The Foreigners (24 page)

“Oops, it's late,” I said, sitting up.

One day, as she was coming home from the beauty parlor, Isolde's downstairs neighbor, a man in his forties, asked. “Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”

Isolde was taken aback, which made her answer somewhat brusquely. “Oh, no, no, I can't. Thank you.” She couldn't imagine any interest in having tea with this man. In fact, a moment later as she was opening her apartment door, she had a hard time even recollecting his face. Was he that nondescript or simply off her radar?

The guy didn't mention it until a month had passed, when he asked again, “Would you accept my tea today?”

His timing was propitious. Isolde had had a hard day. She was tired. Her hands were tired. She'd been working with them all day. Her legs were tired. She was someone who liked company. She went in and sat with him. In a moment, she would continue on up to her apartment, get dressed for the cocktail party she meant to go to, but for now she would rest.

The guy, Hernán, had untidy brown hair that fell into his eyes. He put music on. He was cooking. He seemed to feel that was enough, to be in each other's presence, cooking with the music on. Usually, Isolde would have felt uncomfortable with such a lack of chatter but, after the daylong chatter at the beauty parlor, silence was a relief. And the smell and sound of food cooking. He had a comfortable chair with cushions. She let herself sink into it.

After that, from time to time, she'd stop in and have tea with him at the end of her day. Once tea led to dinner. He was actually a good cook, surprising in an Argentine man. Except for the barbecue, which was a field of macho competition, very few Argentine men she'd met could cook.

Now and then he mentioned a friend, but it seemed that, on the whole, he lived in his own world. He didn't seem to expect her to invite him to her place or to do anything really. He didn't ask her any troubling questions about her life. He was not much of a talker in general. But she could feel how content he was with her presence. One day it occurred to her to wonder what he liked about her. Certainly not the things she would imagine a person would like about her. She never acted like her glamorous self in front of him. She was often tired, never dressed up, hardly bothered to charm. And she certainly wasn't supplying sexual favors. They hadn't so much as brushed hands in passing.

She didn't mind his seeing her going out to a party dressed to the nines, as he sometimes did, but she was embarrassed that he would know what kind of work she did. She didn't tell him. He didn't ask. Then one day she found herself simply talking about something that had happened in the beauty parlor, something funny, it came tumbling out. It must have been that she was feeling so comfortable. In any case, it didn't seem to matter. He enjoyed her story, listened and laughed, and didn't seem in the least surprised about where she worked. Had he known it all along? She didn't ask, simply left it at that.

One day, playing, she showed up in her black wig. “That looks nice on you,” he said.

“Do you prefer dark-haired women or blondes?”

He shrugged. “Either way. I like both.”

“Oh, come on, that's impossible. You must have a type.”

He shrugged. “Not really. Take you. You look great both ways.”

Another day, she inadvertently discovered that his mother was institutionalized. In and out of depression for most of her life, she had tried to kill herself the year Hernán had turned thirty. She hadn't succeeded, only enough to turn herself into a vegetable. “Probably better that way, poor thing,” he said. “She seems to suffer less.” He had grown up with her, his father gone, though it was from his father's side that he'd come into the rental properties, a few apartments, some Chinese grocery stores. One of them was this apartment where he lived now. The others generated enough for him to live off the rents.

Once after a particularly harrowing day—she'd had a prostitute client who'd kept falling asleep as Isolde was doing her nails, then waking and saying that she didn't like the color, so that Isolde had had to start all over again—Isolde stayed on later than usual at Hernán's.

“Here,” he said, seeing how tired she was, “why don't you lie down?” She let him put her in his bed, take off her shoes. She turned away and collapsed, her blond hair on the pillow. Hernán sat across the room in an armchair, watching her for a while.

Isolde woke, surprised, looked over, alarmed. But she was still in her clothes, while he, also fully clothed, slept soundly in the armchair. She felt a first flush of feeling for him in that moment. It frightened her. It seemed so enigmatic and not at all attached to any of the reasons she'd imagined a person would love another, that she crept out without waking him as quickly as she could.

After that experience, she stayed away for a week or more. He didn't press her. When she finally came down again to visit him, she had a different awareness. Maybe it was this she'd been afraid of, that had been keeping her at bay. She watched him cook. She noticed everything, the way his hair dipped to one side at the back of his neck, his smell. As she watched, she wondered, does he have girls? Then she remembered. She'd seen him often with a girl in the early days, small, cute, dark-haired. What had happened with her?

“What happened to that girl you were always with?” she asked.

He looked over his shoulder. “Sofia? We didn't fit together,” he said. “I was trying to force it, but we didn't fit.”

That night, Isolde went back upstairs, but as she lay in bed, her mind on Hernán, she began to feel impatient. She got up and went back downstairs in her nightgown. He'd been sleeping but, seeing her at the door, he took her hand quite simply and led her inside. For some reason, she'd imagined that he wouldn't know what to do with a woman but, to her surprise, he actually seemed quite knowledgeable on the subject.

The grant people wrote again. My time was almost up. They were expecting my final report, at which point I'd receive the last installment of money. I printed out my half-term report, gathered the rest of my notes and lay them out all around me on the floor. I wasn't at all sure that I'd collected the kind of information they wanted. Nor was I sure how to present it.

I wrote an e-mail to my friend Brian to get some pointers about presentation and in the meantime settled down to work.

Gabriel rang the bell as I was dozing on the floor in my sea of notes.

“Oh, boy,” he said, seeing papers all over the floor, “what're you up to?”

“Writing my water report,” I said. “What about you?”

“A funny thing just happened. A guy just wanted to watch me typing naked. Yeah, I swear. He brought his computer with him. For one hour and he gave me a hundred pesos.”

“Sounds great,” I said. “Do you think that could work for me? I could type up my report and make some money in the process.”

“Of course,” he said. “You just have to find the right person.” He sat down in his favorite spot on the chaise lounge. “How's everything else going?” he asked.

“Good.” I smiled.

“Wait, you're up to something.”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting down across from him. “I figured out a way to get my revenge. I'm attacking Leonarda, without her knowing it. It's cool, I swear, I sort of have her in my power.”

“You're kidding.”

“No, really, I can't believe it. It's like she's my little prey now. I came to the conclusion that it's the only way to deal with her, the only thing she'll respond to. She's gripped, she's totally gripped.”

“What's the secret?”

“Simple, really. I realized I just need to have a second life besides her, somewhere else to go. Sometimes I really do have somewhere to go. I go to that bar we went to.”

“No kidding.”

“Yeah, I've been taking your advice about getting more sex in my life.”

“You pick up people?”

“Sometimes. But often I don't. I just go home. Still I pretend to her that I have a date. It's the need to leave. If you're always fleeing, she doesn't have to.”

He paused for a moment.

“It sounds like you're enjoying this.”

“I am. But mainly I feel like I've broken free. I'm not in her power anymore.”

There was a flicker in Gabriel's eye. Was it doubt? I registered it, but only took the time to think about it much later on.

“And what about Miguel?” he asked.

“Out of the picture. As far as I know. But now I don't even care.”

“I can see that, comparatively speaking, your water report might be less than compelling.”

“Yeah, well.” I looked down at the sea of papers again.

Outside, dusk was falling. Silky darkness creeping in. Soon I would be on my way.

 

 

I slithered through the night, reptile-like, gleaming. A crocodile in the waterways of the city, traveling along the underground streams, surfacing when I reached my destination, crawling up, scales shining.

She would wait. She had indeed a furry-animal look. She'd be wearing a T-shirt and corduroys, eyes wary and eager at the same time.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

She was sitting on her bed. There was nothing else in her room but the little bed. I couldn't believe it. She, so fleeting and squeamish before, was now here waiting, a furry prey under my dominion, finally, after all that, in my grasp.

I shook myself, the water dripping off my scales.

“I brought you something,” I said. I gave her a little pinkribboned bag. In it was one of those mini chocolate cakes she loved.

“Oh!” She was happy.

She looked at me as she bit into the cake. This too was new. She, queen of action, was now watching, waiting to see what I would do.

I sat down. Very delicately, I pulled her dark hair aside and bit the back of her neck. First the sound she made, strangled, surprised, seemed genuine, then, as I moved my mouth farther down, biting along the tender muscles, she began to groan. It sounded like the groan she thought she was supposed to make, that she'd learned in the movies.

“Shh,” I said.

She shut up, surprised.

There was a moment of awkwardness. In an attempt to combat it, she turned and pulled her shirt up, offering her breasts to me. Her breasts, weighty, womanly, with their submerged blue veins, belying the girlishness of the rest of her form. In another moment, I would have eaten them hungrily, but that was not the plan. I stood up and smiled.

“I only have a moment today,” I said.

“Wait!” Breasts bobbing.

I waved and turned away. Tempt and torture, that was my idea.

The next time I came by, she was wearing a robe. She had put on false eyelashes. The pair on the left side now hung by a thread.

She was quiet, waiting, breathing. Her shallow breath was raucous. I had her lie down and moved my hands over her back. Her body, I could feel it, was very tense. This was difficult for her, I knew, to lie there and let herself be touched. But, while on other occasions she'd squirmed away, now she let me. I brushed the hair back from her forehead, caressed her sleek, shining seal head, the same caress over and over again. Very, very gradually, I felt her relax.

Then I lay down with her on the bed and held her until I had to go again.

The next time, I decided to try something else. I gripped her wrists behind her and turned her over. She was wearing violet underwear and I pulled them down. Her nimble little butt shone. I spanked her. She cried out in surprise, squirmed. The rosiness spread. She grew still again, waiting for more.

Each time beforehand, I imagined in my mind's eye what I would do. Once I found a notebook. She too was keeping a record, writing down, each time, what we had done.

Sometimes the street outside her little room was silent, sometimes it was filled with a throng. I pictured a thronging mass on the cobblestones.

She had decorated the room, put a colored scarf over the light. She must have been touching herself before I arrived. Her pussy glistened in the colored light. It looked swollen, pinkish, reminding me of a mouth smudged with lipstick after it's been kissed. All over Buenos Aires you see that, in the plazas, on the streets, the smudged mouths of women and teenage girls. I remember especially the jeering, smudged mouth of a girl who rushed past me out of a plaza, hands high in the air. She seemed to have achieved some victory by being kissed, was advertising it to the world.

 

 

A fragile shower of pollen was settling over the streets when I stepped out, like the fine gold dust on the inner edge of her ear, which I had rubbed off with a finger.

“Are they dirty?”

“You should clean them.”

She started to get up. I pressed her back down. “Not now.”

We were lying there quietly. Finally, after all this time together, we could be quiet. I had a longing to stay, but I knew I couldn't.

Outside on the streets everything trembled, the flowering trees shook. I walked calmly through the city, though the noise of the buses was jarring and the fetid smell in some spots nearly overwhelming. People brushed against me, jostled me, seemingly trying to exasperate me, but it didn't work.

I chose my path, at the opportune moment slunk underground, glided along the waterways. I would have preferred not to leave, to stay the night with her, but I knew it was impossible. My staying would have destroyed everything, shattered the cage, she would have been gone in a flash. I had been ingenious enough to find a way to trap her, of this I was proud. I had a certain power over her now, which was not entirely satisfying, but it was satisfying enough. Much better than not seeing her at all, which I couldn't have borne.