The rest of the Ministry of Economic Development seemed to be functioning like clockwork, smoothly and silently. The normal time to leave for lunch was between two-thirty and three.
7
IT TOOK a little longer than the predicted hour to drive to Tlalpan. It was Friday and many people were leaving for a long weekend in Cuernavaca. Several times he was stalled in the choked traffic, and once he even fell asleep at the wheel, to be awakened by a concert of furious honking.
From the street, he could hear the mariachis in the Arroyo. As he parked, he tried to recall the reason for the luncheon, and shuddered. He, especially he, could not afford the luxury of forgetting anything, or forgetting anyone.
Aggressive, self-congratulatory, gray sideburns and a black moustache; a coarse, ugly, ruddy face. Felix said hello, and retained a single impression: an ugly man with beautiful hands. And a woman beside him, greeting the guests.
“Hello, Felix.”
“Hello, Mary.”
He freed his hand from Mary’s grasp. His confusion was understandable, he rationalized, walking toward the table of hors d’oeuvres. He had not only touched the hand and looked into the eyes of the woman he most liked to touch and look at in the world. More. She had recognized him. She had said hello Felix, with complete naturalness. Of course — he gulped down the small glass of excellent tequila — the man with the ugly face and beautiful hands was her husband. He would never have recognized him without Mary. Who would ever remember the owner of a chain of supermarkets? He needed Mary in order to identify her husband. That was all. He hadn’t actually forgotten him. Mary’s husband, in spite of his florid appearance and aggressive behavior, was not memorable. That was all, he repeated, as Mary approached and told him that the meal was very informal, everyone was to help himself, everyone was to sit where he pleased and with whom he pleased.
“Besides, the mariachis are an ideal cover for intimate conversation, don’t you agree?” Mary asked, half closing eyes as violet as the solitary flower on Malena’s desk.
Violet eyes flecked with gold, Felix recalled, helping himself to tortilla chips with guacamole, an extraordinarily beautiful Jewish woman with black hair and a preference for décolletage. She oiled the line between her breasts so the cleavage would be more noticeable.
His eyes followed her as mushroom canapés were being passed and the mariachis bleated in the distance, remote but overpowering. Mary was aware that Felix’s eyes never left her. She moved like a panther, black, lustful and pursued, beautiful because she was pursued, and because she knew it. Mary.
Felix glanced at the time. Three-thirty, and still no lunch. Tequila and hors d’oeuvres, nothing more. He was always exasperated by these four- or five-hour Mexican lunches; and the Director General was expecting him at six on the dot. Mary winked at him from across the room as waiters entered carrying clay crocks of mole, boiled rice, nut- and spice-stuffed peppers topped with cream and berries, platters of steaming tortillas, and several kinds of chili, brown chili, tiny piquines, the fieriest of all, serranos, and jalapeños.
He served himself a heaping plate and joined Mary; the woman with the violet eyes smiled at him and offered him a beer. They walked together from the table, balancing their plates and glasses of beer, speaking in voices drowned in the racket of the mariachis, threading their way among the guests.
“What’s the occasion for the party?” Felix asked.
“My tenth wedding anniversary,” laughed Mary.
“So many years?”
“Ten’s not so many.”
“Exactly as many as it’s been since we’ve seen each other. I’d say a lot.”
“But we do see each other from time to time at cocktail parties and weddings and funerals.”
“I mean physically together, Mary, as we used to be.”
“That’s easy to remedy.”
“You know that all I want is the physical part, don’t you?”
“You mean you never loved me? I know that very well. I never loved you.”
“More than that. I never desired you.”
“Oh? That’s something new.”
“I can only touch you when I don’t desire you. Touch you and touch you, kiss you and screw you, but without desire. Do you understand?”
“No, but it’s enough for me. It excites me. I like the way you touch me. Ten years is a long time. Look. Go to the motel just down the street. Leave your car in front of your room, so I can see where they put you. That way I can run my car behind the building where it can’t be seen. Wait for me there.”
“I have a very important appointment at six.”
“That’s all right, I’ll disappear after a while. Abie won’t even notice. Look at him.”
Felix didn’t want to look at a man he would never remember, and he pressed Mary’s arm.
“And listen, Felix,” said Mary, falsely brazen. “Don’t expect me to be the same as before; I’ve had four children.”
Felix said nothing. He moved away as Abie announced with grandiloquent gestures and elaborate passes of an imaginary cape that he was going to fight four yearling bulls at the end of the party. Torero! He’d shaved carelessly; there were several nicks on his chin.
When everyone had moved to the bullring beside the restaurant, Felix left and drove to the neighboring motel. He followed Mary’s directions and took a room, notable for damp sheets and the smell of disinfectant. He must have slept. He was awakened by throbbing and acid indigestion. For a moment he imagined how it would be to be at the shore, away from the altitude of Mexico City, by the sea, digesting his food normally in an unattainable paradise of simple, short meals served at fixed hours.
Through the motel window he could hear the olés! from the small bullring. He imagined a ruddy-faced Abie, aggressively fighting his bull, his beautiful hands hidden beneath the red cape. Surely the first Jewish torero. Few people knew that many refugees from Hitler’s Europe had come to Mexico, where they effortlessly assimilated the customs, even the rituals, of the Mexicans, as if nostalgic for Spain before their expulsion. He laughed. A Jew in a bullring, facing a snorting reddish-brown bull, was the Sephardic revenge against the Catholic Queen Isabella.
He also imagined Mary sitting on one of the narrow tiers of seats, watching the absurd posturing of her husband. He did not desire her. He had to see her before he wanted to touch her. His physical relation with Mary could not tolerate either the time of dream or the space of separation. It could not tolerate desire.
8
THE DOWNPOUR BEGAN as Felix Maldonado, belching painfully, was driving down the Avenida Universidad. It was an early-evening rain typical of the tropics, a phenomenon born of topographical perversion, a cloudburst more appropriate to virgin jungle than to a chilly plateau two thousand meters above sea level.
No temperate climate would ever witness the sheets of water, the dark, steaming rain whipping against the windshield of Felix’s Chevrolet. The wipers refused to function. Felix had to get out of the car in the driving rain to set them in motion. Even as he was getting soaked, he laughed a little, thinking of a washed-out Abie, the rain-soaked tables, the interrupted bullfight, and Mary, motionless beneath the rain, staring at mountains as violet as her eyes.
As he parked the automobile in the basement of the Ministry, Felix nervously consulted his Rolex. Ten minutes after six. Ten minutes late, he repeated as he stepped onto the elevator operated by his little friend, who greeted him amiably, as if he recognized him. No, he greeted everyone that way, it was one of his duties as elevator operator. Outside working hours, it was up to others to recognize him.