, it will be figures in a book. And it will make us feel better. Because she was American, and she had a debt.”

“She wasn't worth it. She smoked grass. I told her she couldn't do it in her room, if my father found out he would call the police. She said she was running out anyway. She wanted to know if I could get her more. ‘No money, no grass, no fucking fun,' she told me.” Clearly, he was disgusted.

“This is Abilene Painter,” Adele said. “She lives in the country, near Tampico.”

Nando looked over his shoulder at the closed door to his parents' apartment. “Señora Adele, if you want to ask so many questions, why don't you ask about something that matters?”

“What do you mean?”

“Right now, in this city, thousands of students are talking about their rights, and the rights of workers and peasants. Their talk is going to burst into the street. Now there is something worth knowing about! Already some students have been harassed or hurt or arrested. Some will be killed. They will be heroes, but nobody will look hard for their killers. Why don't you listen to what the students are saying? Why doesn't your husband publish their demands?”

“You bring him a list and I know he'll do what's right,” Adele said. “He's not afraid, you know that. As for me, I'm a photographer, not a reporter.”

“What is she?” Nando asked, glancing at Abilene.

“A tourist,” Abilene said quickly.

Nando's cheeks twitched with intensity. “Then you have picked a time to be here. You will see what it is like when young people will not be held back from hope. And you, Señora Adele. You don't have to be a writer to listen. Let the young people speak for themselves.”

Adele clasped Nando's hands. “Come to the apartment with your papers,” she said. Her eyes were bright. “I'll talk to Daniel.”

On the street Abilene said, “Whew! I feel like I'm in on a good spy story.”

“You mean Nando? He's in this thing up to his ears. His father will kill him if the granaderos don't. But I am going to talk to Daniel about it. I could take the stories, with a tape recorder. If anyone will trust me. With Nando in the middle, maybe they will.”

“I want to give you some of the money.”

“Money?”

“For Sylvia Britton's bill.”

Adele waved the thought away with her hand brushing air. “Don't be silly. What do you have for money?”

Abilene's cheeks were hot. “I have a little of my own here in the city.” She felt Adele look at her. “Tonio is going to cut me off soon, I know it,” she said in a low voice.

“And what of Sylvia Britton? She's dead. You heard how they talked about her. What did you think of her friend, the dancer?”

Abilene felt pushed, and her answer was brittle. “I thought he was sexy. Nice and skinny in the hips.”

Adele said, “I thought it was someone just like him who killed her. But not him. Not if she owed him money.”

A few days later, Adele said Nando had come by. He was going to introduce Adele to some of the student leaders.

“What does Daniel think?”

“He said to do what I want.”

“And this is what you want? To run around the city asking puffed up kids what they think of government business?”

Adele looked at her curiously. “Why does that bother you?”

Abilene realized with a pang that she was jealous. “It doesn't concern me. What do I know about revolution?

“Isn't revolution just change? Isn't it really just something that happens inside you? One thing dies and another is born?”

“That's damned vague to me!” Abilene snapped. “We aren't all so serious, you know. We aren't all so good.”

“Don't—” Adele said. She reached out and touched Abilene, and Abilene felt her hand, the way the young man in the hotel must have felt it, as pressure to stay, and to give.

“Isn't there anything you want a lot?” Adele asked gently.

Abilene knew the answer so quickly it scared her. “When I'm all alone in a room, I want to know who's there.”

“Oh Abby,” Adele said, but Abilene fled. Later, she felt terribly sad, as if Adele had gone around a corner, and disappeared.

FELIX came by to scold Abilene for leaving his apartment, but she suspected his was false objection. “I left word with Tonio's office,” she said. “I knew I was inconveniencing you.” He kissed her cheek and examined her face carefully. “My brother is very fond of you,” he said. “He says your nose on another's face would not work, but on you—” She scoffed at that. “No, truly. He says you are very strong, and he asks me—” he let her wonder for a moment—”He asks when you will leave Velez and make your own life.”

“That's hardly his business,” she bristled.

“Think of it this way, chica: My brother wants something better for you.”

“As soon as I decide what it is, I'll take care of it myself. None of you need to talk about it further!”

Felix kissed her nose this time. “I came to tell you that Tonio is in town. He's expecting you this afternoon, after siesta.”

The news was like a blow; without moving a muscle, she felt herself reeling. He had become a dream.

“You look like you're going to faint,” Felix said. “Come on, I'll buy you lunch.”

“I don't want to talk about Tonio.”

“Fine. I'll tell you about my new girlfriend. She studies anthropology and has a waist like this—” He held his hands together close. Abilene threw her arms around his neck and held on, to keep from trembling. Felix, kind Felix, waited for her to feel better. Then he fed her linguine with clam sauce in the Pink Zone and said she shouldn't worry. Tonio had missed her, too.

The plump maid let Abilene into Tonio's apartment and whispered that he was resting. Then she waddled off to her own room on the roof. Abilene sat down and undid the straps of her sandals. Her cheeks burned; she tried to cool them with her fingertips, but the fingers were hot, too.

She went to Tonio's room. A fan rustled the satin sheet that lay over him. She closed the door and stood, watching him. The room was softly lit, a room of mauves and roses, a boudoir. Small lamps that looked like candle-lamps hung on each side of the bed. An oval portrait of Tonio in a silvery white rejoneador's costume hung near a window. The window was shuttered with soft white slats now closed to block out the daylight; the room was illuminated by the light from the bathroom. Money lay in a porcelain dish. Tonio's watch lay near it on a table. Abilene wanted to go and touch each object; she wanted to regain her familiarity with the man on the bed. If she had known how, she would have called on voodoo.

He lay on his side, one hand cupped under his cheek, the other flung out from his body. He was so beautiful he might have been a marble statue. He had been sleeping. The disorder of the bed suggested that he had been restless, had dreamed, or had not been alone.

At the ranch, Tonio slept behind a locked door, after he sent Abilene away at night. Now he seemed so vulnerable, she felt a surge of tenderness. He will never marry Anne Lise! she thought, nor anyone innocent; how would he fit himself to all the ritual? He would marry a Mexican woman after all, a woman who would accept the way he cut up his existence, the little space she would fill. Instead of relief, Abilene felt immense confusion, as if she had been shaken and then dumped on a wobbly bed. She didn't know what she wanted from this man. She had for so long been his mistress, his child, his pet, she had forgotten how to think for herself. The city, and the time away from him, had shaken sleeping faculties. She remembered long ago, when she had learned so readily the ease of acquiescence. That first failure to say no had led straight to this, from those Texas boys to this man, smaller than any of them, and yet as large as a myth, a country, a dream. Where did he get his power? What gene signaled him to grow so strong? It was something more than wealth and privilege. Mickey had told her stories of Tonio's boyhood arrogance, his assertions of fledgling authority. At ten he had scolded his mother for the way she cut her steak!

Tonio opened his eyes and looked at her with the guarded gaze of a lizard. She felt perspiration beading under her arms and on her palms. If he is gentle, she thought, I will love him.

“Come here, I want to see,” he told her. She went and knelt beside the bed. He reached out, as if to clear away a speck of dirt. She wondered if he could feel how hot she was. She wondered if he approved.

“Come up here,” he said congenially, patting the bed beside him. She kicked off her shoes, the new Italian ones, and she crawled up beside him and lay on her side facing him. It was a sudden, familiar and good sensation to be so close again. She was afraid of him because she had done silly things—she pushed the thought of Sage away—but she had forgotten the pleasure of his presence. His sweetness, in moments, when he allowed it.

“Did it hurt much?” he asked.

“It stung. I had a reaction to the penicillin, and when I woke up after surgery there were straws in my nose so I could breathe! The worse was when Reyles took away the scabs. Now it's only that I'm hot.”

She knew, before she had finished, that he had lost interest. “It's going to be fine, fine,” he said absently. He unbuttoned the first buttons of her shirt and slid his hand over her breast. “No change here,” he whispered. His first touch chilled her; the sensation raced down her spine and down her arms, like the dye before an X ray. She felt the smooth small strokes of his fingers as he plucked at a nipple idly, looking her over.

“I missed you,” she ventured in a moment. He smiled and pinched her nipple hard. “Ow!” she yipped. She thought he must have meant something by it, he had pinched too hard to be playful, but she was bewildered, and now cautious. He withdrew his hand, and straightened the sheet over his thighs.

“I hear you've been busy. Made new friends.”

“Not really. I've known Adele for years. Of course I've only just met her husband.” She had no idea what Tonio meant.

“I don't want you out at the university. The place is going crazy. There is going to be trouble.” Just for a moment she was surprised, and then she thought: Of course, he would know.

“Why would I go there?” she demurred. One part of her wanted him to go on, to warn her and threaten. He was so wise; he could see what was coming. He knew everything. But it was like a smile across the cantina floor: You had to go at your own speed. You had to find your own way. The time, the tension, was everything. For dance, or love, or fear.

“Students are babies,” he said sharply. “They know nothing of government or politics or economics. They don't understand that Mexico can thrive only if it is stable. They don't understand the function of the political process, of elections.”

She smiled, amazed at his ferocity. She tried to imagine him in a room with students.

“I'm not playing word games with you, Abby. I'm telling you that this was once a country under barbaric rule and now it is one of the most rapidly developing countries in the world. You don't understand, any more than those silly students do, and why should you? What do any of you know about growth rate and inflation and debt ratio? All you need to understand is that if our economy is unstable the world dismisses us. You don't even need to know that, only that this government will not stand for anything that threatens order. Students! What do they want but to take money out of investments, where the promise is, to stuff into the pockets of the poor? What will that give us but a short generation of full bellies, and a carcass of an economy?”

He paused, glaring at her. She didn't know what he was talking about. He knew what she was good for.

“None of that means a thing to me, Tonio. It's gay talk, like bears dancing in Chapultapec. It's all so much noise.”

“So stay out of it.” He seemed to mean for the conversation to be over. Then he said, “Felix said you moved abruptly.”

“I was there for weeks! I was worried he had no place to take his girlfriends.” She gave Tonio a sly look, but he was not provoked. With less conviction, she said, “I was uncomfortable.”

Tonio used the hem of the sheet to buff a thumbnail. “You know I don't like Claude Girard.”

She said nothing, afraid to make it worse. She did not want him to ask about Sage. It was not the time for it.

She knew she would never talk to him about Sage. If she went with Sage, it would have to be away from Mexico; she would simply disappear, without explaining. She could never argue anything with Tonio. It was inconceivable. And to run away with Sage? It was an adolescent's foolish fantasy. Running away from home.

“Come to the ranch soon.”

“Reyles says I shouldn't get too hot.”

“Stay indoors.” He was sparring with her. “You can turn on all the air conditioners. You can sleep all day.” He spoke with exaggerated boredom. She thought: That is exactly what there is to do at the ranch! In three sentences he had summed up a lot of the last five years of her life!

“Actually I've been thinking you should learn to ride,” he said. “I'm going to assign someone to work with you every day. And my girl at the packing house is trying to learn English. She needs someone to practice with her. You can go over there several times a week. Make yourself useful.

“Also, I was wondering if you would like to invite your new little American friend to the ranch. I was thinking, if she is pretty, that we could have a good time.”

Abilene stared, incredulous. She would have got off the bed, but Tonio had grasped her arm, hard.

“I'd like to see the two of you together, like two sweet fillies—”

“You're crazy!”

“I thought about bringing her here today—”

He was frightening her. He was capable of anything. His hand was biting into her arm. His eyes shone like cold blue marbles. “If you like,” he said, “we can invite the American rancher, to make it another couple. Four of us—would you like that? Would that be fun for you?”

She looked down at her arm, where his hand was making a red mark on her skin. She looked at the arm as if it did not belong to her. As soon as she did this, he let go. Letting go showed how much in control he was. He bent over and licked the place where he had marked her skin. His tongue darted over her shoulder and neck and then into her mouth. A brief kiss. To tease.

“When you came to Acapulco that first time with Mickey—When I first met you. You thought you were such a bad girl, didn't you? But there are bad girls everywhere! For all the times you had spread your legs, you were innocent, you were a baby. You looked sixteen.”

“I'd been raped,” she said nastily. Her courage came back in a flood of anger. “I'd made love in the back seats of cars.” How disgusting it was to think of it all.

“I know all that! But you never gave anything away, did you? You never tried to please them. But me—” He shifted tones crazily. “You've nothing to give another man now, Abby. I'd never be jealous, because I'd know how stupid he'd be to think—but don't make a fool of yourself. Don't try to make a fool of me, I warn you—”

There was silence, except for their breathing, and then, in an instant, he was suddenly boyish. “Go ahead, Abby,” he purred. He lay back on his pillows. “Suck me off. I'm sleepy still.” He curled his body, his buttocks slightly away from her, his knees tucked. One shoulder arched. “It's been too long for us, it makes me grumpy,” he said sweetly.

How false his seduction was, how it centered on the picture he made in his own mind. She had always known it; she had always done what he wanted. She had been a bad girl, and he had made her the bad woman she was meant to be.

She closed her eyes and pretended that she loved him. She pretended that this was the first time. The last. She longed to be high. Tonio caressed her hair at the nape of her neck. She laid her cheek for a moment along the inside of his thigh.

“After the revolution,” he said in his most amused voice, “we won't have the time for this. There'll be sugar harvests and political meetings.” He got up, laughing. It had taken so little time.

While he showered she went into the kitchen and washed her face and mouth in the sink. She lay on the couch blank as sky, waiting for him to dress. He came out wearing a pale blue silk shirt and gray pants. There were pleats below the waist; the pants were so tight the pleats lay pulled open. He put his hand over for her to fasten a gold bracelet on his wrist. He had taken the time to dry his hair. She brought her arms up to fasten the catch of his bracelet; they were heavy as rope.

“I meant to take you to supper somewhere, but you had a nice lunch, didn't you? And I'm not hungry now. I have an appointment later, I might as well go to the office now.”

He was dismissing her. Her arms lay at her sides. He went into his bedroom and returned with a beautiful soft leather case. She watched him from the couch, marvelling at the weight in her arms and legs; if she were dropped into the sea, she would plunge to the ocean floor. Tonio handed her some bills. “You go and eat without me,” he said.

She took the money and laid it on her belly, saying, “I'm not hungry either.” She pretended to miss his cue; she knew he was ready for her to go. She thought he had now put all of it out of his mind, his display of arrogance and witchery, his all-knowingness, his cruelty, he had put her back in place.

“Close the door behind you,” he said. The sound of his voice pricked her like a nettle. She wanted the argument she might have had. She felt sick with suppressed anger. She wanted to scream, to exchange blows and yells, to fall to the floor. Just once she wanted to shout and make a terrible scene! She wanted to accuse him, of caprice, of being everything that is hateful: smug, rich, safe. She wanted anger to bring back the heat. Her breath was already coming harder.

“Don't wait for me to go to the ranch,” he was saying coolly. “Do take your friend if you like. But I want you to be there when I'm there next week. I like it when you come out to meet my plane, looking for all the world like a boy; it makes me horny to see you in my jeans.” Tonio moved nearer her, his weight forward on his near leg. He was a vacuum sucking her in. Oh why was she like this, lying on her back while he stood over her? Why wasn't she on her feet, clawing his eyes out! “Oh God Tonio!” she bleated. “For God's sake, let me go!” Tears spurted down her cheeks, a wash of humiliation and fury.