“Get ready,” he said without looking at her, grasping her arm firmly, as if they were two Christians entering the lions’ ring. “Brace yourself, my dear,” in English. “This is the Circus Maximus, but instead of lions roaring, you hear cows mooing, lambs bleating. And yes, the howl of wolves may be detected. Avanti, popolo romano. Here comes our hostess. Just look at her. Just look. It’s Carmen Cortina. Three verbs suffice to define her. She drinks. She smokes. She ages.”
“Darlings! What a pleasure to see you again… and still together! Miracles, miracles…”
“Carmen. Stop drinking. Stop smoking. You’re aging yourself.”
“Orlando!” The hostess burst out laughing. “What would I do without you? You speak the same truths as my mama, may she rest in peace.”
Outside the night was stormy and inside it was enervating.
“Think what you like and don’t expect me to speak well of my friends,” said the lugubrious painter to the critic dressed in white, who intoned his aforementioned “We are all ridiculous.”
“That’s not what I mean. It’s that I only have indefensible friends. If they’re worthy of my friendship, they can’t be worthy of my defense. No one is worth that much.”
“All ridiculous.”
“That isn’t the problem,” added a young philosophy professor with a hard-earned reputation as an indiscriminate seducer. “The important thing is to have a bad reputation. That constitutes public virtue in today’s Mexico. Whether your name is Plutarco Elías Calles or Andrea Negrete,” said Ambrosio O’Higgins. That was the name of this tall, blond, vexed specialist in Husserl, whose personal phenomenology was a permanent grimace of displeasure and eyes which, though sleepy, were filled with obvious intentionality.
“Well, no one can beat you in that category,” said the resuscitated Andrea Negrete, who after the failure of her last film, Life Is a Vale of Tears (subtitled But Women Suffer More than Men), had taken refuge in a convent in her native state, Durango, that was run by her grandmother’s sister and inhabited exclusively by eleven of her cousins.
“Neither my aunt the abbess nor my cousins the nuns realized that, counting me, there were thirteen of us at the refectory table. Each one is a saint, completely without malice. The one dying of fear was me. I was afraid I would choke on the mole. Because the fact is, the best restaurant in Mexico is the convent of my aunt Sor María Auxiliadora, I swear it.”
She kissed her fingers, and she made the sign of the cross, and Laura closed her eyes, imagining once again the amorous machete stroke of the Hunk of Papantla, the severed fingers of Grandmother Cosima, the mutilated nails dripping blood into the bandit’s hat.
“Well, no one can beat you in that category,” said the actress to the philosopher.
“Not so. You can,” answered the young man with the Irish name and the paralytically arched eyebrow.
“Let’s see if together we can draw even.” Andrea smiled.
“To do that I’d have to get a little gray.” O’Higgins took out his pipe. “Both above and below. Please note, I said get gray, not get laid.”
“My boy, you’re so good you don’t need morality.”
Andrea turned her back on them only to find the sailor with the short pants and the girl movie star covered with curls. They exchanged subtle threats.
“One day I’m going to take out my knife and leave you looking like a sieve.”
“Know what your problem is, sweetheart? You’ve only got one ass and you want to shit in twenty pots.”
“Do you see what I see, Orlando? Just look at that incredibly handsome fellow.”
Orlando agreed with Laura, and they both stared at the bestlooking young man at the party.
“Know what? Since we arrived, he’s done nothing but look at himself in the mirror.”
“But, Laura, we’re all looking at ourselves in the mirror. The trouble is we don’t always see the reflection. Look at Andrea Negrete. She’s been posing by herself for twenty minutes as if everyone were admiring her, but no one’s paying the slightest attention.”
“Except you, the man who notices everything.” Laura caressed her lover’s chin.
“And the handsome boy looking at himself in the mirror all the time without speaking with anyone.” Orlando made an abrupt gesture. “Andrea, go stand behind that kid.”
“The Adonis?”
“You know him?”
“He doesn’t speak to anyone. Just looks at himself in the mirror.”
“Would you stand behind him? Please?”
“What are you asking me to do?”
“Appear to him. Be his reflection. That’s what he’s looking for. Be his ghost. I’ll bet you sleep with him this very night.”
“Darling, you’re tempting me.”
Laura Rivière came in with an arrogant, dark-skinned man “in the prime of life,” as Orlando said to Laura D az, a millionaire and very powerful politician, Artemio Cruz, Laura’s lover. Carmen Cortina went over to gossip with them. “And no one can explain why he doesn’t leave his wife, a provincial vulgarian from Puebla-and, Laurita, that’s no reflection on you-when he possesses, I underline possesses, one of the most distinguished women in our society.”
“C’est fou, la vie!” Carmen blurted out, exasperated-Carmen the Blind, as Orlando called her, when tedium overcame his fading good humor.
“Laura darling.” Elizabeth came over to her companion from the Xalapa balls. “Did you see who just came in? See how they whisper in each other’s ear? What does Artemio Cruz want to tell Laura Rivière that he doesn’t have the courage to tell her out loud? Oh, and a word of advice, darling, if you want to catch a fellow, don’t talk, just breathe, that’s all, panting just slightly, like this… I mention it because sometimes I hear you raising your voice.”
“But, Elizabeth, I’m with a man…”
“You never know. You never know… But I didn’t come to give you breathing lessons, just to tell you to go on sending me the bills for everything, the hairdresser, clothes, don’t be stingy, honey, that fat-lipped Caraza left me well set up, spending is one of my pleasures, and I don’t want anyone to say a friend of mine is Orlando Ximénez’s kept woman.”
Laura, with the hint of a bitter smile, asked Elizabeth, “Why are you offending me?”
“Offending you? Offending someone who’s been my friend forever? Jesus!” Elizabeth patted dry the drops of perspiration in the cleavage between her powerful breasts.
“So, you’re cutting me out of your life.”
“Don’t take it that way.”
“I promised I’d pay you. You know my situation.”
“Let’s wait for the next revolution, dearie. Maybe things will go better for your husband then. Deputy from the state of Tabasco, isn’t that right? Don’t make me laugh. All you get out of Tabasco are priest baiters who drink tequila, not gentlemen who pay the rent.”