by David Unger
great expectations
Guillermo sits on Maryam’s phone number for almost a week. Each day, instead of putting all his attention into his work, he lobs the idea of calling her back and forth. He’s certain she likes him, but he’s still not sure if he wants to mix pleasure with business. And the fact that he is hopelessly attracted to her might lead to something more explosive in his life than the occasional sexual romp with Araceli.
One Tuesday morning, when he finds himself especially distracted at his law office working on some incorporation papers, unable to concentrate and sporting a formidable erection, he texts her.
Maryam.
A minute later. He receives a Who is this?
Guillermo, your father’s lawyer.
Oh hi.
Would you consider going out to lunch with me?
There, he has taken the plunge.
When he doesn’t receive an immediate response, he begins agonizing. Was his message too formal, or baffling in its purpose? Should he have been a bit more direct? He might have said something more urgent, like, Maryam, I need to discuss a security issue about your father in private. That certainly would have piqued her interest, but it might have also worried her.
Guillermo is certain that Ibrahim has not discussed the threats, the hang-ups, and the static noises on the phone lines with his daughter, since he also made Guillermo promise not to. But she has to be aware that he has been making himself a nuisance at the Banurbano meetings by asking very provocative questions—discussion of this has taken place during their Wednesday lunches. Her father, she must know, has a sturdy moral soul and is the type of person who will question discrepancies—even those committed by his own family—until the truth about them is revealed.
By noon, Guillermo is in a panic. He wishes there was a way to retrieve the text he has sent and that he had called Araceli instead for an after-work rendezvous. Why hasn’t she answered him? Has he offended her? Is she on the tennis court?
He decides to text Araceli and hopefully hook up with her at the Stofella for a quick lunch fuck. He hears back from her immediately that she will be at the hotel at one.
Perfect, he answers her, and then he calls Rosa Esther. The maid answers the house phone. “Tell the lady of the house that I won’t be coming home for lunch today.”
“Yes sir.”
“I have an emergency meeting. And I will be coming home late tonight. Please tell her that,” he adds as an afterthought, not knowing why the maid needs to know this.
“Would you like to tell her yourself, Don?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
As soon as he says this Rosa Esther gets on the line. “Lucia has prepared veal Milanese and buttered potatoes,” she says rather abruptly.
“I really can’t make it. Sorry. Enjoy it.”
“You know I’m eating vegetarian.”
“Of course. You had her make that veal for me. Thank you, but I’ll have to take a rain check.” He is so distracted. “How are you?” he asks, as if talking to a distant relative.
“What’s wrong with you, Guillermo? Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Of course. Sorry. I’ve been extremely busy this morning. How was the French conversation class today?”
“You know my teacher is a bore. She loves to tell us how fatigué she always is. Everything has to do with quel dommage.”
“Yes,” he says. “I know she only talks about herself.”
“That’s it. How great Paris is, blah, blah. As if we’re all Indians living in the cornfields.”
“So, why not tell her?” He wants to get off the phone but feels these questions will earn him points.
“What for? Madame Raccah is oblivious. I can understand exactly what she is saying, but Claudia keeps interrupting her to ask her to repeat everything because she can’t follow the dialogue. After class she told me she’s going to drop French. I don’t know if I want to study alone. Claudia wants to start taking Pilates with me.”
“What’s Pilates?” Guillermo asks, wondering if it is some kind of Italian dialect.
“It’s an exercise. I’ve been doing it the past five years at the Pomona. How can you not remember?”
“Like yoga?”
“It supposedly tones your muscles and enhances flexibility,” she answers flatly.
Guillermo sees his cell phone vibrating on his desk and looks down. He unlocks his phone and reads a new text: I thought you’d never ask.
Without thinking, Guillermo looks up at the ceiling, smiles, and says, “Yes!”
“Did you just win the lottery or something?” Rosa Esther asks.
“I’ve been courting a new client for some time and he has just decided to go with our firm. This could be lucrative. I have to go, amor.”
“Well, good luck, Guillermo,” she says, and surprises him by blowing a kiss into the phone. He should feel guilty about all his maneuvering, but he doesn’t. He has successfully managed to compartmentalize his life to the point that his own wife accepts all his cubby holes as normal.
As soon as Guillermo hangs up, he texts Maryam.
What about today? Now.
Are you joking, Guillermo?
What about tomorrow?
Instantly he receives a text back: I can’t.
He is beginning to feel annoyed, the I-call-the-shots annoyance. He is about to tap out Let’s forget it! when he receives, I’m free Friday.
Your apt at noon? he answers.
??????????
Where then?
Better at a restaurant.
La Hacienda Real?
No! 2 many people. The Centro Vasco at 1.
See you there. And then.
;-*
* * *
Guillermo drives to meet Araceli at the Stofella singing the Cuban bolero “Dos gardenias para ti.” He feels almost childishly elated. It has not been as easy as he imagined, and her spunk makes her even more sexy. Clearly, though, Maryam is sweet on him. There’s no other explanation. She has been bold, what with her What took you so long? or I thought you’d never ask. Which was it? He can’t remember, but either way she has taken the bait. Still, he has the nagging feeling that he needs to change his way of thinking from She has taken the bait to She wants to see me. She is a woman with her own thoughts and resources, not a stupid fish.
So he must wait three days to finally be alone with Maryam. Almost an eternity. And he is not about to change his routine based on the supposition of what might or might not happen in three day’s time.
He receives a text back from Araceli saying she is running a few minutes late. Normally he would be angry at her lack of planning, but he is so excited to see her that as he walks into the Stofella he trips on the front steps and almost falls. The clerk at reception gives him the key for his reserved room: number 314, top floor, at the end of the hall, away from the elevator, with no connecting door and only one neighbor.
He lies in bed wearing only his underwear. He knows that he and Araceli are going to have a grand time. He will fuck her hard, really hard, and will imagine he is fucking Maryam for the first time.
chapter ten
the naked maja, or la petite mort
The Centro Vasco is an old Basque restaurant on Reforma Boulevard that had its heyday in the sixties when everyone acknowledged that it was the best restaurant in all of Guatemala City. Now, in 2008, it is a place for viejos rucos—old codgers—who are still impressed by waiters in tight black jackets, white long-sleeve shirts with cuff links, string ties, black vests, and matching shiny pants. There are little ceramic oil and vinegar sets on the starched white tablecloths, and furniture that is meant to be Spanish but has actually been transported from a San Marcos province farmhouse. The salt and pepper shakers are Tyrolean, made of wood, and have cranks.
It is actually an ideal place for them to meet for lunch because no one Maryam or Guillermo knows would eat there now, with so many new gourmet options in Guatemala. The paella is overcooked and salty,
the cod tastes like clods of white flour, and the oily red peppers that the restaurant had once been famous for taste artificial, straight from a bottle. Maybe the restaurant has never been good and had only been a kind of novelty of Spanish cuisine back when going out to eat in Guatemala City meant hamburgers, steak, or an occasional chapin meal.
* * *
Friday is a lugubrious day, with low clouds and a constant cold rain. Guillermo pulls into the parking lot of the restaurant and scans the entrance for valet service since he has forgotten to bring an umbrella. Instead he sees a handful of cars in the dirt lot. He is sure that one of them is Maryam’s since he is—at least according to plan—ten minutes late, and he expects her to be like her father, who is very punctual.
He parks his BMW next to a blue Hyundai Accent whose chassis is half underwater. There’s a man sitting in the car texting on his phone. When Guillermo opens his car door, their eyes meet momentarily.
As Guillermo steps out, his shoes sink into a puddle of mud, which rises over his soles. He walks to the entrance door on his heels, pulling up his pants legs, cursing the weather, the choice of restaurant, the lack of valet service . . . He hates not having everything under his control. Before pulling back the restaurant’s heavy door, he wipes his shoes clean on the towels piled high on the entrance mat.
To his surprise, Maryam is not there. He takes a four-top corner table and waits. The waiter comes up, asks how many people are eating. Guillermo raises two fingers into the air. Then he asks what kind of Scotch they have, and when he learns they only have the scandalously bad Vat 69, he orders a double highball. He downs his drink quickly, sucking on the ice cubes and then munching on the stale cashews and peanuts served on a chipped little plate.
The minutes crawl by like snails. The waiter who served him the drink comes by again and puts a dish of dried sausage on the table, and two salad bowls holding the obligatory iceberg lettuce chunks with spicy tomato dressing on top. Guillermo orders a second drink and texts Maryam a curt message: What’s up?
It is only one fifteen p.m., but Guillermo is about to fester. He texts a second message, ??!!??!!, less than five minutes later, but again receives no reply. The Scotch arrives and he takes it down gulp by gulp. He is thinking that as soon as Maryam shows up, he will have to give her a good dressing down and explain to her the rules of the game.
Guillermo asks the waiter if anyone has called the restaurant and left a message for him. The man simply raises his eyebrows as if he has just been spoken to in Tagalog or Mandarin. He does not seem to want to understand.
Guillermo is fulminating internally. He considers his options: order a third drink and get truly soused, or simply leave.
He looks around the restaurant with its framed posters of bullfighters, the erstwhile Picasso drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on horseback, Goya’s La maja desnuda, Velázquez’s Las Meninas, and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, which after two drinks is possibly the worst painting he has ever seen in his life. He shakes his head at the half dozen winebotas with their absurd red rings and shrunken black penis spouts dangling from the walls. Dirty chandeliers with low-watt bulbs hang above each and every table—he is sure they were purchased from his father’s store fifty years earlier.
What the hell is he doing here waiting like a stupid old secretary for her boss? What is he waiting for?
He decides to call Sofia Muñoz. He leaves her a message on her cell phone to meet him at the Stofella at precisely six p.m. This is the first time he has ever left her a voice message. It is a risk since she is married to an insurance agent who might know how to retrieve her messages. Guillermo doesn’t care. He does not want the day to go totally to waste. And he will have to leave the Stofella at exactly seven thirty p.m. because he is meeting his children across the street at Tre Fratelli for dinner and then going to the nearby Oakland Mall to see the ten o’clock showing of Kung Fu Panda.
He puts a five hundred quetzales on the napkin dispenser and walks in a straight but lumbering line toward the front door. From the corner of his eyes he sees his waiter begin to approach him, then angle over to the table, probably to examine the bills.
As he starts to push on the door, someone pulls it open. It is Maryam.
“What the fuck,” he says as he crashes into her.
She keeps him from falling, but he is annoyed for having lost his balance. Before he can express further displeasure, however, she kisses him on the lips and whispers in his ear, “I’m sorry. I was running late. The rain, the traffic, my car stalled, I forgot my cell phone, please don’t be angry—”
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says huffily, pulling away from her. Her lips taste of mango chapstick. His head is spinning.
“Yes, I know.” She tries to grab his hand, but he impulsively pulls back. “I’m not really that hungry,” she says to him. “Can we go somewhere else?”
She is wearing gray woolen leggings and a matching gray sweater top. A maroon skirt, more for show than comfort, hugs her hips. A knit scarf is tightly wound around her neck. She’s holding an umbrella and sporting yellow Hunter rain boots.
“Sure,” Guillermo says. She hooks her arm into his and they leave the restaurant. It is still raining, so he borrows her umbrella and goes to get his car—she’ll leave her Mercedes in the lot—while she waits for him under the overhang.
As they drive away, he notices the car beside his put on its lights. It is the blue Hyundai.
* * *
At the Stofella Guillermo gets his key at the reception desk while Maryam waits by the elevator. As soon as they walk into room 314, she takes off her clothes and throws herself stark naked on the bed. She closes her eyes, letting out a childish little giggle. Her ample breasts flop to the sides of her chest.
“I’m waiting for you,” she says.
Her undressing has happened so fast that Guillermo doesn’t know if he is pleased or upset. This is not how he had planned things would play out. Instead, he struggles to take off his shoes (still stained with mud), his brown suit, his brown tie, his cuff-linked white shirt, his T-shirt—like a college sophomore.
Because Maryam is ten years younger and is married to a much older Lebanese Arab, Guillermo has imagined that Samir is the only man she has ever slept with. He assumes that though she has sensuous qualities, she will be shy in bed and terribly inexperienced. But already she has outflanked him.
He has imagined a more traditional encounter: some goofy and awkward talk, slap-dash touching, then a couple of deep kisses, a hand into her blouse or a detour under her skirt, Maryam’s feigned reticence—the lady doth protest too much—tearing off her clothes, exhorting her to relax, to enjoy the explorations . . . he would be the aggressor, but in time she would surrender to his entreaties.
Instead, Maryam watches him, amused as he struggles to take off his clothes. When he is nearly naked, she sits up on the bed on one elbow and looks at him mockingly. “Are you going to make love to me wearing your black socks?” And then she laughs.
Guillermo glances down at himself, black socks up to the ridges of his knees and his penis ascending through his baggy white jockeys toward his belly button. He feels ridiculous. If he could watch himself from a distance, he too would laugh, but he finds it impossible to see humor in his own absurd maneuverings. He is even ashamed of his penis flagpoling through his shorts.
“Off with them, off with them,” she commands, swinging a forefinger in the air as if signaling decapitation.
Guillermo sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his socks. His head continues spinning because of the Scotch, and he wonders if Maryam’s friskiness is also the result of drinking.
He turns to her and starts kissing her deeply, as deeply as he can go. He is grateful that he can still taste the mango flavor of Maryam’s lips. She does not resist, begins exploring his mouth with her tongue. They are both enjoying the rise in passion. He pulls his underwear down to his ankles and perches over her. Sitting on her thighs he begins rubbing her
nipples softly. She arches her back and purrs with pleasure. He flattens his body against hers and tries to place his penis into her, two or three times, but each time she closes her legs.
“Is anything wrong?” he asks, feeling totally lost, adolescent, and out of his element. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t put on a rubber. He is nagged by the memory of catching herpes from Chichi and so he typically protects himself when screwing women for the first time. Once his trysts evolve he insists that his girls be checked for AIDS almost monthly and take the morning-after pill as soon as they are done making love. He does not let them go until they have taken a pill, or otherwise proved to him that they will not become pregnant. He doesn’t need any illegitimate children.
She points down to her sex and says, “Eat me first. I want you to imagine that you are eating the sweetest baklava you’ve ever tasted.”
He obeys, slides down to the foot of the bed, and places his mouth squarely above her pubis. She once more arches her back, this time in anticipation, so that her vulva rises up to meet his mouth. While he begins to lick her, she starts running her hands feverishly through her hair and pulling down on her earlobes. She is moving her hips from side to side and raising her legs, forming a small Arc de Triomphe.
Without warning, she grabs his head and pushes it deeper into her crotch, so that he feels the cartilage of his nose flattening against the top of her pubis, her clitoris. He can barely breathe.
She doesn’t let him stop licking, even though his tongue has lost feeling. She continues to press his mouth into her. She squeals a few times, she must be coming—that’s how he interprets her trembling—and when he feels that his tongue is about to fall off, she pulls him up, reaches down for his penis, and shoves it inside her.
* * *
Guillermo and Maryam make love all afternoon. In truth, she appears to be using him for her own needs as if he were a practical handmade tool, maybe a canvas dildo. He is more than grateful to oblige, but continues to feel a loss of control. She wants him to rub against her clitoris, to drive into her, to fill her up completely, to come into her from behind. Whenever he feels he’s about to come, she relaxes and induces him to push through layer after layer of curtains to reach the spot where she can finally let loose. And when she does, she trembles in his arms the way a willow shuffles in the crosswinds of a storm, with all its vines fluttering.
