The Last Lovely City (3 page)

“How tacky can you get!” Chase cried out. And then she said, “Look, don’t call me, I’ll call you, okay?” And hung up.

True to her word, she did call him—once, very late at night. “I’ve had some wine,” she said. “I shouldn’t be calling, I mean, otherwise I wouldn’t. But I just wanted you to know a couple of things. One, I was really in love with you. God, if I needed further proof that I’m seriously deranged. I always fall in love with the most unavailable man anywhere around. Emotionally. Mean eyes, good shoulders.
Shit
, why did I call? Good night!” And she hung up, loud and clear. A ridiculous and quite unnecessary conversation, in Carter’s view.

Now, in the afternoon sunshine, Carter looks about at all the roses and the scented white wisteria—at their lovely house and at unlovely, untrustworthy, but deeply familiar Meredith. He finds that, despite himself, he is thinking of Chase. Of her passion (those cries of love) and her scornful rage and of her final avowals (but she was drunk). Is it now too late? Suppose he
went to her and said that he was through with Meredith, would she take him back? Would she ask him to come and live with her? (So far, she has never suggested such a thing.) Could they marry?

No
is the answer that Carter gives to all these questions. No, Chase would probably not take him back, and no, there is no way he could afford to marry her. Even if he were sure that he wanted to. Chase is crazy—she must be crazy. Look at those paintings. There in the warm sunlight he suddenly shivers, as though haunted.

“Yes,” he says to Meredith, although she hasn’t spoken for a while. “Yes, okay. All right.”

The room, in this old, West Coast Mexican resort hotel, is unspeakably shabby—a window broken, the bedside table precariously leaning sideways—and not entirely clean. Led there by the aging, barefoot busboy, Penelope Jaspers, an art dealer, and Ben Bowman, a superior court judge, both from San Francisco, exchange a heavy look. In the bathroom, which is not quite as bad as she feared, Penelope, who had requested this particular room (she has been here before, though not for several years), tries a faucet: no water. And then back in the bedroom she finds no electricity. She can see from Ben’s face, and his stance, that he is prepared to tough it out if she is, but Penelope has more at stake in this trip, for her a possibly dangerous return to old haunts (although she has changed a lot since then, she feels), and so she rather quickly decides that discomfort will be less than no help. She tells the busboy, Alfonso, who does not seem to remember her (or is he being tactful?), “Things don’t seem to work in this room, Alfonso. Could we see another?”

Alfonso does not recognize Penelope; they look so much alike, these North American women. Pale and too thin, they dress either in pants or in immodest bathing costumes. This particular light-haired woman has a smile more pleasant than the rest, and her voice is soft—he thinks that he may have seen her
before, although with a taller husband, who had no beard. North Americans quite frequently exchange their husbands and wives with each other, he has been told. Nevertheless, as pleasantly as he can, he tells the woman, whose Spanish is fairly good, for a gringa, that he will return to the desk for another key; he will show them another room.

Penelope and Ben smile at each other, quickly, tentatively, and she tells him, with a gesture, “This room, with the Farquhars in it, you can’t imagine the difference. They always came for a month, you know, and put their things around.” Not telling him, And Charles and I were in the room next door. Ben “knows” about Charles, a painter; knows that she came here with him often, and that she felt “terrible” when she and Charles broke up (terrible for a couple of years, in fact; but now she is really okay, she has told him that too). “The room even seemed bigger,” she adds.

“Empty rooms look smaller.” Ben is given to such stray bits of information.

“Lucky there’s another room. We hope.”

“Probably. This is off-season,” he reminds her.

There is another room, seemingly at the top of the flight of steps they have just come down—and which now, following Alfonso and their luggage, they climb again, in the almost stifling, unaccustomed April sunshine, among the still bravely flowering bougainvillea vines.

Happily, the new room is extremely nice. A new structure has been built over the old, existing structures, over the tiers of rooms—over all of them, in fact, except the lower row, where the Farquhars, and next door Penelope and Charles, used to stay. This room is large and white, with an alcove for bathing, another space for reading, or lounging about, with two sofas and a table. A king-sized bed, and a broad porch out in front, with a table and chairs and hammocks—and a sweeping view of the bay, the brilliant sea and its enclosing hills of jungle trees. The
sea and the view for which they have come, essentially, to this place.

And how fortunate, really, that they have this room instead of the old one that Penelope asked for, the Farquhars’ room. How lucky that the lights didn’t work, Penelope is thinking, and the water. If things had been just slightly better they would have stuck it out, and suffered. Ben wanting to please her, to be a good sport, and Penelope, for her pride, pretending that everything was fine. But this is perfect, she thinks. Here we are in San Bartolomeo, but not in the same room or near those rooms. It is simply a much better version of what I had before, she thinks. How fortunate, all around.

She asks Ben, “Do you want a swim?”

He smiles. “Well, why not?”

“I’m over him, really, finally, I think. If I just don’t go back to Mexico I’ll be all right, probably.” Penelope said this to her closest friend from time to time, with decreasing frequency, in the years that succeeded her disastrous breakup with Charles, with whom she had lived for five or six years (depending on whether you counted the months of quarrelsome separations). She said it a couple of times after entering into a “relationship” with Ben, a more or less respectable, though bearded, judge. And then this spring, now about three years “after Charles,” as Penelope still thinks of it, she finds herself on a trip with Ben, not only to Mexico but to San Bartolomeo itself, the beautiful scene of too much, the scene of too many scenes.

What happened was an airlines deal, promotional: Go anywhere in Mexico for $199. Penelope and Ben read this, and they both began to say, Why not? We need a vacation, swimming, warm weather. In San Francisco, a long mild dry winter had been succeeded by a cold wet dark spring. And then they began to eliminate places: well, obviously not Cancún, and Cozumel’s
so far away. Acapulco is horrible, and Vallarta’s much too crowded. Until at last Penelope said, more or less to herself, Well, why not San Bartolomeo? It’s so much in my mind, I have to go back there sometime, why not now? with Ben? with whom, on the whole, she got along rather well—though not lately; lately she had felt rough edges between them.

San Bartolomeo was where every January, for a week, she and Charles struck a truce, or nearly. No really bad fights. Where everything was beautiful: the flowers; the green, encroaching jungle; the white beach and the sea. And the Farquhars, an elderly, distinguished couple, he an astronomer, she an actress, both long retired, were in the cabin next door—unlikely but close, and valued, crucial friends for wild Charles and frightened Penelope. With Carlotta and Travis Farquhar, Charles tamed down, drank less, and shouted not at all; he was, in fact, his best, most imaginative, entertaining, generous, and sensitive self. And beautiful; Charles was always more handsome than anyone else around. Penelope, losing fear, was more friendly and talkative than usual (she felt this to be so, with the Farquhars).

For those weeks in San Bartolomeo there had been not only the balm of the Farquhars’ company but also that of the place itself, its extreme tropical, flowery, seaside beauty. The long days of nothing to do but swim and walk and eat and take naps. And make love.

The Farquhars had died a couple of years ago—as a dedicated couple will, within weeks of each other. And why, Penelope wondered in the weeks succeeding confirmation of plans for their trip, hers and Ben’s, why had she so specifically asked for the Farquhars’ room? Did she imagine that she and Ben (they sometimes spoke of marriage) might become, eventually, such a couple? Or did she want to be right next to, but not inside, the
room that she and Charles had shared so happily? (It
was
true, they had been almost always happy in San Bartolomeo.)

In any case, it does seem fortunate that they are to be in quite another room—although, on the way down to go swimming that first day, and every day after that, they walk right past that well-known row of rooms, the bottom row. Vines and bushes have been allowed to grow up almost to the porches, interfering, Penelope supposes, with the view from those rooms.

On the plane down from San Francisco, Penelope had chatted somewhat nervously to Ben, extolling the virtues and beauties of their destination—indeed, until he patted her arm and told her, “Pen, it’s okay, I’m sure it will be all right.”

One of the attractions described by Penelope was Rosa’s restaurant, a beach shack, at the foot of the path up to their hotel. “Rosa is wonderful,” Penelope told Ben. “Very small and dark, this burnished skin. And such a great cook, the best seafood. She’s so energetic! With this slob of a husband who lolls around in very clean clothes that probably she ironed.”

As they reach the foot of the path, that first day, there indeed is Rosa’s: a concrete floor with a thatched lean- to roof, some tables and chairs. And, swinging out into the breeze, several rickety cages, each housing a drowsy, shabby-looking parrot.

And there is Rosa! recognizing Penelope. “Ah, amiga!” and rushing toward her, as Ben stands off at some distance, discreetly, on the sand.

They embrace, as Penelope thinks that she had not remembered Rosa as being so small. Rosa’s head barely reaches Penelope’s breast. And then, still embracing Penelope, Rosa bursts into tears. “My husband!” she cries out. “Now dead two years!”

“Oh, how terrible. My husband died too,” Penelope lies—a double lie; she and Charles never married, and he did not die
but ran off to Turkey, finally, with a pretty boy. She does not understand this lie that she herself has told.

“Ah, amiga.” Rosa presses her closer, and then lets go.

“My friend Ben.” Penelope gestures vaguely in his direction, as Ben, who knows no Spanish (and thus did not hear Penelope’s curious untruth), smiles.

“Ah, good,” says Rosa, vaguely.

“We’ll see you later; we’ll come down for dinner,” Penelope promises.

“Good.”

But Penelope senses that Rosa has already lost interest in her. Rosa only wanted to say that her husband had died, wanted the drama of that moment. Her husband, the slob in his clean freshly ironed clothes, whom Rosa loved.

Having promised, though, they do go down that night to Rosa’s for dinner, Penelope in her long white flowered dress, bought years ago, down here, in a funny store recommended by Carlotta Farquhar. “You look really pretty,” Ben tells her as they settle into rickety chairs, next to the view of the night-black, half-moonlit sea.

Rosa’s has all been repainted, a bright yellowish green, but still the room seems much darker than before. At one end, the kitchen end, a large TV set emits a murky light and a lot of noise—a Mexican talk show, dancers in frilly costumes, tambourines, guitars, Rosa and a group of assorted, T-shirted adolescents—her children, now five years older than when Penelope last saw them, all huddled, transfixed. Rosa, who used to be always rushing in and out of the kitchen.

The food is good, good fresh fish browned in garlic, but not as good as Penelope remembered it.

Ben asks, “Have you ever been to Hawaii?”

“No, why?” Not asking, Do you wish we were there instead? already?

“I just wondered. I used to go there a lot.”

“You liked it?”

“Oh yes. With, uh, Betty.”

Betty is Ben’s former wife, who behaved very badly; she drank, had affairs, all that. Ben almost never speaks of her, conveniently for Penelope, who does not wish to speak of Charles. She asks him, “Do you think of going back there?”

He hesitates—what Penelope thinks of as a judicial pause. “No, I guess not,” he tells her.

The group clustered at the TV set seems indescribably sad, to Penelope. She considers the life of Rosa, a life of such hard work, so many children, but successful, in a way: her own good restaurant, there on the beach. Very popular with tourists; or she once was. But now seemingly all is in ruins; nothing is getting through to her but absence and pain, mourning, and noisy TV talk shows. Rosa is so terribly reduced that possibly she has indeed shrunk in stature, Penelope believes. In no sense is she now the woman she once was. All over Mexico, Penelope imagines, there must be women like Rosa, defeated women, bowing to sadness. The emotions that she herself felt after Charles were sufficiently like this to make her now shudder, and some shame for Rosa, for herself, for all of them makes her wish that Ben had not met Rosa in this state.

Ben and Charles are so totally unlike, as men, that Penelope almost never consciously compares them. Ben is dark, quite presentable but not handsome. He is thrifty, extremely thrifty. Intelligent rather than brilliant, tending to be quiet, almost taciturn. Judicial. His most annoying expression, to Penelope, is, “Well, I’d have to see the evidence on that.”

His love for Penelope, a love to which he admits, though reluctantly, seems out of character, odd. At times Penelope can hardly believe in its truth, but then Ben is an exceptionally truthful man. She senses that he would prefer a more conventional woman, perhaps another lawyer?—but in that case what was he doing with crazy Betty?

He must wonder, it occurs to Penelope, if she is in fact thinking of Charles, and if so what in particular she remembers.

Actually, what Penelope most remembered about San Bartolomeo, in those years of not going there, was the flowers—the spills and fountains of bougainvillea, the lush profusion of bloom, in every color: pink red purple yellow orange. And the bright red trumpet vines, and other nameless flowers, everywhere.