Private House (22 page)

“You spoke to him?”

She closed her eyes. The darkness was rolling about a little. “It's too complicated to explain. But there might be a message.”

“All right, we can call the desk. Or we can see how you feel. I'll go back with you—I can come back here later if I want. Don't worry about it.”

Lorraine closed her eyes. And all at once, the whole day was catching up to her. Her last thought was that, at least, she hadn't spoiled Mathilde's day, and that she hadn't made a fool of herself and that she'd done what she could do. Then she was asleep. When she woke up, it was dark in the room and her mouth was dry, she desperately wanted some water. She struggled to sit up. She'd sunk down, between the cushions of the couch. Bailey's voice said, “When the Americans come and we're all rich, that's what
I'm
going to buy, a new couch.”

“Oh dear,” said Lorraine, “what time is it?”

Mathilde said, “A little after ten. Don't worry. I called the hotel, I just said I was you. No messages.”

Lorraine was aghast. “I should have been there.”

“Honestly, Lorraine, I don't think anyone called.”

Bailey had fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and now Lorraine drank it down and felt better, though still groggy.

“I had too much to drink,” she said.

Bailey put his hand on her forehead. “Too much sun, I think.”

“But I should go now.”

“No, you shouldn't.” Bailey turned to Mathilde. “Do you have any Anacin?”

“Anacin?”

“Aspirin.”

Mathilde found her bag and handed Lorraine three tablets. She swallowed them with another gulp of water. “Lie back,” said Mathilde.

Lorraine felt sick, because of the sun and the drink, but mostly because she hadn't been at the hotel. But she knew she couldn't go anywhere now. She closed her eyes. For a time, she could hear Mathilde and Bailey talking softly, but either they went away or she dozed. And then, definitely, she fell asleep. When she awoke, the apartment was dark and quiet, and even without looking at her watch, she knew it was late.

She lay still, remembering where she was.

Bailey had placed a chair beside her, like a night table, and left her another glass of water. She struggled up, sipped the water, then drank it so thirstily that she had to catch her breath. She looked at her watch and saw it was 3.00 a.m. The phone call she'd missed came back to her. She had gone to so much trouble that morning but then she hadn't been there to take Hugo's call. Or had he called? Probably not,
but in a way it didn't make any difference. It was awful. She'd written
urgent
on her note, underlining it: and hadn't bothered to be there. Her heart sank—because she was never going to know. Unless he came to the restaurant . . . tonight, yes, tonight. But something was lost, that's what she'd felt, some last chance: she'd never know just as she'd never be sure if it had actually been him on the phone. She was sure now, it wasn't. But no, she wasn't sure; it might have been. Now she went over the whole day in her mind, Hugo's
casa
, the landlady in her big skirt, the man she'd met on the landing. Phil. And Jack, the young man, with the dark line of hair on his belly. They could have been gay, she'd been thinking that, maybe the
casa
was a place for gays, certainly they existed—“gay-friendly”—but then she told herself that was silly. Still, it made her wonder if Hugo was gay and she remembered that she'd thought so at first, she'd assumed it. Or was it possible that Almado might have seduced him, brought him out? On the phone, Hugo had denied having a girlfriend; he'd almost insisted on it. Why? And it made another explanation for the ring. It was a
ring
, after all. Would Hugo have given it to Almado
unless
they'd been lovers? Of course the simplest explanation was the right one. Almado had stolen it. He was a thief, that was
his
scam. Still. . . . She tried to recall Hugo as clearly as she could, what he had looked like, and sounded like. Could he have been gay? Could you tell? Could you ever? She remembered talking about this to Murray. They'd been talking about Christ, and the possibility that he had been gay. Murray had said, “There's no doubt that he was in Michelangelo's eyes . . . and Leonardo's, and Caravaggio's—” But, in the end, he admitted you couldn't be sure. “He
could
have been.” That was the best you could say. Lorraine had always felt Christ was sexless. Murray couldn't resist. “We never see his penis, do we? Perhaps he didn't have one. A real freak. Hermaphrodite? Castrato?” Now, lying in the dark, she wondered where Hugo fell along this spectrum. And then she heard sounds from the other room . . . but they were only whispering. They must have been making love, though. She wasn't embarrassed— somewhat to her surprise. She smiled, in fact, and felt rather content: At least there's no doubt about them. When she finally did have something with a man, she would think of them and be grateful. She listened. Mathilde had laughed. She liked Mathilde and was happy for her. She liked Bailey for remembering “The Shoop Shoop Song.” Bailey had said, “The future isn't over yet,” but perhaps that also meant that the past hadn't quite closed its doors. What had happened to her? What was happening now? She closed her eyes and fell back asleep.

S
ATURDAY
, M
AY 7, 2005

1

“I would have telephoned, but that is very difficult for me.”

“This is all right.”

Adamaris had called up from the lobby of the Raquel, and Mathilde had come down, ushering her out of the hotel as quickly as possible: she didn't want her to run into Lorraine. Now they were in the bar of the Ambos Mundos, its cool dimness defined by the brilliance so prettily shadowed and barred by the shutters. It was two-thirty now; after last night, today had started late and proceeded slowly.

“Of course my life would be made easier. It is not possible to express this in words.”

She was only reporting that their reservation had been made for that evening, but it was clearly an opportunity too good to miss.

“I'm sure that must be true, Adamaris.”

Adamaris released the straw from the grip of her perfect lips and shook her head twice, exactly. “Is not possible. You do not know. The electricity fails every week, often every day. I light a candle and sit in the dark. Without a phone I am the same. When did you begin to have telephones in Paris? After the Second World War?”

Many Habaneros found cities more real than countries, perhaps reflecting perceptions of their own. Mathilde set down her glass. “Before that.”

“Then you can see.
That
is where we are, that far back.”

Adamaris sipped her Coca-Cola, while Mathilde enjoyed a good
mojito
, made with enough rum and plenty of mint. A group of Japanese tourists filed out of the old elevator and chattered their way to the tables reserved for them: they'd been visiting Hemingway's room.

Adamaris, thought Mathilde, was relentless. She never stopped. “Your friend is all right?” she continued. “The pills have proved to be very effective?”

“I'm not sure she's taken any.” Mathilde wanted to tell her not to mention the pills tonight, but that would be giving something away; and she was cautious on that score. After all, Adamaris could read your mind:

“I will be discreet, of course, but she has not had more . . . attacks?”

Mathilde remembered that the word, used this way, had been new to her; it was characteristic that she should practise it at the first opportunity. Mathilde shook her head. “I don't think so.”

“That is good. Such an attack could be dangerous, you agree?”

Mathilde shrugged noncommittally; it was best not to follow Adamaris unless you knew where she was going. “Dangerous . . . I don't know about that.”

“But she might need assistance? You see, then, why it is a good suggestion that she have a phone with her.”

Her eyes flickered to Mathilde's bag, and Mathilde felt a temptation to bring the phone out, and set it in front of her—and then she thought, What is temptation for? and did so. She set it on the table, directly opposite Adamaris's packet of cigarettes: but her hands plucked these away and disappeared, on the other side of the table, into her lap. Was that the key to her personality? An absolute self-control? Without it . . .

“I know you would like it, Adamaris, but I have a friend. He needs a phone too.”

Adamaris lifted her eyebrows, and her lips lifted as well, so that as she spoke—for the first time—her mouth was twisted from its perfect form. “A man?”

“Yes. A man.” And then—she sensed she would be rubbing it in— she added, “A black man.”

Adamaris pursed her lips: her whole face, in fact, compressed itself in a moment of concentration. “I do not have this in my blood.”

Mathilde thought, Perhaps I do. It was an interesting way to look at it. She said, “You don't like blacks?”

“Of course I do not say that.”

Mathilde smiled. “Let us have a difficult conversation, Adamaris. Have you had a black lover?”

Adamaris lit a cigarette. Now she knocked a little ash from the end. She said nothing, but it was clear to Mathilde that the answer to her question was no, and so she added, “Do you think you'd enjoy it?”

Her face settled into total neutrality. “I am sure it would be satisfactory.”

Mathilde sat back, defeated. Of course Bailey was certainly that: satisfactory—perhaps, oddly, that was the perfect word. She wondered
to what extent his blackness contributed to this. Perhaps, Mathilde thought, this was why she'd been so open to Bailey. He was, so emphatically, not her. Adamaris was the pure strain. And now Mathilde decided, with a certainty that surprised her—with exactly the surprise that, time after time, Bailey provided: I want my blood to mix. I want my blood to mix with the blood of all the world.

Just then, Bailey appeared. He stood a moment in the doorway, framed by its brilliance, and like everyone else coming in from that sun, his eyes needed time to adjust. He didn't see Mathilde. But she saw him. He stood with his weight a little on his left side, and now he hooked his right thumb through the belt loop of his tight jeans and looked slowly around the room. Lean. Lanky? Mathilde was trying to think in English:
lanky
, yes. He looked very American, and even more black because he was wearing a fresh white shirt. Now, she knew, the white Americans tried to look like the blacks, or the kids did. All those rock stars. Hip hop. Those baggy pants that looked like diapers full of shit. Bailey went back to a time before that. Not rap, but jive. He would have been young in the fifties, after all. The model then was the West, cowboys and Indians. Riding the range. John Wayne. Jimmy Stewart? Was he that old? That slow drawl out of the side of the mouth, because they were always chewing a blade of grass . . . There were never blacks in those movies. What awful movies they were! Only the Cinémathèque would dare to revive them! The men fought and the women cringed up against the wall, their hands jammed in their mouths to keep from screaming. Of course, he'd made her do that—jam her hand in her mouth to keep from crying out. But how different it was. Now he had turned, and seen her. He smiled slowly. Like the drawl. Very American. But from long ago—he was right, he was trapped by time as much as the island itself. A certain kind of man, washed up on this
shore, preserved like a piece of driftwood. Like everything else. The Revolution. Fidel. . . . It surprised her to think that this was an element of his attraction, to connect back to that, since, as far as she was aware, she didn't agree with any of it.

Adamaris, following her gaze, turned and saw him. Mathilde, for that instant, couldn't see her face, but when she turned back her expression was one of absolute reserve, total withdrawal. Mathilde smiled. Adamaris wouldn't be able to deal with Bailey, there could be nothing between them. There was no guilt to work on, or not the right kind; at least he didn't feel guilty for his very existence. Fuck 'em and forget 'em, wasn't that what they said? She wondered if that was what he was doing to her, but of course it was the other way around: she had fucked him, and she was flying away the day after tomorrow and he would be left behind.

“Bailey, this is Adamaris.”

He nodded. She extended her hand—only then did he offer his—and said something in Spanish. He replied, but there was a second's hesitation and even Mathilde could hear that his accent was awkward; it seemed to Mathilde that this was how Adamaris tried to assert her dominance. She turned back to Mathilde. “I will leave you now. Until this evening.” And then she added. “Please thank Mrs. Stowe again for inviting me.”

She went off and Bailey sat down.

Mathilde said, “She wants the cell phone.”

He smiled. “She wants anything she can get. . . . How's your
mojito
?”

“Not as good as the ones you make.”

“But they're okay here, for a tourist place.”

The waitress came and he ordered, speaking Spanish to her. Mathilde said, “What did you think of Adamaris? I think she's a racist.”

He laughed. “You might say she comes from a long line of them, to look at her.”

“Yes. She's very Spanish. She said that—it's not in her blood. Is that how they think?”

He shrugged. “I don't know about ‘they.' Some. I'm not sure how important that word actually is. Think of it from her point of view. If she went with a black man, married him, had babies that were a little too dark, she'd be letting down all those ancestors . . . you know, the pictures hanging on the old hacienda's walls. You wouldn't want to be the first, would you?”

“Yes, I would.”

Was this the closest she could come to telling him? He missed it, merely covering her hand with his. “You're leaving the day after tomorrow.”