Little Indiscretions

by Carmen Posadas

  Before heading off, the driver asked her: “So you want to go to the Calle de Ayala?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said without looking back, not even a glance. “Take me to the Palace Hotel.” And then she added: “You don’t have to go along Almagro to get there, do you?”

  To which the taxi driver, who was talkative and a stickler for precision, replied: “No, it’s easy” (apparently everything was easy for him). “From here, if you prefer, we can go down to Castellana, across Colón, and then straight ahead until we get to the hotel.”

  “Great—because my husband is waiting for me, you know,” said Adela, as if the driver needed to know.

  She didn’t look out the window again until they reached the fountain of Neptune. That mad old bat was right. She could go to Mulberry & Mistletoe tomorrow. That way she’d be setting out from a completely different part of Madrid. It was raining, after all.

  EVEN THOUGH Adela Teldi always liked coming back to Madrid, the city of her birth, there were certain streets she carefully avoided. Like the Calle de Almagro, for example, with its plane trees, whose downy leaves made you sneeze, and its footpaths, which had hardly changed since her childhood. So little had they changed, in fact, that if for some unimaginable reason she had found herself walking down that street, it would have been hard for her not to fall back into the silly games of her childhood: avoiding the cracks in the pavement or playing a kind of mental hopscotch. But there was no reason for Adela to go to that part of Madrid. Her Madrid had shifted, and the shops, the hairdressers, and the restaurants she frequented, even the houses of her friends, were all a long way from that block, once so familiar. Luckily. So the following day, around four in the afternoon, Adela set out from the Palace Hotel and had no trouble getting to the Calle de Ayala, where the catering company had its premises. And when she arrived, a young fellow showed her into a pleasant waiting room.

  “I’ll be with you in a moment, madame,” he said to her. “My boss isn’t in. He’s almost always here, but something came up and he had to go out. It’s a bit of bad luck, but don’t worry, I’ll be able to help you. I’ll just go and get something to write with, Mrs. . . . ?”

  And, as in an old film, Carlos left the sentence hanging for Adela to complete.

  “Mrs. Teldi, with a T for Teresa,” she replied. “And what is your name?”

  “Carlos Garcia at your service, madame. I’m sure we’ll be able to meet your needs. I’ll be right back.”

  While he was in the other room looking for the list of menus, pulling out the albums with photographs of buffets and impeccably laid tables adorned with flowers and still-life arrangements, he could see Mrs. Teldi through the gap between the curtains: she was walking around the waiting room, surveying the portraits hanging on the walls. He saw her smile at some of the personalities in the photos as if she knew them, tilting her head occasionally to read a dedication. There’s not much variety in the things people do while they’re waiting. Some light a cigarette, others walk up and down as if taking possession of the space by measuring it. And some settle in, taking off their coats, undoing a button or two.

  One more album, thought Carlos, mustn’t forget to show her the fruit arrangements, and he glanced guiltily at Adela: it isn’t good to keep the clients waiting. But she had made herself comfortable on the sofa, having shifted a South American poncho that must have been bothering her. Now her coat seemed to be bothering her too, though it wasn’t all that hot in the waiting room. Suddenly, impatiently, she removed first her coat and then the scarf that was covering her throat. Mrs. Teldi’s movements were so hasty that for a fraction of a second, the slight hollow at the base of her very white and fragile neck was exposed.

  What a pity, thought Carlos, spying on this stranger. That neck must have been quite unforgettable once. Then he went back into the waiting room with the papers and the albums.

  TWO OR THREE days later, when the door of room 505 at the Phoenix Hotel shut behind them, the rest of the world ceased to exist for Carlos and Adela. The piped music could have been “Love Me Tender” or a flamenco song: it wouldn’t have made any difference. When they paused in their lovemaking, they could have drunk Fanta or Bailey’s without ice, it could have been light outside or not, cold or oppressively hot. None of that mattered: the only thing they sensed was love. It was the typical chance meeting between a mature woman and a young man: they began by talking business, how the party would be organized and so on, then they had sandwiches at the Embassy, got drunk together in the bar of the Phoenix, and ended up in bed. A casual encounter, predictable enough. But the next day they saw each other again, and the day after, and the one after that, and when the door of the hotel room shut behind them, off came the shirt with the Mulberry & Mistletoe logo, the Armani skirt, the red bow tie and the sky blue blouse, all in perfect silence, kisses guiding the way to nakedness. And, still without a word, they set about exploring that naked flesh inch by inch, with a passionate attention to detail. The piped music brought them the voice of Wilfrido Vargas singing, “There’s nowhere left I haven’t kissed,” but neither was interested in what their ears might register. Carlos and Adela heard, saw, smelled, and felt through the skin—“every inch a source of bliss”—and bliss it was for Adela to run her smelling, seeing, hearing hands over that young skin, so young that, kiss after kiss, what it inspired was not so much desire as tenderness. How lucky, how lucky you are, Adela, she said to herself. Kiss him while you can, no questions asked, no past, no future. Make love the way castaways do, or the terminally ill, the way only old women like you can make love. Stroke his thighs, tangle yourself in his hair, don’t let a morsel of that beautiful body go to waste. You’re a lucky woman. And what about him? What is he thinking? . . . It’s just as well nature hasn’t given us the power to read other people’s thoughts. So kiss him, taste him, love him, Adela, she told herself. And afterward, forget. Don’t forget to forget, for heaven’s sake. Forgetting is essential, because the world is still there waiting outside the door of room 505.

  THIS ADVENTURE HAD taken Carlos by surprise and swept him away, but not once did he look back. Falling in love is like the flight from Sodom and Gomorrah: if you stop to look back you may find yourself turning into a pillar of salt, a sterile, impotent statue, sensibly (all too sensibly) wondering: What the hell are you getting yourself into here, spending three afternoons in a row with a woman who could be your mother? Have you taken a good look at her?

  No. Carlos hadn’t taken a good look at her, because in the microcosm of room 505 the laws of perspective had been suspended, so it was impossible to view anything more extensive than the curve of a neck or the lobe of an ear. When you’re under the sway of an all-consuming passion, love in its purest state, all you can see are millimeters of skin electrified by desire and ever-new paths opening before you. Carlos set off to explore without a compass. “I want to take the long way from your hips down to your feet . . .” He was not a big reader of poetry and had no special interest in Neruda, but in love, poets and waiters follow the same paths. Sooner or later, both have to overcome all the same obstacles on their amorous voyages: peninsular fingers, hill-like knees, the deep dale between the thighs. The route is long, and it may take the explorer some time to reach the Mount of Venus. There, for the first time in his life, Carlos lost control of his tongue, as if it had developed a mind of its own.

  The role of explorer was not unfamiliar to him, but it had always been just that: a role. “This is what women like, or this . . .” The exploration was perhaps more clinical than passionate, but it always seemed to work. He considered himself an accomplished actor, yet until he stepped into room 505, his amorous experiences (as well as being a search for the woman in the picture) had always felt rather like taking an entrance exam. Was he worthy of admission to the club of surefire lovers? Or the club of tender lovers, who hug the girl afterward when all they really want is to get out of there—all right, all right, I’ll cuddle her a bit, a little kiss here, an I
-love-you there, but don’t overdo it, stick to the script. They freak out if you start ad-libbing.

  In room 505, however, there was no script, no map, no compass. And there was no need to work himself up by imagining that the line of an unfamiliar neck might fit the perfect curve he had discovered in an armoire all those years ago. With other women it had always been deceptively easy: all he had to do was shut his eyes and Lola, Laura, Marta, Mirtha, Nilda, Norma . . . and so on, through to the end of his neat and not so little black book, they all had the neck of the woman in the painting.

  But that skin . . . Adela’s skin (he hardly dared to say her name: it was superstitious, like the fear of looking back and turning into a pillar of salt), Adela’s skin did not extend beyond the minute path marked out by his kisses. Love has eyes so weak they cannot pick out wrinkles or imperfections, so shortsighted they can admire a freckle simply because it’s hers.

  ADELA WAS NOT shortsighted. And she had long since quit the club of obliging lovers, which has different statutes for its male and female members. Women have to know how to sigh convincingly and how to turn up the heat by talking dirty at the appropriate moment: those are the golden rules. The language of passion is a delicate balancing act: you might, just might, get away with cunt in certain circumstances, but fanny, well, no, and cock is okay, but knob . . . excuse me! There are strict rules about these things, and sometimes acting is more convincing than sincerity, but you have to know how to pull it off, when to say what, how to soften or raise your voice, because obscenities are like exotic food: there are aphrodisiacs and purgatives.

  Adela knew all this, of course, but none of it mattered to her anymore. She had given up employing those skills in her affairs years ago, and she certainly wasn’t going to start again with this boy. Yet although she felt that her long years of acting had earned her the right to concentrate on actual pleasures without bothering to pretend, somehow the paths her kisses traced on Carlos’s skin didn’t seem entirely new. It was as if once, many years ago, her hands had explored this territory. It was a silly, absurd idea, but for the first time in ages, she felt she had lost control of what was happening to her. She of all people, after so many lovers, so many affairs, so many attempts to cauterize her solitude.

  Her sister’s name—Soledad, solitude—had slipped unexpectedly into her thoughts, giving her a start.

  “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Don’t stop kissing me.”

  But it was too late for kisses to blot out that name, linked to a story she would have preferred to forget. So, holding Carlos tightly, Adela resorted to a method that had served her well over the years. She had applied it successfully since the day her sister died: the best way to forget guilty caresses is to smother them with thousands more, because nothing diminishes guilt like the tireless repetition of the sin, which empties it of meaning. And that is what Adela had been doing all those years, trying to forget one particular body by loving so many others.

  For a moment the trick seemed to be working. Adela smiled: the danger had been averted once again, and she was feeling rather pleased with herself, until she noticed that strange but familiar sensation in her thumbs.

  By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. I’ve done all this before, she thought. I’m sure I’ve loved this body, this skin . . . But then she tried to shake herself out of it: Come on, Adela. The only wicked thing going on here is that you’re falling in love with a twenty-one-year-old boy. Don’t let yourself. Just keep quiet and enjoy it. You’ll be able to love him again tomorrow, and Friday too, and maybe a fourth or a fifth time after that, but don’t think any further ahead. As you know only too well, my dear, dreams do exist, oh yes, but only so long as you don’t try to make them come true. Room 505 is paradise for as long as it lasts: two, three, four days, maybe even quite a bit longer. Think of that: you might be able to enjoy months of love just so long as . . .

  Just so long as you’re sensible about it, she told herself sternly. As soon as he walks out that door, ring up Mulberry & Mistletoe and cancel all the arrangements for the party; promise you’ll do that.

  As soon as he’s gone, you’re going to pick up that telephone and change your plans. The idea of spending a weekend with a houseful of guests plus him is just crazy. Out of the question. This is where your passion belongs, between these four walls, and only a hopeless dreamer would attempt to live it out in public. Carpe diem; kiss, don’t think. Love and forget, Adela. Dreams melt away at the touch of reality. Enjoy yourself now and pay later by giving up on seeing him outside this room. Make sure you call that chef.

  TWO HOURS LATER, when Carlos had left the room at the Phoenix Hotel and love had given way to practicalities, Adela sat down on the unmade bed to call the number, just as she had promised.

  “Hello, is that Mulberry and Mistletoe? Could I please speak to Mr. Chaffino? It’s Mrs. Teldi here . . . Aha, pleased to meet you, so to speak . . . Yes, that’s right, exactly, Teldi, with a T for Teresa. I dropped in the other day to arrange some catering, and since you were out, I talked with your assistant. Did he tell you what we needed? Well, I’m calling now because I’ve changed my mind . . .” (Adela stroked the sheets and closed her eyes tight, although what she was really trying to do was shut off other, more obstinate senses, for the scent of Carlos’s skin was still clinging to the treacherous sheets and was even more delicious than when he had been there in person—and more dangerous, too. Oh God, the scent of absence!)

  Adela wanted to light a cigarette so as not to smell that perfume, but something stopped her.

  “Pardon? Yes, sorry, I’m still here, Mr. Chaffino. I wanted to tell you that . . .” (Her hand ventured farther afield now and discovered forgotten patches of warmth. Careful, Adela. Many stupid things have been done on account of an empty hollow in a warm bed . . . but only by naïve, romantic women, who didn’t know the rules of the game.)

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Chaffino? I’m so sorry, I was thinking . . . You see, I called you because . . .” (Don’t do it, Adela, don’t do it.) “Actually, I called to confirm the arrangements,” she said, crumpling, because the sheets still held the shape of Carlos’s body. He hadn’t been gone ten minutes, and she could still feel the kiss he had left on her lips, saying, “Till tomorrow, my love” . . . She could also feel that inexplicable tingling in her thumbs, warning her that something wicked was on the way.

  “Yes, yes, that’s right, it’s all going ahead . . . except that instead of a whole weekend, we’ll just do the dinner on Saturday night.” (What a coward you are! As if that were any kind of solution. What difference does it make whether he comes for one night or a weekend?) “Is that all right then? I’ll call tomorrow and we’ll go over the details, what do you think?” (Game over: you lose. You’re making the same stupid mistake as all those women you’re always laughing at.)

  “That’s right, all settled then. Tell me, Mr. Chaffino, you and your assistants, how will you be getting there? . . . Excellent, I’ll send you a check. So it’ll be just the one day then, but a very special day.”

  THE FIFTH DAY

  LITTLE INDISCRETIONS

  PART THREE: SORBETS AND OTHER FROZEN DESSERTS

  Madrid, 25th of March . . .

  Dear Antonio,

  I told you, I told you! The Teldis have turned up, just as I predicted. You won’t believe this, but the very same day I wrote my last letter to you, Adela Teldi paid us a visit here in person at Mulberry & Mistletoe. She wants me to cater for a party at this house they’ve got in the south, called the Lilies. At first it was going to be a weekend, with lots of guests staying over, breakfast, lunch, and dinner and so on, the whole deal, but in the end it’ll just be one big dinner on Saturday night. It doesn’t matter. It’ll be less money, but the amazing thing is that my hunch was right.

  So what does it all mean? Well, for a start it means I can help you get in touch with them, like you asked me to. The Madrid address is easy: they’re staying at the Palac
e, and I’ll give you their address at the Lilies too, in case you’d prefer to write to them there. And now let’s get down to business—we mustn’t let all these strange coincidences distract us from serious culinary matters.

  Have I got a treat in store for you this time! My secret tips for making sorbets, the aristocracy of cold desserts. But before I launch into my little indiscretions, a request.

  It makes sense for me to keep writing, since I’m sending you these recipes, but from now on I think it would be simpler for you to call me. Reverse charges, of course, it goes without saying. I hope you won’t be offended, but I can barely read your writing. And what with the green ink you always use, it’s like . . . well, like a row of tatty parrots perched on a wire. There are whole sections I can’t make out for the life of me, like the paragraph where you’re telling me about Teldi, something about the disappearance of political prisoners in Argentina, if I’ve understood it properly, and God knows what else. In any case, that part of the letter is practically illegible, though I’ll try and decipher it properly tomorrow on the way down. But whatever it is you want to say to Teldi, I would strongly advise you to make an effort with your handwriting: no one’s got the patience to read three or four pages of green scribble. He’ll give up right away. It’s the curse of our times, Antonio: no one has any patience anymore, everyone gets bored so easily.

  Except for me, of course. Here are my plans, then: I’m off to Málaga to do this big dinner the Teldis are throwing for a group of collectors, God knows why. I’ll keep you posted. I’m sure it’ll be interesting. I love big parties with lots of houseguests; something unexpected always happens. I’m taking Chloe along to help (the girl I told you about in my first letter: she’s not a bad waitress), along with Karel Pligh and Carlos Garcia. They’ve both done the country-house thing before, so I’ll be able to concentrate on the food and my beloved desserts. I’m even planning to invent one specially for the occasion, a sorbet surprise worthy of the Teldis: cold, expensive, and very showy. What do you think?