Dark Plums (4 page)

“Okay.”

“You're gorgeous.”

Again she flushed, but as his dark eyes bored into hers she forgot everyone around them. Somehow he was familiar. She wanted to tell him more about herself, but her mind went blank. Sensing her confusion, he reached across the counter and touched her hand. His fingers were warm, the skin calloused.

“Relax, baby.”

“What's your name?”

“Alfredo Montalvo.”

“Are you Puerto Rican?”

“No, I was born in Cuba.”

“So, you're Cuban.”

“Yes, I'm Spanish and Indian, with a touch of African in me.”

He put ice cubes in a glass, squirted Coca-Cola, then added rum.

“I see.”

Cigarette smoke was irritating her throat. The woman next to her, absorbed in conversation with her companion, didn't notice that her cigarette was practically in Adrianne's nostrils. The musicians, who were on their break, had gathered at a table in back. One had
a very blonde woman on his lap. They were all black, except for the bass player.

“I was born in Chile,” she said. “We moved to the United States when I was little because my father got a job with an oil company in Houston. But he died when I was twelve.”

She thought of her mother, Elena, wandering at dusk through their house, opening the windows to let in the fresh night air. Elena would go through the motions a bit absently, deep inside her own world. Even before Julio's death, Elena's face had often been filled with sadness, and Adrianne had always felt as if she were somehow to blame for her mother's melancholy.

Alfredo put her rum and coke on the counter and gripped her fingers. His touch was warm. Then he went back to mixing drinks.

“You're lonely,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“I can see it.”

She wondered what it would be like to make love with this man.

The glass was icy in her hands.

“Two B&Bs,” the waitress called out. She was a slender girl in a tight black sheath. When she whispered something in Alfredo's ear, the two of them both burst out laughing, and Adrianne's jealousy flared. At that moment she became aware of Max's eyes boring into her back.

“How's the rum and coke?” Alfredo asked.

The waitress disappeared in the crowd.

“It's good, but I should get back to the man I came with.”

“That old man over there?”

“He's only a friend. I don't know him well. He lives in my rooming house.”

“Baby, you're a free woman, and you could have your pick of just about any man here. You've been sending out sex signals to all of them. Do you know that?”

Again he touched her, this time caressing her face. And she could feel the magnetic current between them. “You don't have to be a slave to anyone. Most people are slaves, although they don't have to be. Look around you. They're all slaves except for the musicians. They're the only ones who really enjoy what they're doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even if these people are wealthy, they're selling themselves. They sell their bodies and their minds and their time. Some of these men work eighty-hour weeks. As for the women, they're all selling themselves, every one of them, either at jobs or as housewives. They're
putas
, whores.”

“I don't understand.”

“Just think about it.”

She fiddled with the satin rose on her dress. “Why do you work here? Are you selling yourself, too?”

“Yes,” he said. “I'm selling my body and my time. I'm an artist. I need a job to pay the rent and buy canvas and paints. So, I'm no better than the others.”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“See that painting over there across the room? The nude? That's mine.”

Adrianne could see it only indistinctly in the darkness of the club. Above some tables was an unframed canvas, a mass of grey and pink tones that, when she looked attentively, depicted a huge reclining woman.

“I like it,” she said.

“I sell my waking hours to this job, and the boss lets me put up one lousy painting. It ain't worth it, baby.

“By the way, don't look now, but your elderly friend is walking over here. Adrianne, come by tomorrow night around eleven-thirty. I've got to see you again.”

He leaned closer and stroked her hand, gazing into her eyes. “Will you come tomorrow?” His intensity engulfed her.

“Yes.”

“I can teach you who you really are,” he murmured, just before she felt the heavy touch of Max's hand on her bare upper back.

“Hello, sir,” Alfredo said. “How are you tonight?”

“Adrianne, I am tired. We must go.”

“So, you're the young lady's friend. We've just been talking. How about a refill on the house.”

“No,” Max said abruptly. “It's very late. Come, Adrianne.”

As she slid off the stool, Max seized her arm. She felt shaky.
Once again she looked at Alfredo, but he was mixing more drinks and seemed not to notice her.

“I do not like that man,” Max said as they walked outside.

They took a taxi back. When Max took her hand in his, she did not resist. I owe him that much, she thought.

After they reached the door of her room, Max stood still while she fumbled in her purse for her key. His heavy breathing made her tremble. At last she found the key and said, “Good night. Thank you for everything.”

“Adrianne, very easily I could grow to love you,” he whispered.

“Good night.” She closed the door quickly, locking it shut. Alone at last, she walked over to the mirror where she took a good look at herself. The roots of her hair had grown out, she noticed, and the peroxide tint looked harsh under the ceiling light. Perhaps tomorrow she should apply a honey-colored rinse after work, before she met Alfredo. Thank God tomorrow was payday. She'd be able to cash her check and buy a package of rinse.

Max's desire touched and troubled her. As for Alfredo, thoughts of him obsessed her. Could he be the one she had been seeking?

“Adrianne, what do you see in the old man you were with last night? Free meals? A few drinks?”

She flushed, feeling protective of Max, and she recalled how forlorn he had looked when she left him.

“He's a good man.”

“He wants to get you into bed.”

Adrianne's flush deepened.

The bartender went on swiftly drying glasses with a purple cloth. His face was sensitive, alive, and his movements graceful. People's voices mingled with the sound of a Cole Porter tune on the piano. The blues trio wasn't playing tonight. Smoke, alcohol, and perfume assailed her nostrils.

“Hey, I didn't mean to offend you.” Alfredo gazed into her eyes. Once again she felt something familiar about him, although they had just met the night before. As though picking up her thoughts, he said, “You've got strong vibes, baby. I've known you in other lifetimes.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

Was this just a line he used? Strange he, too, should sense that he already knew her.

“Alfredo, I need those drinks.”

“Coming right up, sweetheart,” he said to the waitress who had whispered in his ear last night.

“I'll talk to you later, Adrianne. I've got to get back to work.”

Adrianne looked down at her navy skirt and then surveyed herself in the mirror behind the bar. Tonight she wore a translucent white blouse with a plunging neckline, and she thought she looked all right, although she hadn't had time to tint her hair after all.

Alfredo filled a jigger with scotch, poured it into a glass over ice, then squirted in soda and placed it on the counter in front of a middle-aged man in a grey suit. A slave, she thought. Two slaves. Three slaves.

She tried to make out strains of piano music through the din.
Soft and romantic, it almost hurt. Snatches of conversation caught her attention.

“… six and a half points a share …”

“… I hear he's leaving the firm.”

“Al, two Buds.”

“… got great tits …”

Several young men were thumping their glasses on the counter, and Alfredo said something to them that she couldn't hear. They began arguing with him in loud voices, but he ignored them as he continued his work. After a few moments they quieted down.

“Motherfuckers,” he said, moving closer to Adrianne. “Those jerks can't see anything past their own selfish needs. If they opened their eyes and ears for a second, they'd go crazy. We're living in Sodom and Gomorrah, baby, even though it may not look like it.”

Adrianne was startled by the violence of Alfredo's outburst. His fingers trembled as he poured white froth into large glasses.

“At this moment Eisenhower is close to pushing a button that will unleash the bomb. We're living so close to the edge. There are people in this city who don't have enough to eat. Men, women, and even children are shooting up heroin to escape their pain. Someday this whole system is going to crash. You'll see people dying like flies on these streets.”

Adrianne suddenly thought of Max, of how he had suffered, and she was flooded with sadness for him as well as for the poor people of whom Alfredo had been talking. A shiver of fear ran through her as Alfredo continued in an angry voice. “People don't believe in God anymore. Their God is money. What about you? Do you believe in God?”

“I don't know. I don't go to any church.”

“My mother went to Mass every Sunday. But she treated me like shit.” He moved an ashtray in front of her. His nails were long, narrow, and square-cut. “What about your family. Are they religious?”

“My mother is.” She twisted a tendril of hair around her fingers. “I don't know about my relatives in Chile. One of my aunts is a nun, but I've never met her. I've never met any of them. We left when I was so small, and we never went back.”

“Really?”

“My mother doesn't want to go back.”

“Does she understand that you feel cut off from your relatives?”

“No, she doesn't.” Adrianne twisted harder at the tendril of hair, until it pulled at her scalp. Things looked blurry through the tears that had welled up in her eyes. “I don't think she cares. She's very efficient at her job—she's a librarian—but when she comes home, she's a different person.”

Alfredo's hand was warm over hers. “I know what that's like, Adrianne. When my own mother dies, I'll dance on her grave,” he hissed.

She stared at him. His eyes were flashing with anger. “I was born in Havana. When we came here, I was little, too. We lived with relatives for years out in Queens. My mother left my dad back in Cuba.”

He began cutting a pineapple. He sliced off the skin, then cut the flesh into thin wedges. The sharp, shiny blade moved rapidly.

“Have you seen your father since you left?” she asked.

“I visited him once. He was a good man. He wasn't crazy like the
norteamericanos
… Adrianne, a little while ago I went to piss in the men's room. Someone had scrawled a message on the wall in pencil that read, ‘I suck hot cock. Call me,' along with a phone number. One psycho is calling out to another across the city. Help me. Let me suck your cock. While I piss into the toilet bowl, I'm looking at this stuff on the wall. Can you imagine a man lonely or crazy enough to write down a message like that? What a crazy world. It's like we're living in a huge psycho ward.”

The voices around her sounded louder. She heard a final chord from the piano, and then the piano player announced that he was finished for the night.

Alfredo lit a cigarette then offered her one, cupping the flame. “I'm off for the night as soon as I balance the cash register. Want to see my loft, Adrianne?”

“Sure,” she heard herself say.

They took the subway downtown. All the while she pressed against him, and the sexual current between them was so strong that Adrianne could hardly bear it.

They got out of the subway station at Spring Street, and he kept his arm around her while they made their way through dark streets, past unlit buildings in an industrial district, past a few huddled shapes that lay sleeping in doorways. When they reached his building, he unlocked the street door and they walked five flights up narrow stairs.

Alfredo's loft contained a large room with skylights and long industrial windows. Smells of paint, turpentine, and tobacco filled the air. Slowly she walked around, examining pictures and drawings that were stacked up against each other and that hung on the walls. A few reminded her of his painting at the Rose Bar, and these had harmonious shapes and hues. “Old work,” he said with a shrug when she pointed out those pictures. There was also a series of male and female nudes with wolves' and tigers' faces. Some of these were sketched in charcoal; others were painted in brivliant oils and acrylics. There were paintings of trees that made her think of tortured human limbs.

He led her through the doorway of an unpainted plywood partition into the kitchen, where she sat down at a table next to a gas stove. The sink was jammed with dishes. In front of her was a butt-filled ashtray as well as a purple candle in a wine bottle coated with wax drippings. He lit a cigarette for her and one for himself, then poured them both glasses of Chianti.

For a moment he left the kitchen, then returned with a drawing pad and a pencil. “Hold that pose,” he said. “I want to sketch you.” He worked rapidly. Ash from his up-ended cigarette fell to the floor. From time to time he sipped at his wine. Her body began to ache. Finally, he showed her what he had done. Ochre lines revealed a figure slumped in dejection, with a sharp face and enormous eyes.

“That's me?”

“That's you, baby.”

“But I'm so ugly.”

“That's your opinion. Do you think my paintings are ugly?”

She gazed down at knife cuts on the stained wooden surface of the table.