“Afraid she’ll go down to Southwest Eighth Street, tell everybody.”
They lay close, legs touching, the sheet pulled up now.
“But only for a minute,” Karen said.
“What?”
“That I worried about the maid. By the time we got to the stairs I couldn’t wait.”
“I couldn’t wait to see you,” Maguire said. His hand moved over her thigh to her patch of hair and rested there gently. “To look at your face and look at you here”-his hand moving, stroking her-“and see both of you. I tried to imagine, before, what it would look like.”
“Really? You do that?”
“No, not all the time. Most girls, I look at them and I’m not interested in what it looks like. I know, for some reason and, well, it’s just there. It’s okay but it’s not that important. But every once in awhile I look at a particular girl, a woman, and I don’t know what hers looks like, because it’s a very special one, it’s hers, it’s part of her and-I can’t explain it. But that particular person I know I can feel very close to.”
“And I’m one of those?”
“There aren’t that many. Just once in awhile I see a girl, a woman-”
“You’re having trouble putting me in an age group,” Karen said. “It’s okay, girl, woman. Which do you want me to be?”
“No, see, I like the word girl. Giiirl, it’s a good word. Woman, I think of a cleaning woman.”
“And you like girls.”
“Yeah, but I’m not preoccupied, if that’s what you mean.”
“What about the shark girl? Let’s give her a hand because she may need one someday?”
“Oh. Lesley.” That was one thing about girls, women, he’d never understand. How they could read your mind. “Lesley’s”-what was she?-“sort of spoiled. She pouts, puts on this act if she doesn’t get her way. Or, she’s arrogant, very dramatic, and you have to wait around for her to come back to earth.”
“Do you go out with her?”
“Well, I have. She’s the one who lives next door. In fact it’s her aunt’s place, the Casa Loma. She got me the apartment. It’s an efficiency really.”
“Oh,” Karen said.
“That’s all. I ride to work with her.”
“She’s a cute girl.”
“I guess so. If you like that type.”
“Do you picture her pubic hair?”
Jesus Christ-
“No. She’s not the type I picture. She’s more what they’re turning out today. Not a lot of individuality, but a lot of hair and a cute ass. If that turns you on, fine.”
“Does she turn you on?”
“Lesley? I ride to work with her, ride home. We talk once in awhile.”
“But does she turn you on?”
“The only reason you pick her, you happened to’ve seen me with her.”
“Are there many others?”
“No, what I mean, it’s like if I picked out Roland because we were talking about him and I ask you, when he jumped in bed with you, did it turn you on?”
“He jumped on the bed.”
“Yeah, but did it?”
“We sound like we’re married,” Karen said.
“This is what it’s like, huh? I always wondered if I was missing something.”
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. “I think you were miscast. You should’ve been something else.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“I haven’t decided yet. But-you would’ve ended up in prison. You’re smart enough to know that.”
“That’s why I got out of it.”
“No, I think you’re out of it because you finally realized you never should’ve been in. That’s what I mean you were miscast. Some wild idea influenced you.”
“Money,” Maguire said.
“See, you pretend you’re cynical, but you’re not. It wasn’t just money. Maybe the risk, or the excitement.”
“Maybe,” Maguire said. “I remember telling Andre I could do without anymore thrills. Yeah, maybe you’re right,” his tone thoughtful, going back in his mind and beginning to wonder how he’d got into the life-always one more, just to raise traveling money-and how those years had gone by so fast. He said, “That wasn’t me I was telling you about. It must’ve been somebody else.”
Looking at him lying next to her in her bed she could say to herself, My God, who is this guy? Or she could say, Somebody I’ve known for a long time. She said to him, “You feel it, don’t you? You said you felt close.” Putting her hand on his hand.
“Like the other night was years ago,” Maguire said. “Even dinner, the one we didn’t have, seems a long time ago now.”
“That’s what I’ll tell Marta, we’re old friends,” Karen said, and smiled. “Why do I worry about Marta? Even with Frank, I was never afraid to stand up to him.”
“I guess you did,” Maguire said.
“But I was always worried-not worried, concerned, with what the maid thought of me.”
“Because you think of her as a person and not just a maid,” Maguire said. “Talk about miscast, the lady of the house. I don’t see you that way at all. A lady, yeah, I suppose, the way it’s used. But I don’t see you just sitting around pouring tea.”
“How do you see me?”
“Well, like in a sweater and jeans, doing something outside.” He paused. “You want me to tell you, really?”
“Yes, I’d love to know.”
“I see us,” Maguire said. “I see us driving through Spain. I see us at a sidewalk table, place with a red awning. I see us looking at somebody, like some tourist, and nudging each other and laughing.”
She turned to him as he spoke, moving closer and laying her hand on his chest.
“I see us picking up our maps and a couple bottles of red wine to take with us.”
“What kind of car do we have?”
“Alpha Romeo. Convertible, with the top down.”
“Where’re we going?”
“Madrid to the Costa del Sol. And if we don’t like it, we’ll go to some other costa.”
“I think we’ll like it,” Karen said.
She thought, briefly, But who’s paying for it?
Then put it out of her mind. She felt safe. For the time being, she could close her eyes without imagining something happening to her. She could picture herself doing whatever she wanted. She tried to imagine the sidewalk cafe and the Alpha Romeo. But she saw herself coming out of a shop on Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, putting on her sunglasses, and someone saying, That’s Karen DiCilia.
“THEN THEY GO BACK TO HER HOUSE,” Jesus Diaz said to Roland. “Then, you know, after awhile, he goes home.”
Roland was down on the floor in his undershorts doing pushups, red-faced, tight-jawed, counting, “Ninety-five… ninety-six… Where’s he live?” straining to say it.
Like the time on the toilet, Jesus Diaz thought. The time Roland, sitting on the toilet, grunting, making noises, had made him stand in the doorway of the bathroom while Roland talked to him.
“He lives up by Northeast Twenty-ninth Street, in Fort Lauderdale.”
“One hunnert,” Roland said, getting up, breathing heavily with his hands on his hips. Jesus Diaz tried to read what was printed in red on the front of Roland’s white bikini undershorts, without staring at his crotch.
“You tell me she met him at the place. So then they both drive to her house?”
“No, he went in the car with her, the Mercedes.”
“Then how’d he get home?”
What was printed on Roland’s shorts, was Home of the Whopper. Jesus Diaz said, “He drove her car home.”
“She let him use her car?”
“I guess so. He drove it to where he work, that place, Seascape.”
Roland squinted. “Seascape? The fuck is Seascape?”
“That kind of porpoise place. They have the shows there.”
“Jesus Christ,” Roland said. “Seascape, yeah. I believe Dorado owns it, or did. What’s he do there?”
“The tricks, you know, with the porpoise. Make them jump up, take a piece of fish out of his mouth. All like that.”
“Well, you go on back and see him,” Roland said. “Take somebody with you to hold his arms.”