Dry Your Smile (35 page)

But never. Never said and never would be said. Even though Iliana had more than once felt invitation was being given, clues dropped. Deciphering those clues, imagining a hidden reciprocity of obsession, could lead to lunacy, she had warned herself, and as her private passion for Julian grew, she resolved that the only way to banish the unilateral love but preserve the bilateral friendship was to go abroad again.

Not back to Latin America. She would return to Europe. It might heal her, as it had the first time. In Europe she had learned to see through an Old World sight, tearless with watching generations of revolutionaries, lovers, tyrannical idealists and their victims alike pass beneath windows leaded like half-lidded eyes—a gaze of jaded sanity, despair suspended daily more through acts of wit than will, a diffident altruism leavened by personal responsibility for one's own existence.

To this day she could remember the disappointment moaned by their group. Just
now
, to leave the States? When the movement was taking
off
, when press coverage of feminist issues had become
serious
, when Hispanic-American women were “getting involved” … Even more could she remember how forlorn Julian had been. But all Julian had said, wistfully, was,

“It will be hard for me, losing you. We'll miss you.”

There it was again, the double-entendre code. “Hard for
me,
” but “
We'll
miss you.” Was that the editorial “we,” the speaking-on-behalf-of-the-group “we,” the royal “we,” or some hint about all the Julians in tandem? It was the confirmation Iliana dreaded: she must get away from Julian in order to get over Julian in order to love Julian safely.

So there had been Venice. “
Pas mal, pas mal de tout
,” Iliana murmured. Venice was decidedly a consolation for almost any loss. Her reputation had grown, and her financial means, and her capacity to enjoy herself. Venice had taught her that art was the only lasting revolutionary gesture, and that whatever helped her accomplish her art, made life more comfortable or more interesting, was not a luxury but a necessity.

Oh, if the old CR group could see her now! Sold-out hussy, they would grumble, running dog of a capitalist-imperialist swine! Well, who cared; most of them by now were probably back in bland suburbia, the remainder still clutching bleached denim “workers'” shirts to their downwardly mobile selves. Let any of
them
manage to smuggle film out of Argentina under the eyes of the notorious torture police. Let
them
work in a sweatshop without the benefit of a union, live through a bone-chilling New York February with no winter boots. Let
them
scar their vision with one-tenth of what hers had seen and recorded. Then let them discover Venice: sensual delight, and the personal “self-indulgence” which was only a fraction of what she might now avail herself if she chose. Because it was true that she still was more at home in her coveralls, pockets bagging with lenses and light meters, than in designer clothes.

There was only one problem in Venice. Even there she saw Julians: street-urchin small girls, militant feminists, intense women poets. Negatives. The original developed print remained in a far country but haunted her, the ghost of an exposure improperly set. There were the letters, too. Julian-on-the-page unconsciously knew how to give Iliana hope that the never-yet-manifest smile might one day dance, Salomé in a luxuriant
éclat
, across the real Julian face.

There had been distractions, to be sure. Work, laughter, diversions. Lovers. Two years with Beth, the Canadian expatriate who tutored English for a living, whose accent and political radicalism made her a temporarily satisfying Julian-surrogate. Then the aimless year: long sidewalk-café conversations with Giorgio about the futility of love. Her agent and confidant, he was the one person with whom she ever discussed Julian. Then the last two years, with Christina, a Latin and an exile like herself, but from Brazil—and as different from Julian as a glossy finish from a matte. That affair had expired finally when there were no more tempestuous fights to be stormed through. Iliana had tried the imitation and the contrast; both had their compensations, neither quenched the thirst. Venice began to feel played out, a stopover. It was Julian who had now become “home.”

But Iliana waited. Everything she knew and was helped her wait: the exile's patience, the artist's discipline, the apostate Catholic's fatalism, the pride of the pampas
caballero
. She had waited without hope.

Until Julian's letters confided difficulties with Laurence, then mentioned him less and less. Until the loss of Giorgio, months of visiting the hospital as he wasted away, an early casualty of what they now called AIDS. When he died, carrying with him Iliana's secret, she found herself for the first time in years thinking about a return to New York. Then it came—the coup for which Giorgio had worked so hard but never lived to see:

“A one-woman show at the finest photography gallery in Manhattan,” she muttered aloud through clenched teeth.

The justification.

The doorbell shrilled, announcing Julian. Iliana started with excitement—like an absurd schoolgirl, she thought. She forced herself to move calmly, sliding out from under the contact prints and carefully placing her sherry glass in its crystal coaster on the coffeetable. She could feel herself rapidly trying on a wardrobe of different smiles, despite the ripple of rage this realization sent through her. She glanced in the hall mirror, to see who Julian would see. Then she went to the door.

This would be the woman she had wanted more than she thought such wanting possible. For eight years. This would be the woman she loved now as tenderly as she might once have loved Enrico Martínez's aborted child. This would be her old comrade and friend. This would be Julian.

“Querida!”
she cried gaily as she swung open the door and enveloped Julian in a hug, feeling the upper half of Julian's torso respond with warmth. The physical message of terror from a heterosexual woman to a lesbian friend: a peculiar spastic bend at the waist, a posture in the shape of a number 7, the lower torso kept arched away at a safe distance. She released Julian and stepped back, holding her at arms' length to have a look at her. “But you're fatigued!” she proclaimed immediately. “Come, right away, take off your things. Put down all the cases, little shopping-bag lady. Is it cold out? What would be good? Coffee? Tea? A drink? Have you eaten?”

The worn face smiled at her.

“Actually, I'd love a drink. No, wait a minute, better not. I have to finish an article tonight, no matter how long it takes. Better make that coffee, okay? Sorry I'm late—”

“Not okay. A
little
drink, just a mild one. Then coffee. And you eat something.”

“Honest, not hungry.”

“Ta ta ta.” Iliana enunciated her nonsense words of dismissal with firmness. “I know what I say. A glass of burgundy gets the blood flowing. I promise that you will write your ‘whatever' better, even if you have to stay up all night to do it, you workaholic.”

“All right, I surrender, I give up,” Julian grinned. She loves being gently bullied, Iliana thought, loves being taken care of.
Mi preciosa
.

“Oh!” Julian cried, spying the contact sheets on the sofa. “Is that
them?
I can't wait!”

“Oh no you do not, Juliana my friend,” she yelled, rushing to sweep the sheets up onto her corner desk. “You just wait. Sit down on the couch and relax. I bring you a glass of friendly St. Emilion. You clear your fevering brain of whatever has made you tired, so you approach de Costa pictures with the clear mind and eye.”

“Dear
dear
. I did
not
mean to offend the great de Costa,” Julian answered, but the mischievous note in her voice already showed signs of recovery from exhaustion. “I'll be good and wait. But I'm
dying
to see them, you wretch!”

“Soon, soon. Patience is good for the soul,” Iliana called from the kitchen. Swiftly she assembled a tray: the wine, a stem balloon glass, an oven-warmed baguette, a slice of truffled pâté, a crystal bowl of cornichons. She didn't like Julian's brittle-boned look. It brought back her own days in Paris, when to eke out a meagre survival as a model, she had sucked in her cheeks affecting high-fashion gaunt, all the while living on bread and coffee. “Sustenance first, comprehension after,” she announced, bearing the tray into the livingroom.

“But I told you, I'm not hung—Oooo it looks delicious,” Julian admitted, throwing Iliana the look of a child caught denying it wants to steal from the cookie jar.

“So, hunger artist, you can perhaps stoop to nibble something?”

Julian produced an exaggerated sigh. “For you, my dearest friend, only for your sake, shall I force myself to taste, chew, and even yea swallow, a morsel of this lowly fare.” Then, changing voices to that of a gangster, “Outta my way, lady, unless you wanna get run over in my lunge toward that pâté.”

Iliana's laughter rang out like a bell at matins. Every time she estimated what Julian needed and discovered herself accurate (despite any of the stated or unstated demurrals) was another sign, a nuanced promise that the Salomé smile was slowly, tantalizingly, dancing its way up to the surface of that face. She watched with satisfaction while the food was attacked. But between bites, Julian accused,

“You're not eating. I notice you're not having any wine, either. You don't practice what you preach.”

“I
always
practice what I preach. That's how I learn what is good to preach and what is disastrous. But I've been drinking sherry. To mix sherry with burgundy is an insult to the sensibility, a confusion to the palate, and an invitation for revenge from the stomach. Although I might have a—‘nish'?”

“Nosh,” Julian laughed.

“Nish, nosh, of the pâté.
And
I make us some coffee. Since you insist on chasing this inoffensive St. Emilion with a blast of caffeine, what can I do?” She got up and went to the kitchen, pausing on her way to put a record on the turntable.

How could you convince someone like Julian of the necessity to feed one's own hungers as well as those of the world? She measured fresh beans into the coffeegrinder and flicked it on. Its roar drowned out the music from the other room, and the fragrance of coffee, as always, brought a pang of sense-memory from home. Denial, that's what it was, self-denial. A censorship of personal hunger—and not only for food—as pernicious as any government censorship. She filled the pot with water. Denial of hunger, of thirst. But when you tried to tell them, what happened? When you forced them to look at the faces of starvation in La Villa Miseria, Buenos Aires' worst slum, what happened? They suppressed your photographs, they censored you, they drove you away. She lit a flame under the coffeepot. How do you convince them that all the hungers are connected? How do you convince them so they don't drive you away?

She returned to the livingroom.

“Excellent,” she nodded, glancing at Julian. “You must have been famished without knowing it,
pobrecita
. You are far too thin these days.”

“Don't be silly. You know what they say: you can't be too thin or too rich. Well, I'm certainly safe from being rich. But it's the first time in my life I'm thin from not dieting.” Julian mumbled out of a full mouth. “'Course, it's a cloud-covered silver lining, that. The Grief Diet. I mean, I'm so damned busy or anxious or depressed or nauseated these days I don't have time to eat, much less appetite. But it's not intentional. If I croak from stress at least I'll be a glamorous corpse.”

“You are too young to be planning your corpse-hood, my dear. Yoy, yoy, yoy,” Iliana shook her head, “the incorrigible actress is among us. Listen to me. I mean it. You are getting bony.”

“What? You want me to be the little roly-poly I was years ago in our group? Fat
and
miserable you want me to be, is that it? Some buddy
you
are.”

“All you North Americans are obsessed with weight. Anorexia must be a national disease here.” Iliana popped a cornichon into her mouth. “Food is a great sensual pleasure—not for gluttony, for discriminating delight. So, I might add, is flesh. And you need not have worried,
chica
, about a diet. You have a Flemish body, from the Dutch masters. A Flemish body and a Renaissance mind.”

“And Walt Disney reactions: Gee. Golly. Gosh. Are you supportive! You sure learned your CR-group lessons well. Do you ever know how to make a girl feel better! And what,” Julian shifted, “is that gorgeous music?”

“A new record from Composers' Forum I just bought today.” Iliana noticed the resistance, the change of subject, and turned back toward the kitchen. “A woman composer with an unpronounceable name,” she called back over her shoulder. “Just want to check the coffee. But it's marvelous, no? So eclectic. She uses everything—instruments, synthesizer, voice …”

She came out of the kitchen, carrying a second tray with two cups and a steaming pot of coffee.

“Anyway, I
do
know what I say,” she persisted, edging the tray beside the first on the shrinking coffeetable surface. “Take it from one who has a Renoir body and a Quixotic mind—which is not a bad combination either, I might add. You should make yourself eat a little more, drink a glass of wine, enjoy some of the comforts life has to offer.”

“So offer me one,” Julian demanded. Then quickly specified, “
Now
can I see the contacts?”

The invitation. Then the caveat. Iliana smiled and proffered a damask napkin. “Now,” she said, bringing over the sheets from her desk and placing them gently, like a gift of myrrh, in Julian's outstretched hands, “
now
, yes, you may have the reward.”

Julian looked up at her.

“Iliana. I—I want you to know … I want you to understand that
I
understand what a great personal favor this is. I know that you never do this sort of photography anymore. I want you to know that I'm just—very grateful.”