Henry looked at her blankly.
“Yes, well, nice to see you,” said Gustavo, coming to her rescue.
Let me tell you, I’d never seen Gustavo so taken with a woman in the five years he’d been my tenant. Don’t get me wrong—he was a nice guy and quite good-looking in his “guy’s guy” way, but when it came to women, he was a dog. I was pretty sure he’d slept with, or tried to sleep with, almost every beautiful, unattached, adult female under thirty-five in Coffee Park since moving in, quickly moving on without a qualm the minute they began to bore him.
But it was clear that this was different.
Abril was twenty-seven or twenty-eight but looked like a schoolgirl with her long straight hair parted in the middle, her silver hoop earrings and bangles, and her endless assortment of sundresses. And I had to admit she was obviously a good mother who loved her son even if she did annoy me to no end. To further make my point about mystery, she had that air of the unexplained that drove men crazy. After months of acquaintance through Iris, all I knew about her was that she’d lived in Little Havana for a while, moved to New York to be near her Dominican family, and came back with a son. She loved sewing, cooking, Henry, and now, apparently, Gustavo.
“Buenas noches,” said Hector again, nodding to Olivia to follow him out, but when he opened the door for her, she turned back to Abril and said, “Myopia that severe is usually hereditary. Are you myopic too?”
“Sorry? Oh. No. No, I’m not, but Henry seems to—”
“So just him then. The licorice.”
“Yes. Thanks again,” said Abril.
I stood there, noticing that Hector had bathed and changed into black pants and a dark gray shirt with silver cuff links. This was his important meeting? A date with his wife?
“You okay, Mariela?” asked Gustavo after the door closed behind Hector and Olivia.
“Oh, sure . . . yes, just distracted. A million things. Why?” I answered, rushing to open my own apartment door.
“You looked real strange there for a minute or two.”
“You know me, born strange. See you all later. Bye, Henry.”
I stepped quickly into apartamento uno, locking the door firmly and rushing to the window without so much as turning on the light. I wanted to get a good look at Hector with his damn wife before they got into the car. Would he open the door for her? Smile at her and wink for no reason like he did with me?
But before I could get to the window, I heard Ellie’s wooden platform shoes on the stairway, so I rushed to open my door wide and surprise her in the middle of stealing out of her apartment to avoid paying her rent again.
“Just the person I wanted to talk to,” I said.
“I was coming down to talk to you myself.”
“Who else would, if not ‘yourself,’ right?” I said, knowing the fact I’d just made fun of her had gone right past the fake designer jean-clad part of her body she used for listening and thinking. I’m not big on grammar, but Ellie’s sentences had always been a mystery to me. She’d end them with the word yeah, as in “so and so did this and that and then, so . . . yeah.”
“Just so you know, I’m moving out sometime next week, so . . . yeah.”
“Ellie, we’ve been through this. Regardless of whether or not you move out, you’ve already used up your deposit. I need your rent money for this month now, before this month is over, and I need to make sure that the apartment’s in good shape before you leave, not after.”
“And what are you going to do if I don’t have it? Evict me?”
I took a deep belly breath.
“It’s not about that. It’s about you being responsible and leaving it the way you found it for someone else in this community to enjoy.”
“Ooooh mah-god! I’m sooo sick of you Coffee Park people with your ‘community honor’ and your karma rules. What is up with that?”
“Look, Ellie, wherever you go, you’re going to have to pay rent. So I don’t care how many times you were dropped on your head when you were a baby. You’re going to pay your rent, got it?”
“Look, lady, being my landlady doesn’t give you the right to threaten me, okay?”
“Ellie, don’t be stupid. Nobody’s threatening you.”
“Who’re you calling stupid?”
“I said, ‘Don’t be . . . stupid.’ ”
“Look, I don’t have to take your bullshit, okay? People here might not know it, but I’m on to you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Damn right, excuse you. You’re one to talk, but you sure like dipping into ‘community resources,’ ” she said, making quotation marks in the air.
“You have something to say to me, Ellie?”
“Oh, I’ve said my piece,” she said, looking toward the stairs and raising her voice.
“Well, the piece I want to hear is when you’re going to pay your rent and hand in your keys.”
“When I get to it, got it?” she said, imitating my earlier response.
I was so angry I could’ve dragged her up and down those stairs, forget I was no longer in middle school tackling girls who made fake scary noises and whispered things when I walked by, just ’cause I’d been stupid enough to believe they were my friends and told them I was clairvoyant. Or in high school, slapping the life out of anyone who dared to whisper anything about my mother. But I didn’t.
“Is this the way you want to handle things, Ellie?” I said instead, steadily looking straight into her eyes to let her know I was a lot crazier than she’d ever be and didn’t care what she thought she knew, even as I realized that if Ellie knew, and that was a big “if,” Olivia might too. (Hence Hector trying to tamp down suspicions by taking her out?)
She must’ve gotten the message, because she just said, “Screw you,” before swinging her bony ass out the door as quickly as she could.
I watched her go with a feeling of doom.
She’d never been a great tenant, but lately it had gotten worse. It was as if she no longer cared about a thing. When she moved in, she’d been a young girl wanting independence from an overbearing mother. I’d wanted to help her, keep an eye out for her. She’d been polite, apologetic even, when I’d talked to her about putting her recycling in the right place and not throwing her cigarette stubs out the window and onto my front garden. But lately she’d become rude, looked a bit dirty, and acquired an expression of unfocused defiance that unsettled me. I wondered if she was doing drugs. I know people think social drugs like marijuana are not “that harmful.” But if it makes people be someone they’re not and not care about things they’d normally care about, it can’t be all that good, can it?
The worst of it was I couldn’t afford the expense of a vacancy just then. It was as if God were hitting me on the side of the head: Hector’s odd behavior today, Olivia’s comments, catching them going out on a date, and Ellie’s being “on to me” were all signs that I needed to end the affair. Of course, that would mean running into Hector constantly at the building, while staying away from him for decency’s sake. But where was this decency line, really? Wasn’t I breaking it now by being with him?
This is what happens when you’re the “other woman.” You lose all perspective and spend precious energy thinking about whether being his landlord makes it more or less decent to see a married man who still cares enough about his wife to cut an afternoon with his mistress short in order to take her out for an evening on the town.
That night, I sat at the metal desk in my living room/dining room/office/library, looking out the window at the city that held Hector and Olivia somewhere and trying to write a breakup letter even as I imagined them celebrating their anniversary or some other important thing. I was feeling jealous of them for knowing with a certainty I’d never know for myself that, despite everything and everyone, they’d be together until death did them part. Yes, mistresses are always jealous of the wife, and I was no different.
I was pretty sure I wasn’t in love with Hector, at least I didn’t think so, but
I did know that it was time to stop because whatever I was feeling was obviously defeating the purpose of dating married men as an antidote to heartbreak.
The worst thing was I’d had a hundred opportunities to decide this before, but no. I’d waited until he’d tired of me. Damn it. He was a married man having an affair. What else did I think would happen? Had I subconsciously hoped things with Hector would be different? And if not, then why was I so surprised?
Well, for starters, the abruptness. After putting so much effort into building a connection beyond our bodies and working so hard to get inside my head as a bridge into my pants, he’d just suddenly lost interest. That day. But why? For the first time in years, I considered trying to coax my gift, my clairvoyance, back from the oblivion to which I had condemned it so long ago. I needed to see the future, to know for sure that, Hector or no Hector, loneliness would not be in the cards forever. I realized I was no better than my clients, hanging on to look-alike love in fear the real one would never show up.
It started to rain over Little Havana’s Coffee Park, the air going from warm to chilly quickly, as is common in Miami. I put away the letter I’d been writing and made myself a cup of spicy-sweet, milky chai, my omelet and wine fantasy forgotten. It warmed my stomach as I sat on my windowsill, watching the windy rain make dancers in dark green glossy skirts out of tree branches.
Soon, the window became blurry, while the fact that Hector and I were over began to become very, very clear.
Chapter 7
And it’s exactly that stupid fear of being over, finished, thrown out, that creates the misery of our mistakes. It’s also how notorious number four came to be part of my list.
Well, that, and the bookstore.
And the real estate slump of 2008.
It was during the preceding fall of 2007 that Hector, being an extremely intelligent and strategic man, convinced his wife to sell their home in the character-rich/then value-poor neighborhood of The Roads, which they did just before the bubble burst. This way, he’d explained, they’d be able to save their bookstore and turn their equity into cash otherwise irrecoverable later. The following fall, in October 2008, they moved into my building.
Had I not been in the middle of catching husband number two with the yoga teacher at about the same time, a man who’d sell his house before he closed down a bookstore would have been an aphrodisiac too strong to resist for me.
Now, it’s true that Hector first came to see the apartment with his wife, Olivia. But he later returned alone to sign the lease and pay his first month’s rent, bringing a book and a chocolate soufflé with him as a “landlord gift.”
“Thank you. I thought the landlord’s the one who welcomes the tenants with a housewarming gift.”
“Oh, you have been more than welcoming. You’re obviously an incredibly warm woman, not to mention a beautiful one, so what else can I do but bring you gifts?”
I’d seen right through him: pompous, oversexed, and with a wife who scared the wits out of me. Always silent, smiling that superior, crazy half-smile. I thanked him for the soufflé, told him he could return the signed lease later, closed the door, and didn’t give it another thought beyond, “Fool, please. I am not in the mood for people with penises just now.”
For a while, all was calm. I had a couple of short affairs, not even worth including in my list. I didn’t ask anyone for help, and I didn’t encourage any man to ask it of me. I was completely alone: no family, no friends, and no real relationships besides my tenants and the people of Coffee Park.
Time passed. And Manuel passed. And Jorge came and left, and more time passed, and then one day, when I was finally tired of being almost forty and I could feel the loneliness in my bones like mold, he returned.
It wasn’t cold that early Miami morning in February when he knocked on my door. Still, he wore a coat and scarf because, as I’d later learn, he always dressed for the season, regardless of where he was.
“Good afternoon, Mariela. So sorry to disturb you,” he’d said when I answered, with his precise diction and his thick Argentinian accent.
“It’s okay. Something wrong in your apartment?”
“Oh, no, no. I just need a copy of my lease. I seem to have misplaced it.”
“Oh, okay. Well, come on in and I’ll print you one.”
As I looked for the lease on my computer, he strolled casually into my kitchen.
“Where do you keep the coffee? Ah, here it is. I thought we’d share some coffee while I’m here,” he explained when he saw I’d followed him into the kitchen with a pen between my lips and a startled look on my face.
“I’m sorry,” he said then, looking sheepish. “Am I being too familiar? God, I always do this. I’m such a boludo, how you say . . . a jackass? I get the story chemistry and there’s no stopping me.”
“The story chemistry?”
“You love stories, don’t you?” he said, pointing to my large book collection, which took up half the wall space in my small living room/office and could be seen from where he stood in the kitchen.
“Sure,” I said, flattered enough to want him to inspect them, to be impressed by my varied choice of authors: John Barth, Carver, Junot Díaz, Doctorow, Vikram Chandra.
“Well, I’m sure you’ve read this one,” he said, handing me a book from the inside pocket of his trench. “But it is an early edition, signed by the author. Very, very valuable. I know you love this book. A woman as beautiful as you has to have this book. Please accept it, as a gift.”
It was Love in the Time of Cholera, which I’d read, and from which I only remembered that the object of the protagonist’s slightly pedophilic affection had red pubic hair.
That’s when it happened. And by “happened” I mean that I decided. I decided I liked the sight of this man taking off his coat and scarf and getting ready to make coffee for me in my kitchen. I decided to be open to his possibility, to let him happen, if he wanted to. He wasn’t my problem. He was his wife’s.
“Do you want to review the lease with your wife, in case you need me to update anything?” I asked later, sipping his coffee and wondering if he understood what I was really asking, wanting to be sure he understood the risks of what he’d come for.
“No, no.” He sighed like a father talking about a rebellious child. “Olivia doesn’t deal with these things. She . . . doesn’t have problems. She’s not on earth long enough to have them or to know that she has one when she does,” he finished with a tortured, resigned smile that had obviously seen light before this moment.
I nodded, thinking I knew this game. Hell, I might even have invented this game. But I convinced myself his wife either knew and didn’t care one bit that she had an obviously unfaithful husband or didn’t know and was happy that way. At least with me, she wouldn’t have to worry about his divorcing her and taking her assets with him when he left her.
“May I ask . . . how old you are?” he asked.
“No, you may not.” I laughed.
“It’s just, you remind me of an actress, the mystique of maturity and the smile of youth at the same time, eh, Licia. Licia Maglietta’s her name. Italian,” he finished in a way that said he felt if something was Italian, it was undeniably superior.
“Well, I’m sure Licia would be mortified, but thank you.”
“And sexy,” he said.
“Mortified and sexy?”
“No, mature and youthful, sexy and innocent, all at the same time.”
I smiled, busying myself with the book he’d given me.
“Wow, your books are expensive,” I said. “Thank you for the gift.”
I flipped to a page on which he’d placed a cardboard bookmark from his bookstore. There was a handwritten notation on it. I read aloud:
“Sex is in the brain and begins hours, days, months, sometimes years before the actual lovemaking.”
“My God, can’t believe I forgot that in there,” he said, taking it from me with an embarrassed smile. “But, it’s true, no? Pleas
ure is a hunger you feed. If your palate is uneducated in these matters, you lunge hungrily, gulp it like cheap wine. But. If you’re someone who really enjoys making love, then you feed it slowly, enjoy each morsel you place inside the mouth of your mind. You’ll forgive me for being so forward . . . I feel comfortable in your presence, as if I’d known you a long time.”
Priceless, wasn’t he? I could clearly see that he was pretentious, chronically unfaithful, unsatisfied, and possibly given to condescension. But I chose to be ignorant. I chose to be ignorant because I was lonely, and bored with life, and hungry for the attention I was afraid I’d never get again.
I chose him because I was empty, and he seemed like just the thing to fill up with for at least a little while. I knew exactly what I was doing, and when he left that afternoon, I knew he’d be back.
Chapter 8
“It was not a date.”
“Looked like a date.”
“Well, it was not,” said Hector.
“A celebration then,” I insisted.
“It was not a celebration. It was a dinner. A dinner, okay?” he said, proceeding to sigh loudly into the phone as if I were a misbehaving child requiring more patience than he could muster.
“Okay. A celebration dinner.”
“A business dinner, with people from the city’s cultural affairs office, Mariela.”
“I thought you said it was a bookstore thing.”
“It was. They’re, eh, putting together a campaign to unite and promote local independent businesses, and for once I had a seat at the table. For once it was me, and not Mitch Kaplan.”
Mitchell Kaplan was the owner of Books and Books, the literary landmark I’ve told you about, and my favorite bookstore in all of Miami. Hector considered him his sworn enemy and flattered himself into thinking his own bookstore, Del Tingo al Tango, which fittingly meant “from here to there,” the “and back again” not entirely implied, represented competition for Kaplan.
“So?”
“So it was important to me.”
“You don’t have to raise your voice. And you don’t have to give me explanations. I’m just your mistress,” I said.
The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho Page 5
