Ligeia often laughed. But that was another story.
Oh, yes, you laugh, Dragoness. The wonder is that you haven’t died of laughter.
* * *
Δ “Dragoness,” I asked you, “tell me how it was the first time.”
“I’ll tell you, but don’t look at me that way. Let me laugh.”
“Okay, I’ll behave. Tell me.”
“He was sleeping. It had rained all afternoon and I took the subway to Flushing Meadows and he was in the motel sound asleep and I opened the door, soaked, my raincoat wet through…”
“You don’t have to lie to me, Elizabeth.”
“Who’s lying to you? I’m telling you how it happened. He was lying on the bed fast asleep and I came in soaked to the skin and stood there in the door and looked at him.”
“Okay. I’m not wondering what happened, but where it happened.”
“I looked at him and waited.”
“All evening?”
“No, caifán, not all evening. Stop interrupting. I waited because I was sure that my presence there would awaken him and because I wanted to feel him still asleep and feel myself waiting.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, caifán. I believe everything they tell me. But you’re a disbelieving type, aren’t you? You don’t trust people.”
“That depends. I’ve been roasted trusting people sometimes.”
“We’re getting old, old man, that’s all.”
“Sure. I’ll wear the bottoms of my pants rolled up. Forget it.”
“It bothers you? That’s funny, I think. Believe it or not, it doesn’t bother me at all. Except for one thing. You begin to be too damn tolerant. Consciously and deliberately tolerant. What a horror that is.”
“You’re depressing me, Dragoness. Okay, now enough suspense. You waited. Did he wake up?”
“Of course he woke up. Then I went close to him with my dripping raincoat and my wet hair and drops of rain all over my face. I went close to him finally. At last. The boy I had met at City College and decided I had to have. The handsome boy from Mexico, so damn good-looking that when you saw him you felt you had to pinch yourself to be sure.”
“A swarthy Apollo?”
“Yeah, you could say it that way. And I told my girlfriends, or maybe only myself, that one way or another, little by little and no matter how long it took, I was going to get that man.”
“Win his lightning fast-on-the-drawers beauty with time and patience?”
“Bullshit, caifán. Stop grinning. That’s the way it was.”
“You aren’t reading me clear, Dragoness.”
“Clear enough. Why do you always laugh?”
“Maybe it’s because I don’t care for solutions.”
“We’re leaving on a vacation trip tomorrow.”
“Where to?”
“Veracruz. I want to see the sea again.”
“Who’s going?”
“Javier and I.”
“That’s all? Come on, Dragoness, give.”
“Little Isabel.”
“And that’s all?”
“All right. Franz.”
“Ahhh.”
“Well, it’s a solution, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s go back to that motel room.”
“I knelt on the bed and Javier opened his eyes and smiled at me. He reached his hand out and unbuttoned my raincoat. Under the raincoat I was wearing only panties. Javier was shocked, oh, he was scandalized. But really. ‘Did you come that way all the way from home?’ The same prude then that he is today, but at the time I thought it was his innocence, that he was pure, inexperienced. He was trembling…”
“And you, Elizabeth? What did you feel? Quick now.”
“Well, that … That everything was going to happen very very quickly. Too quickly.”
“For what?”
“Too quickly for … love, I suppose, magic, dream, reality. The word doesn’t matter. That it was going to be over and behind us very quickly because the whole world was pushing us forward toward it, making us urgent, unable to wait, take our time…”
“Yes, I think I get it. Go on, Elizabeth.”
“Well, then there we were. And now we had become a pareja, a couple.”
“Already a couple?”
“Yes, already. You know, after we got up from the bed we filled the washbasin and washed our hands together in the motel bathroom, soaped and washed our hands together, our fingers touching in the warm water…”
“This may be too personal, but were you couple enough to come together that first time?”
“Nothing you ask me or I tell you is too personal, caifán. No, not then. Only much later, after years together.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Afterward? I thanked him. I told him not to worry about it, just to try to let himself go as much as he could. That only by giving could he take, by spending, save. Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Sure, very true. How did he answer you?”
“Oh, quietly and with complicated words. But very sincerely. He told me that he loved me because I wasn’t an echo from his past, from his childhood or his teen years. That our relationship was authentic, not a parody. Something like that. Probably he had read it somewhere. But at the time he seemed very moved and very sincere.”
“What did you say then?”
“I asked him how he could know he wasn’t lying when he said he loved me.”
“A proper question.”
“He didn’t answer it. We made love again and we went on feeling that we were joined together deeply. A couple now.”
“That pretty couple. Self-sacramented. Stealing from each other.”
“I suppose. But I think I sensed even then that he wanted a problem, something to worry about, to be disturbed, troubled by. And that maybe that was what I was for him. The troublante, the difficulty. Lord, I forget what language I’m speaking.”
“You’re speaking pop language, Dragoness. Pop literature, you know. The big sign in the background:
POP LIT
“What, caifán? Slow down. Sometimes you buzz like a neon light.”
“Sorry, Pussycat. I was carried away. You say it was in Flushing Meadows?”
“What, Flushing Meadows? God, no. It was right here in Mexico. In a tourists’ court on the road to Toluca. He took me there in a broken-down taxi.”
“Off of it, Pussycat. No cracks about cabs. Cabs mean a lot to me. They bail me out. They keep me going. They’re one of my trades. By my cab alone…”
“Sometime you’re going to choke on pure air, caifán. Drowned by words.”
“Well, words are another of my trades. What did he say to you?”
“At the court? Oh, you know. That he loved me. That he loved me because with me everything was new and fresh, he wasn’t repeating anything from the past. You know the way he talks. That we weren’t living out a parody. Jazz like that.”
“And did you believe him?”
“Well, Proffy’s sweet, you know. I liked it that after we made love he got up and went to the bathroom with no dignity at all, half groggy, half out of it, nothing hip. Do you know what I mean?”