Читать книгу The Amado Women - Désirée Zamorano - Страница 9

Nataly’s phone rang at two in the morning. Even though she knew who it would be, she answered it, keeping her eye on the TV, half-following the long dead actors on the shimmering grey and white screen. “Hey, Dad,” she said. “You call to take me out to breakfast?” It was her own private joke. Every time he offered to take her out, she ended up paying the bill.

“Kinda late for breakfast, isn’t it? Or kinda early? I guess you artists are in your own time zone. How’s your mother?”

“You can always call her yourself, you know. She’s fine.” Silence on his end of the phone. Great. She tried not to fall into that trap but heard herself ask, “Something wrong?” and heard her father’s heavy sigh in response.

“I should have never divorced your mother,” he said for the hundredth time. Long ago, Nataly stopped pointing out that her mother had divorced him. It never seemed to make a difference.

“I messed up major,” he added. Nataly nodded silently and could picture his watery brown eyes, tinted red with self-pity, the dark brown hair parted on the side, his sideburns neatly trimmed, whatever the fashionable length, thin lips mouthing the words into the speaker. “Eight years, and not a day goes by I don’t think about it and regret it.”

Nataly wondered if he also regretted Jolene or Earlene or whatever the hell her name had been.

“You and Celeste ever patch things up?”

Jolted, Nataly said, “What do you mean, Dad?”

“You two used to be so tight. Then she goes away, and it’s like you’re always mad at her. Celeste left us all, baby, not just you, so don’t be that way. Don’t be like your mother and make it personal. Be like me. There’s a lot of me in you.”

Shit, thought Nataly. Just great.

“Where do you think you got your talent from? You’re an artist, a visionary like your old man. Hey, tell your mom for me that I will always love her. Only her. Got that?”

“Sure thing.” He hung up.

Nataly moaned, stretched and got up out of her bed. A double espresso couldn’t have blasted her into consciousness more than that random phone call from her father. She slipped on a chenille robe and a pair of scruffy slippers and stepped into her work room.

She was currently obsessed with scarlet and purple. In the center of her loom was a small practice piece. She was experimenting with the textures and the colors, a small sketch for the larger piece she was planning. It wasn’t right yet.

To Nataly, colors had rich meanings. Red, that’s obvious, she thought. It’s love, passion, lust, sex. Purple more of the same, but layered with obsession, creativity, ambition, anger, jealousy. But combined with red, the two colors became loyalty, fidelity, eternal bliss.

She chose fabrics, ribbons, yarn around those reds and purples—braiding, knotting, cutting, stitching them into a collage that ultimately she would stretch and starch and dry until it appeared to flutter around the shoulders of an invisible mannequin.

She lost herself in the repetitive task and started thinking again about her father. He had started taking her to the restaurant when she was young. Maybe she was just ten or eleven, sitting on a bar stool during the afternoon, sucking Shirley Temples through two squat straws, savoring the sweet, sweet grenadine. At the empty bar, Nataly drew or did her homework or watched the TV. She was there, her father told her, because she was his favorite, and Nataly knew that was true. Later though, she realized, there had been no one at home to watch her so the job had fallen to her dad.

She had liked how attentive one of the waitresses was, always getting her something from the kitchen—a cheese enchilada or a bean burrito. This waitress always asked her about her day, her teacher, her friends. The woman’s attention made her feel special, but she also began to notice how that waitress laughed around her father, how she looked at him, how she touched him. Did they think she wouldn’t notice?

Nataly worked on the tapestry until late morning and then took a nap followed by a shower just before she set out for her shift at Rimsky’s.

She found herself looking forward to Thursday nights. For a series of Thursday nights, she waited on Dr. Roeg, the name on his credit card. He usually ordered the sole, always two gimlets before dinner and nothing but water during. She kept her server smile on her face and noticed the insistent gold band. She spoke pleasantly with him about nothing at all and then gave her attention to the rest of the clients in her station.

Dr. Roeg had broad shoulders and manicured nails. He never spoke on his cell phone or tapped on his Blackberry during dinner. He always ate alone.

On a Friday in March, Nataly and Yesenia hunted through the fabrics in the garment district of downtown LA. It had poured the day before. The streets were filled with rubbish and haphazard tents of green trash bags made by the street dwellers. Nataly looked closely at the way the bags were slung around cardboard boxes, how belongings were protected by more boxes, plastic wrap, bungee cords, even tent spikes. These were installation pieces.

Yesenia said, “What are you going to do with the doctor? You’ve got it bad.” Yesenia kept her sleek black hair trimmed like glossy fringe around her pale chubby cheeks, dark eyes, expressive mouth.

Nataly laughed and said, “I’m not going to do anything at all with a married man.”

“Self-denial. Good for the soul. Bad for the body, good for the art.”

Yesenia had just returned from Manolito’s Gallery in New York City. As they passed more tents, Yesenia said, “Do you know, I think the subway is New York’s answer to democracy. Crazies and homeless, ethnics and WASPS, city and suburban, wealthy and underclass. Hmmm. Maybe they have something on us after all.”

“So the owner’s deep into ethnic pieces?” Nataly asked.

“He really likes my stuff.” Yesenia looked sideways at Nataly.

“That’s terrific,” Nataly said, jealousy battling within.

“I told him about you,” Yesenia said. A wide red smile spread across her face, her black hair rippled by the wind. “He wants you to send him your portfolio.”

“Why?”

“I just told him about what you did.”

Nataly paused, thought, then said, “Yesenia, can you imagine? Both of us doing a show in New York?”

Yesenia said, “Las dos, chica. That’s what they’ll be calling us five years from now. It could be amazing. Remember Bernard? He’s out there. Maybe he’ll let us sleep on the floor.”

“As long as he doesn’t join us!” A spark lit up in Nataly’s heart.

“Oh my God!” her mother said later on the phone. “Which hotel should we stay in?”

In May, Dr. Roeg stopped making an appearance at her station. Nataly thought about that. She thought so much about it that once, while Eric the manager was in the kitchen, she logged onto the reservation screen and scrolled through the book. There, going back into February, March and April, was Dr. Roeg, with his phone number and her table number on every Thursday night. But there was nothing for May.

In between waiting tables, paying her bills and working on that small woven sketch, Nataly went to the bars with Yesenia. She liked Al’s, tucked off a dank dirty street. Inside it was dark. And noisy.

Sometimes she and Yesenia would go to the bars in swank hotels and scowl at the men dressed in their business suits. No one there she or Yesenia would ever consider dating. Sleep with? That was a different question.

Late May, Yesenia announced she was moving to New York. “It’s a career move,” she said with a wide smile, her thick black lashes fluttering. Yesenia wore a fuchsia scarf that matched the fuchsia tips of her hair.

Nataly was stunned.

“You’ll visit,” Yesenia said, tugging at her arm and giving her a hug. “Look, nothing’s happening here for us. And you can expect more of the same. This is a window of opportunity, a limited time offer. Come with me, chamaca. None of us, Nataly, are going to be young artists forever.”

Later Nataly said to her mother, “Can you imagine? Basically she’s telling me I’m going nowhere. I don’t even know if I want to see her again.”

“Can I visit you in New York?” her mother said.

Eric kept asking her out, and Dr. Roeg had not been into the restaurant in what seemed like weeks and weeks. Probably on a luxury cruise with his wife and kids. Probably staying at the Ritz in Paris or London or river rafting the Amazon. Probably not thinking about me at all. At all, at all.

Her therapist said, “You realize you’re being neurotic.”

Nataly said, “Of course I realize I’m being neurotic! That’s why I’m here with you!”

The Thursday after Yesenia’s going away party, where Nataly had made the mistake of bringing home an overly-impressed-with-himself musician, Nataly stepped down from the bar with her tray of sidecars, seabreezes and Belvedere vodkas and almost missed a step. She recovered swiftly, held onto the tray tight and passed Dr. Roeg at Table 12. She smiled in his direction, but his eyes were closed, and he was rubbing his forehead.

She set the cocktails down in front of the four middle-aged businessmen. Nataly had figured out long ago how to identify an alcoholic: he checked out the size of his drink before he sized up her breasts. This party was evenly split.

She passed the doctor, smiled and said, “I’ll bring that vodka gimlet right out.” He nodded and said, “Make it a double.”

As she placed the order at the bar, Eric murmured in her ear, “I see your boyfriend’s back.”

Nataly smiled, hoping for enigmatic.

Eric said, “I figured out why some women don’t like nice, simple guys.”

Some women meaning me. Nice, simple guys meaning you.”

Eric nodded. “They don’t want nice, simple. They want exciting, complicated.”

“Imagine that.”

“Their loss,” he said, with no smile on his face.

Nataly thought Eric looked quite handsome at that moment, with his stubby pony tail and that wisp of wistfulness on his face. Was he really that interested?

“You know, Eric, if I had your inflated ego, there’d be a waiting list a mile long for my art work.”

He smiled. “You haven’t seen the best part of me inflated.”

“Thank you. You forget that I did. And I almost liked you there for a minute.” Nataly set the doctor’s drink on her tray and stepped down to the restaurant.

“Hello, stranger,” she said. “Ready to order?”

There he was, those perfectly broad shoulders, the clean manicured hands, the hair spiking upwards. But he didn’t look the same, not really. The creases across his forehead seemed deeper. His eyes appeared weary. And something else. He looked so piercingly at her that Nataly glanced down at the tablecloth.

He cocked his head and said, “Did you miss me?”

Nataly glanced back into those eyes and found herself unable to speak, the way he looked at her. What color were they? Gray. Green. The color of sex, colored by loss.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. I’m not in a hurry tonight. Let me think about it.”

Nataly nodded, walked away, a kind of furious activity going on deep in her rib cage—hidden, she hoped, from everyone else.

It turned into a busy and lucrative shift. Nataly didn’t have time to personally deliver his salmon caviar on blinis drenched with clarified butter and a dollop of crème fraiche. Or his dover sole. After the rush had subsided, she was able to make her way to his table to see if he wanted dessert.

“How about a decaf espresso?”

Nataly noticed that he nursed the espresso for half an hour. She set down his credit card and lingered as he tabulated and signed his receipt.

He reached inside his wallet, pulled out a business card and scribbled something down. “If you ever want to talk,” he said. “Just talk.”

Later that night Nataly again inspected the small, beige business card, cut on heavy stock.

Dr. Peter Roeg

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

Pediatric Oncologist

His office number was listed, as well as a pager number. On the back he had written a third number and under it private. She set the business card on her night stand next to her phone.

That seemed like too much of an invitation so she slipped it in her night stand drawer. She pulled it out to investigate his handwriting. Eleven numbers and one word. She decided she couldn’t tell much. She decided not to think about that gold band on his hand, which actually told her everything.