Chapter 18 #2
“Of course not. I told you: those dances are not for the likes of me,” Perla said loftily.
Not for the likes of any of the married ladies sitting around, he supposed. They were drinking and eating, but none of them seemed inclined to dance. He was stuck sitting with a perfectly painted mannequin.
He began to resent the café, its every noise and every smell. He wanted to be out there, moving to the rhythm of a danzón even if the town’s matriarchs found it vulgar. Despite the decadent celebration, it seemed that the “gente bien” clung to certain customs.
Goddamn it, how the sweat glistened against that neck, and how moist the lips seemed. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, Inés had dashed outside again. He saw her partnering once more with Bartolo and stubbed his cigarette into an ashtray.
He felt the coolness of the forgotten mask under his fingertips and stood up muttering an excuse that his wife didn’t seem to hear. Nobody paid him any attention as he stepped out of the café and put on the mask.
He began walking the perimeter of the plaza and saw other men dressed in their tiger masks, hooting and hollering, some of them dancing and others passing around a bottle of liquor.
He searched for Inés, wanting to see her smile that shone as bright as a shooting star, that flash of lively black eyes.
Suddenly he caught sight of her. There she was, dancing not with Bartolo, but with a stranger with a red handkerchief dangling from his back pocket.
Ulises watched her, and she must have felt his gaze, for she looked back at him. He was wearing the mask, but she smirked. She threw her head back, her hair like a black cloud, her lips parted with laughter. The sound of her voice made him shiver.
The melody ended and she moved away from the man. Swiftly he stepped forward and caught her hand, pulling her with him, but she extricated herself from his grasp.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I thought we might dance.”
She shook her head and laughed again. “Is that what you really want to do?” she replied, with a delicious, honeyed wickedness.
This time it was she who grabbed his arm and pulled him with her. They hurried down random streets, then zigzagged into a narrow alley that was speckled with confetti. The murmur of the plaza reached their ears, but it seemed far off, like the sound of the ocean in a conch.
There was one solitary lamppost at the entrance of the alley and as they moved farther in, the dim lights filtering from a window on a second floor could hardly penetrate the knot of shadows at street level. Everyone must have been at the plaza or holed up in cantinas and private parties.
They were breathless by the time he stopped and took off the mask, letting it clatter against the cobblestones. His palms itched to touch the curve of her breast. She let out a low, sardonic laugh as he pressed her against a wall.
“Have you been drinking much?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I had a glass or two. Why do you care?”
“I’m worried you’re drunk, or else you wouldn’t be this friendly.”
“Who says I’m being friendly?”
“You haven’t kicked me.”
“Dancing always makes me happy. I can’t stay mad if I dance.”
“Lucky me.”
She smirked and stood straight and proud while he wrapped an arm around her waist and looked down at her.
“Can I kiss you or will you slap me?” he asked.
“Try it.”
He brushed his lips against her own, then gently pressed his forehead against hers.
The smirk wavered. She seemed confused. That was not the kiss she’d been expecting, or that he’d meant to give her.
But Ulises felt a pang of sorrow. He would have liked it to be different between them.
He would have liked something ordinary and sweet. To be a man wooing a woman.
She must have guessed his thoughts, for she suddenly acquired a determined, furious look.
“Will you get on with it?” she said, her voice sharp. “I don’t have time for you to recite sonnets.”
Her hands tugged at his belt, and she kissed him, bold and unabashed and challenging.
He supposed it was silly to expect sweetness from Inés.
Mischief, yes. Sweetness, no. Though he wondered if she’d been different with that boy Perla had mentioned.
Salvador. Perhaps he’d bought her flowers and copied lines from El Correo del Amor.
Even memorized trite phrases from its pages, recited them in a tremulous voice.
Manufactured romance that didn’t have an ounce of authenticity but that young women were foolish enough to believe.
He bunched up her skirts and delved his fingers between her folds, found her wet and wanting.
She’d lied about not being drunk. She might not have imbibed much that night, but she was drunk on the attention and the motion of the dance.
She’d been flirting for two hours with half a dozen men, smiling and teasing them, growing flustered.
He suspected any fellow might have satisfied her, that if he hadn’t stumbled upon her she would have gone off with the policeman or the stranger with the handkerchief.
She undid his buckle, and he almost slapped her hands away, offended by the thought of being a useful palliative and nothing more. Yet there was no denying the wave of lust that hit him when she touched him; he wanted her very much, and without any more preamble he eased himself into her.
It had been too long since he’d had a lover.
The women he courted for profit did not count, and the rest of his liaisons were brief and as flimsy as a spider’s web, disintegrating at the slightest touch.
He even wondered if he’d ever had a true lover, and it was a marvel to find himself in a darkened alley, feeling almost faint with desire after the mechanical expedience with which he handled his conquests.
He rocked his hips, wrapped his hand around a lock of hair, delighted at the lushness of her curls. He wished he might have seen her naked, spread upon a bed. As it was, he hadn’t even had a glimpse of her breasts and still she was divine.
This is not me at my best, he wanted to tell her, embarrassed, not only because they were fucking against the wall of an alleyway, which was not the most romantic of backdrops, but because he’d had his fair share of alcohol that night and he wasn’t going to last long and he knew she didn’t want him to drag it out. Just a quick fuck.
At least he could kiss her properly, and he did. He kissed her with a bruising intensity, until her breathing turned short and shallow. He felt her body tighten around him, and he lost his rhythm and shuddered to a halt, moaning into the side of her neck.
Too soon she disentangled herself from him, smoothing down her skirts and pulling away. “Estrella will be expecting me,” she said, and the simplicity of the remark felt bruising.
She couldn’t remain with him, and he hadn’t anticipated a long, effusive parting. But suddenly he wanted her to stay. Only a minute longer.
He interrupted her retreat, caught her hand, and spun her around to kiss her one last time, lingering against her, his hands at her waist. He wished he knew lines from El Correo del Amor, even if they were trite.
She looked up at him and raised a hand to carefully cup his face—it was her turn to surprise him—before she slid away, rushing down the alley.
He rested against the wall, his heart still thumping wildly in his chest, and looked up at the night sky. After a couple of minutes, he retrieved the mask he’d dropped and walked back the way they’d come.