House Arrest (20 page)

T
HE CLUB TROPICAL was located a few miles outside of town, in the outer reaches of the Miramar. It was on an old estate, surrounded by palms that rose straight to the sky. A ceiling of fronds covered the stage. The night was hot and sultry as Isabel looped her arm through mine and we passed the bubbling fountain of nymphets, water coursing down their buttocks and thighs, cascading from their breasts and hair.

Heads turned as we entered the large entryway. Isabel looked straight ahead, clutching my arm. Her dress was sheer white silk with a shawl that trailed behind her. I felt under-dressed in my pink jumpsuit she’d asked me to wear, though Isabel said when she saw me that I looked “stunning.” That was her word. Not one I’d usually apply to myself. Tonight, instead of having her hair pulled back severely into a bun, as usual, she wore it down, flowing to her shoulders. Everyone turned to look at her.

Even emaciated, she could be a queen, the deposed ruler
of an ancient land. The crowds looked at her, because she was so regal. And because they knew who she was. She was the movie star, the celebrity in town, renowned not only for who her father was, but because she hated him so. She would tell it to anyone who asked, particularly foreign journalists. Suddenly lights flashed. Cameras went off. So now they had my face. Now everyone knew who I was as well.

“Your table is this way,” the maître d’ said. Isabel had made the reservations, arranged for the table near the stage, but off to the side so we wouldn’t be disturbed. She had also arranged for the car to drive us from the hotel. My sense was that Isabel could arrange for anything, negotiate anything, except what she really wanted.

With a long drumroll the dancers rushed on. Swarthy men pranced with women dressed like aquatic birds. From our seats, I could see their painted-on eyebrows, smell their hair spray. Thighs, slightly flaccid, in mesh hose, were raised in my face. A long-legged woman in a peacock’s tail strutted across the stage. Isabel poked the ice cube in her Cuba libre.

At nearby tables patrons whispered, nodding our way. Men in polished silk suits stopped at our table, offering Isabel their hands. A man who looked like Xavier Cugat appeared on stage. He had a thin mustache and a baton in his hand. Raising the baton, he struck up the band and shouted, “Now, everybody dance.”

Grabbing me by the hands, Isabel pulled me to my feet. “Come on,” she said. “Dance with me.” She dragged me onto the dance floor, where she tipped her head back and began to sway. My face flushed as I felt the eyes of the room turn on us. Stroking me on the cheek, Isabel placed my hands on her waist. Then she drooped her hands around my neck.

Tossing her head back, she began to sway. I was surprised at how well she moved, how smoothly she led me across the floor. I tried to follow the steps, to move my feet in rhythm with hers. A few times I stumbled on her toes. Sweat appeared on her lower lip as she kept her gaze fixed on mine.

I wanted to look and see if other women were dancing together, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from Isabel. She held me, guiding me across the room, and I could imagine her as she was—a little girl of no more than eight—the night her father came to dance with her.

It was close to two in the morning when we got back to the hotel and Isabel said she wanted to use the bathroom. She wanted to come upstairs. I was hot and sweaty and we were both a little drunk. She told the driver to wait for her and followed me up the stairs.

Inside the room, she flopped down on the bed. “Oh, it’s so hot. I feel so dirty. Let’s take a shower,” she said. She pulled her dress over her head, stood there naked, then headed for the bathroom. I heard the water go on, the shower. Steam poured out of the bathroom. She called to me from inside. “Come,” she said, “it will relax you.”

As I passed the mirror, I couldn’t see my face because of the steam. I rubbed my hand on it. I looked well, dark and tan. My hair had golden highlights, but under my eyes were circles. I never stayed up so late. Isabel’s hand waved at me from behind the curtain. I slipped out of my dress and got in.

Water cascaded down her chest, her thighs. Her body was thin and yet round; there were soft curves, smooth lines. If she had more flesh, she would be beautiful, I thought. Here, she said, handing me the soap. I haven’t bathed with a woman since Lydia and I washed together as girls. I had
forgotten the smooth softness of the skin, the hairless flesh. Then she took the soap from me and had me turn around. Her long thin fingers ran up and down my spine. I loved the smooth circles her hands made on my shoulder blades, the even strokes down the backs of my legs.

Afterward we dried ourselves off. Isabel threw her hair forward, drying it briskly with the towel. Then she wrapped the towel around her waist and walked to the balcony, where she opened the French doors. We stood for a moment, drying off in the breeze. Then, exhausted and hot from the shower and from the heat of the night, we stretched out on the bed. She lay with her head resting against my shoulder and I let my fingers stroke her damp hair. My fingers moved between the strands, separating them. Her hair smelled fresh and I breathed it in until my breath quickened as I felt her skin against my skin.

Suddenly she sat up, pushing my hand away from her face. “What is it?” she said. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” I said, startled by her abruptness. “I don’t want anything.”

“You must want something,” she said with an edge in her voice that left me feeling suddenly afraid. She was rising, staring at me from above. “You gringos are all alike. You are all selfish and afraid. You want adventures as long as there is no risk to yourself.” She flung the covers back and was shouting now, grabbing for her clothes. “You think you are brave, but you are just like the rest of them. You are all stupid cowards.”

She pulled on her dress and now she was sobbing, sputtering. I sat up, reaching for her across the bed, but she motioned me down. “Do you hear me?” she shouted, heading for the door. “You are all stupid, selfish cowards.”

“You’re wrong,” I told her. “Isabel,” I shouted, “don’t leave.” But she was heading, sandals in hand, for the door, which she slammed behind her. Wrapping a blanket around me, I went to the balcony and saw her car still waiting for her below. Her driver jumped out and opened the door for her. She slammed the door when she got in and the car sped off around the plaza, disappearing in the night.

S
OME MORNINGS I’ll get up with the birds. In the oak tree out back dozens of birds roost and their morning calls wake me. In the spring there are the crows. But there are also the grackles, the starlings, the sparrows. When they wake me with their caws and cries and twitterings, I can’t go back to sleep.

I’ll look at Todd, asleep beside me in the chiaroscuro light. He sleeps on his back, mouth opening and closing. There are these odds moments of intimacy. When you can see the other, but he doesn’t see you. Hair sticking every which way, the silly look of slumber on his face. Or a sudden flash of a dream passing behind his eyes. A glimpse of what he sees on the other side.

Then I’ll pad downstairs, make myself a cup of coffee. This is my favorite time of day. Five-thirty or six
A.M.
, no one up. I’ll sip coffee, read the paper. There is a blue chair in the kitchen that looks out on the yard. I’ll sit there, listening to the birds, wondering what would happen if Todd and Jessica
woke up and found me gone. I’ll wonder if I couldn’t just pack a bag and leave. Where would I go? Of all the places to which I’ve traveled, which one draws me the most? That place in Maui accessible only by boat? The altiplano of Bolivia and Peru? Could I breathe that rarefied air for the rest of my life, groom alpacas, be accountable to no one?

When my coffee goes cold, I’ll head upstairs. I’ll pause at my daughter’s room. The dog is asleep with his head on her pillow, and she clutches him in her arms. The dog looks at me and, knowing it isn’t time to get up, puts his head back down again.

I’ll go over, shove the dog aside. I’ll slide between the covers on her bed, putting my body where the dog had been. I’ll lie close to her and smell her milky breath, touch her soft skin. Unblemished. Perfect. I’ll place my head down on the warm pillow and fall asleep.

A blaring telephone wakes me. I hear Todd’s voice on the other end. “I think I should come down,” he tells me. “This is taking too long.”

Actually I have no idea how long it is taking. The days seem to melt into one. “I’m sure I’ll be out of here in the next day or so.”

“Maggie, it’s been four days. Are you sure there isn’t something you want to tell me?”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

“It shouldn’t take this long,” he says. “Tell me. The last time you were there, what happened? What did you do?”

For two years now I have been silent. I have not told him a thing. He has no idea how close to the brink I came, how I teetered, then came back again.

“Nothing happened,” I tell him, “nothing at all. But maybe you should come down.” I am weeping into the phone.

“I’m going to,” he says. “I’ll be there. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

F
OR SEVERAL DAYS after our night at the Club Tropical I did not hear from Isabel. I did not try to find her after our fight and she did not try to reach me. I was making my way through the list of things I had to review. I had finished restaurants and museums. Hot spots and clubs were done. I had one or two joint-venture hotels on the north and south of the island to check out, but those were easy day-trips.

The historic walk through the old city was basically done and I had an afternoon walk to complete to the fortress by the sea, the site of the victory over the Spanish. If my work continued at its present pace, I would be done in three or four days. I considered going to look for Isabel but I had a great deal to attend to and found myself almost hoping that she would drift back into the shadows of my life as easily as she had appeared.

Just when I had resigned myself to this, I found her sitting in the lobby of my hotel one morning as I was heading out to
do the walk to the fortress. I wasn’t surprised to see her appear like this. She gave me a little nod when she saw me and I noticed that she looked pale, worse than she had when I first met her. Haggard, with deep circles beneath her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept or eaten in days. I was surprised by the change that had overcome her. She was visibly altered, her eyes duller and dreamier than I had seen them, like someone who cannot recall who she is or what has happened to her. “You look terrible,” I told her.

“I’m all right,” she said, “no worse than usual.” But she seemed despondent, downcast. “I have just got to get out of here. I have to get away.” She grabbed me by the hands. “I really think,” she said, “I think I will die if I have to stay.”

“Come,” I said, taking her by the hand over to the restaurant, where I ordered a glass of orange juice and a sandwich for her, though she assured me she couldn’t eat. I sighed. “There must be something I can do for you.”

“We scarcely know each other,” she went on. “There is no point in you getting involved.”

I reached across, stroked her hand. “I already am involved.”

“Well, there
is
something. It is just that it is so much to ask …”

“You can ask,” I said.

Her face shone. There was suddenly almost something beatific about her features. “You see, I have prayed for help,” she began. “I have prayed for someone to come and deliver us and I have been beginning to think that no one would ever come. I have thought about this for such a long time now. It is almost all I do, but recently I have begun to think that perhaps it was you.”

Now it is clear to me that when I saw her at the Church of
the Apparitions, she was praying for my help. Perhaps she had even told me to go there so that I would see her pray. I am not a religious person, but suddenly I felt that I had been sent, that it was my mission to deliver her. “What is it?” I said, leaning forward, our bodies almost touching.

She took a deep breath. “Well, this is what you could do, if you were willing. I’ll just say it. Tell you what it is. You can listen and think about it. You could lose your passport and plane ticket. Three days later you will report them missing. During that time I will leave the country and your new passport and ticket will be issued. Manuel will make sure all this happens smoothly. If it costs you anything, I will repay you in the States.”

I have blue eyes and coppery hair and I must weigh twenty pounds more than Isabel, but she says she has friends who will take care of these details. “You know who I am,” she told me, “and you know who my father is, and there is no other way for me to go.”

I have never lived particularly close to the edge. I like balanced meals, I put on my seat belt when I get into the car, even in the backseat. But suddenly I found myself tempted, not only because I wanted to help Isabel leave, but also because I wanted to stay. Not forever. It wasn’t that I wanted to stay on
la isla
forever. Just for a little while—to dance until I forgot who I was and what I was doing there in the first place.

She would buy a sandy-colored wig and leave the country as me. And then who would I be? It was almost as if for a time—though I knew there was no logic in this—I would be Isabel. It makes no sense, but somehow I was being asked to trade places with her. This was something I knew how to do. It was a game I’d played before.

“What exactly would I have to do?” I asked as we sat in a café near the Miramar. Isabel wore her hair pulled back in a bun that made her bones stand out even more than they normally did. She sipped unsweetened lemonade and smoked a cigarette, which I had only seen her do when we first met.

“You would take a walk one night and sit by the seawall at a designated spot. Here you will leave your passport and ticket. Manuel will come by later and retrieve them. After that, we won’t have any contact. You will wait until the day you are to leave and then report your documents missing. The Swiss embassy will provide you with new documents and you will leave as planned. They will consider it a theft. This kind of thing happens all the time here. It should go off without a hitch. I have friends who will make sure you leave and they will help me leave.”