Читать книгу Give It To Me - Ana Castillo - Страница 13

7

Ursula had been gone a month. She took Romeo with her as Palma’s going away present. (Once the dog had a name it felt too personal.) The cat had no trouble with its owner’s noncommittal issues and hardly ever came around anymore. Palma discovered the neighbors were feeding it. She was left on her own in the desert. If you had a job or a relationship, a place made some sense. If you had a sick mother or a kid in school to look after. Things that nailed people down. She stopped answering Ursula’s “miss you” texts.

Pepito’s texts, however, were heating up, even after, or maybe because, she had initially ignored them. He had gotten a part-time job working the floor in a men’s suit store and furrier managed by an “old friend.” The second Palma read the text she imagined her tall, dark cousin in a three-piece suit. Something Wall Street. Distance made the libido grow fonder and she masturbated that evening in a hot bath. There were things you might imagine a thirteen-year-old girl doing, a young coed doing, young being the operative term. Most people didn’t fantasize about a forty-two-year-old woman in a small bathtub fondling herself while thinking about her cousin. The truth was all over the world, women, single and married, pleasured themselves in the shadows, made ashamed of the desire they felt. They used casual encounters—the brother-in-law, cousin, pool boy, delivery boy, student, postman, UPS guy, accountant (just kidding), divorce attorney, taxi driver, school bus driver—to propel their sabotaged imaginations. Ladies now also had a ton of anonymous disembodied sources added by the Internet.

Men used porn sites, too, of course and still resorted to old-school Playboy issues kept behind their toilets, and maybe any woman on the street. Middle-aged guys were notoriously horny, and despite having erectile dysfunction, baldness, paunches, gastritis, colitis, no money except that which they could steal from obligations to family, bad taste in humor, boring stories to go with the lack of character, and being void of any personal sense of dress style, they managed to get some woman’s attention. And society thought it okay. Men were men, the universal adage went.

Then, one ordinary evening Pepito busted all her notions about unrequited female desires across the globe and throughout the generations wide open, like a lit firecracker inside a cantaloupe.

Pow.

Her cous’ called and asked, Do you remember that picture you sent when I was locked up where you had on white slacks and sandals?

Yes, she said, although she didn’t.

Your hair was kind of blowing in the wind and you were standing in front of a statue. (Palma remembered. She was in Medellín. Her ex took the picture. Her head all over the place. Colombia. Rodrigo. The unprecedented sense of alienation she felt in his mother’s home and in a foreign country. The letters to and from Pepito.) You looked so good, prima, Pepito said. I can’t tell you how many times I got off with that picture.

What? She asked. Nothing, man, he said. You looked great. You were thick.

She was. A healthy woman in her prime. (That was before the hysterectomy. When he first saw her again in Chicago, Pepito said, You look frail. You need to put on some weight, girl.) She imagined him rubbing himself. That ain’t me no more, Palma said. (Who was she then, between scars you saw and couldn’t see?) Your hair was blowing in the wind, he repeated, and some strands fell across your face. He gave a moan. Ay, flaquita, you have no idea . . .

Palma Piedras did have an idea. Tell me, she said.

First, we have a nice dinner together. We order whatever we want. Then we go up to our room. In the elevator I am kissing you, all over, just loving you up. I have ordered champagne and a platter of goodies—chocolate, caviar, and exotic cheeses . . . (Exotic cheeses? She wondered what that meant for him. White cheddar?) We have a glass of champagne (Read: Andre) and toast to our love. (?!) We’re playing Barry White and you do a slow strip tease for me . . .

She wanted to interrupt and ask why he couldn’t do a strip tease for her but held out to see where they were going on the good-libidinous-ship lollipop.

You straddle my lap, he said, and I put my penis inside you. I get it in way deep in that wet pussy of yours, like I always knew it was. You’re wet for me now, right, baby?

Holy cow. Heavens to Murgatroyd. Silly Rabbit, tricks were for kids. Uh, yeah.