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Episode Four Donna Maria lets the curtain fall. In the artificial dusk of the motel room, the scent of sex has gone stale. The man she spent the night with is already half-dressed, pulling on his boots as he smokes a cigarette. The gloom transforms him, and suddenly Donna Maria is somewhere else. She sees a stripped bed, a man sitting on edge of the mattress. He wears boots, American jeans. His black hair is raked with the toothmarks of a plastic comb, which he wields compulsively, like a teenage boy. A spider idles on a nicotine-stained wall, a radio broadcasts a Spanish that Donna can barely understand. Boards cover the single window. The wood has been painted to match the walls, but that attempt to mask the boards only makes their purpose more obvious. This room could be located in a tract house in Los Angeles, an apartment in London, a hotel in Beirut. The man on the bed is taking deep, contented drags of a hand-rolled cigarette. The smoke merges with the perpetual haze that blankets the ceiling. This is the one time Donna Maria has seen him, the only time he's allowed it. Why this time, after so many others? Donna reels back into the present. She stumbles against the wall and cocoons herself with her arms. Her bare breasts roll heavily, making her aware of their soft weight, their vulnerable tips. Naked, she is nothing but penetrable flesh. "You all right, babe?" The stranger on her bed is staring at her, his eyebrows knotted. His features are sharp-edged, Anglo-nothing like the face from her memory-but her heart still isn't beating. The man rises into a crouch, as if she might lunge at him. Bare-chested, he backs toward the door. His fear makes her laugh, and laughter brings her back to life. "Relax," she says. "It was just an attack of déjà-vu." He bares his teeth-a trapped animal's grin. "Hey, I've been there. We all have bad memories, right?" "Right," says Donna Maria. "I hate to book out of here, honey, but I have to go. We had fun, didn't we?" He has one hand on the doorknob. Before Donna can do so much as nod, last night's lover has become another ghost. Donna Maria shudders. Her craving for a hot shower is so strong that she's tempted to ignore her guests and lock herself in the bathroom for half an hour. She imagines the fiery needles of water piercing her skin, bringing waves of tranquilizing pain. Pain doesn't erase pain, but one sensation can overcome the memory of another, at least for an hour or two. Joel and the blonde woman are probably standing at the front desk, milling around with their overnight bags and checking their watches. By now, they will have explored the front room, remarking on its faded charms. The sign on the door says OFFICE, but the motel's office is really nothing more than a desk planted in the middle of a mission-style lounge. The tiled floor, wide fireplace, and ceiling beams make the room look like a set from Bonanza. That was the look that Donna's grandmother strove for, the style her guests wanted -- Hollywood kitsch with a touch of authentic Mexican culture. But the stagy leather furniture now suffers from cracked upholstery, and the colorful woven rugs have faded to a muted range of reds and browns. Near the fireplace sits the oracle that inspired the dream behind this room: a giant color TV set. As a teenager, Donna Maria used to do her homework in front of
that TV. When guests arrived, she would set her history or geography
book aside and wade back into the world of practical details.
Register the customers, run their credit cards, assign them the
keys, point them toward the ice and snack machines. There is more than one kind of wedding, says Donna Maria to her grandmother's memory. There's the wedding of one soul to another, and the wedding of one body to another. Then there's the wedding of a body to itself, the moment when mind and flesh are united in one jolt, and you realize that any separation between the two has been an illusion. In this way, if no other, I have been married, abuelita. Donna Maria decides against the shower. Her pulse is still galloping,
but she steadies her nerves, ties up her hair, and takes a whore's
bath at the sink. She splashes her breasts, armpits, and pussy
with warm water, trying to wash away the smell of sex for her
own sake, not her guests'. She pats herself dry with a threadbare
towel, then confronts her reflection in the speckled mirror. "Do you think she's here?" Carly asks for the fifth or sixth time. "I know she is," Joel says. "Maybe she didn't really expect you to answer her letter." "She wouldn't have sent that picture of herself if she didn't." He sounds confident, but Carly catches him glancing at his watch. She taps the old-fashioned desk bell again. Silence greets its rusty jingle. "I can't wait anymore," Carly says. "I'm going to pee outside." "Where?" "Anywhere. I'll squat under that big tree." "Wait. Someone's coming out." Through the open door they see a man striding across the gravel, heading for a brown Dodge parked in the shade of a gnarled pepper tree. Naked above the waist, he is pulling on his shirt as he gets into the car. "Looks like he's running away from something," Joel says. "Good. The faster he leaves, the better." As soon as the Dodge has rumbled out of the lot, Carly makes a beeline for the tree. She squats in a cool patch of soil, her thighs spread wide under her skirt. Going without panties has certain practical advantages. After a minute of tantalizing pressure, the flood begins, a climax of pure bliss. She looks up through the ragged fringe of sun-spangled leaves and sighs. Except for the splash of her pee, and the bickering of crows in the sky, the countryside is beautifully silent. The stinging scent of warm urine, the bitter kiss of coffee still on her tongue, the breeze whisking her spread thighs, the tawny summer hills: if it's possible to come with all five senses, Carly is doing just that. Somewhere a door creaks open. Boot-heels crunch on gravel. Carly doesn't realize that she's being watched until the shadows shift around her, and she finds herself staring up into the grave, dark eyes of the woman from the photograph. "Oh, God." Even in the wild heat of humiliation, Carly can't help being stunned by the other woman's beauty. She is older, heavier in body and presence, but if anything Donna Maria is more striking than she was in the photo. Carly wants to stand, but she's paralyzed. What do you say to a woman who's haunted your fantasies, when that woman is suddenly standing over you, watching you take a piss on her property? "I'm sorry," Carly says. The trickle finally ends. Frantically she looks around for something to wipe herself with, and settles for a handful of moist leaves. "I couldn't find a bathroom, and I couldn't wait." The other woman shrugs. Her face reveals neither shock nor curiosity as she watches Carly rub her crotch. "Doesn't matter." "No, it was rude." "Only because I caught you." Carly struggles to her feet and rearranges her skirt. The damp hem clings to her thighs. Donna Maria's eyes narrow, possibly in amusement. Chronologically, the other woman is about Carly's age, but there's a caution in her face, an aggression in the angle of her hips, that speak of a harder form of aging. The curves of Donna Maria's body are deep and full, but unyielding; they offer no respite for the eye. Tight jeans cleave a deep V in her crotch. Hard nipples jut through a white t-shirt, worn thin by many washings. There's temptation in that taut body, but no invitation to take shelter. "I'm a friend of Joel Conti," Carly says. "That's what I figured. He was afraid to come alone." "Afraid?" Carly laughs, but the sound rings hollow. Donna Maria's unblinking stare reminds Carly of a crow's gaze. The eyes are flat black mirrors-no accusation there, only a blank surface that reflects the subject's unease. "If he wasn't afraid, he should have been." "Why?" Donna Maria glances at Joel's battered car. "I wouldn't want to drive that piece of junk all the way down from the city by myself." Carly wipes a runnel of perspiration off her eyebrow. Her wispy bangs, she knows, are plastered to her forehead. Her throat feels packed with cotton. She coughs. "You need something to drink?" Carly nods. Need, yes. She feels an urge as fundamental as her thirst, but she's never learned the word for this impulse. All she's been thinking about for the past seventy-two hours is the photograph of the woman who's standing in front of her. Now, here is Donna Maria, close enough so that Carly can smell the stale residue of smoke and liquor on her clothes. She can see the delicate lines that radiate from Donna Maria's skeptical lips, the swell of flesh under her chin, the dusky circles under her eyes. Carly can't help noticing that the lavender shadows around Donna's eyes are the same shade as the ghosts of her nipples beneath her white t-shirt. Donna's breasts are fuller, heavier, than those of the girl in the photograph. They're the dense globes that Carly has always wanted to possess. For years Carly thought her fascination with sexy women came from insecurity about her body. Only recently has she been able to untangle the threads of envy from the true roots of her attraction. Looking at Donna Maria, Carly realizes that she doesn't want to feel those breasts hanging on her own slender frame, but resting in her hands. Brushing her lips. Rolling against her cheeks. Gliding between her thighs-back and forth, back and forth-as the other woman pushes her down into a pool of sunwarmed sheets . . . "Come on," Donna Maria says, breaking into Carly's reverie. "I'll get you a soda. If you're lucky, the ice machine might even be working." Donna Maria heads toward the motel office. Her battered cowboy boots give her a self-assured, rocking gait. Carly follows in the other woman's wake, watching her slim shadow trail behind Donna Maria's larger one. How strange it feels to be here, Carly thinks, instead of trotting through Golden Gate Park with Phillip on their Saturday morning jog. No one knows where Carly's gone this weekend. She couldn't explain Donna Maria Santos to anyone she knows in the city. What would she say? Maybe she could start at the beginning, try to peg the ropes of her desire in a childhood fixation. Ever since I was a little girl, I've been drawn to dark women. My mother -- my petite blonde mother -- used to lose me in public places. She would find me following some tall stranger with long black hair. Mom used to say that I was a yellow duckling who thought it was a raven. Or this: When I was fourteen, I fell in love with another girl. Her name was Yasmin. She was taller than I was, with slim brown legs like an antelope, and long black hair. I never told her that I loved her. I don't even know if it was love, or just a need I wasn't old enough to define. And this: The black-haired woman has never left my mind. She hounds me, drives me nuts, won't leave my psyche. When I try to push her out, she comes back in my dreams. I need her. I just don't know what I need her for. On the ride down from the city, Carly considered telling Joel about her fantasies. If he weren't caught in his own net of obsessions, she might have recounted a few of her own, but the two friends were silent on the long drive, letting radio music replace their usual banter. Now, as Joel watches Donna Maria walk across the lot, Carly sees the anticipation in his tense muscles. Hunger transforms his face, deepening the shadows below his cheekbones, giving him the darkly swollen mouth of a horny angel. A bolt of insight strikes Carly's heart -- she wants to be the object of a hunger like that. What would it take, to be wanted so fiercely? If only she were curvier, if only her erotic flame burned hotter, if only she were free. Joel's fingers tremble as he clutches at his camera. Meanwhile, Donna Maria has stiffened like a wild animal facing an oncoming truck. As the two of them confront each other, Carly vanishes. She wishes she could run. She wants to run along the highway until
she drops from exhaustion. Some kind driver would pick her up
off the road and take her back home, to the safety of San Francisco
and Phillip. No matter what happens between Joel and Donna Maria
this weekend, Carly is going to be nothing but a witness. And
for this, more than anything else, she resents the pale ropes
that keep her tethered to her fears. |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
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