Chapter 46 No
No
Coco
My heels clack across the gallery’s elegant marble floors.
I have an important appointment with a client interested in making a six-figure investment in a good painting, and I’ve set aside a few pieces I think might interest her.
It’s not the typical done deal; this woman knows what she wants, what she doesn’t, and what she should read and investigate before she buys anything.
Young, beautiful, successful…a mirror you want to look in, of course, but above all a client who it’s in my best interest to keep satisfied.
I glance at my reflection in the glass covering an especially valuable piece that’s part of an exhibition right now.
My hair is styled in loose waves with a middle part, and I’m wearing a dress with a tailored blazer over it and some black Jimmy Choos I borrowed from Mama.
I’m not wearing tights, but I did get a little chilly today for the first time as I walked to the metro on the way to the gallery.
“You look really nice today,” a colleague says.
I turn toward him, weirded out. “Excuse me?”
“Sorry,” he says. He’s old enough to be my father, and he’s near retirement, but right now he looks like a bashful little boy. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I didn’t mean to be offensive. It’s just…you came back from vacation seeming very stressed and now—”
“Antonio.” I cut him off. I don’t want to talk about my personal life with him, and I don’t need his compliments. “I have an appointment with an important client, and I want to impress her. Do you think lipstick projects a more confident image?”
“Yes.” He nods. “Without a doubt.”
“If you don’t mind…I’m going to run to my office for a sec.”
The sound of my heels accompanies me to where I’ve stored my bag. Inside I find a red lipstick, powerful, strong; I get a twinge in my stomach when I realize it’s the one I was wearing this summer when Marín and I…
“Coco.” My boss pokes her head into my office.
“Is it time already?”
“I didn’t know you were expecting a visit,” she says. “But yes. It’s time. Were you in the middle of something?”
“Just putting on lipstick.” I smile. “I want to seem like a strong woman who’s secure in myself to encourage her to buy something with a lot of zeros.”
“A lot of zeros?” She grimaces. “I’m not sure if there are a lot of zeros in that bank account.”
I don’t ask anything else. I just run my tongue over my teeth and stride out.
At first I don’t see anyone. The gallery seems as calm and silent as always. I notice it started raining really hard outside and that the security guards are huddling inside, watching it rage.
A few wet footprints on a previously impeccable floor lead me to one of the corners, where we have a reproduction of a work by Juan Gris that I valued myself and bought from one private collector to sell to another.
In front of it, wearing a frown, is someone I wasn’t expecting to find admiring avant-garde art at nine thirty on a Wednesday morning.
I don’t know whether to run forward or backward, so I just freeze.
The sound of my shoes makes him turn around.
That’s enough for me, just like the first time we met in that bar in Malasana; a single glance gets me hooked.
It’s his eyes, I tell myself, which have something special about them that I’ve never found in any other gaze.
I don’t know if it’s a handful of truth or a constellation of possible unlived lives.
I swallow. He does too, and he turns all the way toward me, putting his hands in his pockets.
“Guitar, fruit bowl, and carafe,” I say, feeling my heart pounding in my throat and my stomach.
“What’s that?”
“The painting.” I point to it. “It’s called Guitar, Fruit Bowl, and Carafe. It’s by Juan Gris, one of the most important figures in cubism. He was from Madrid.”
A small smile plays at his lips. “Yeah, Sardine?”
“Yeah. He has a portrait of”—I take two steps toward him and add—“of Pablo Picasso that is exhibited in a museum in Chicago, and it’s one of the first cubist works painted by anyone besides Picasso or Braque.”
“Do you like cubism?”
“No.” I smile. “I appreciate it as avant-garde, but if you ask me if I’d like a cubist painting hanging in the living room, I’d say no.”
“No. You like symbolism.”
“What am I gonna do? I love George Lacombe.”
“Plus…what was the name of the one that gave me the creeps?”
“Morea. I always thought you went into a kind of fugue state when I told you this stuff.”
“If I dig deep, I’ll probably remember something else.”
“No need. It’s not a test.”
“No…you’re wrong. This is my final.” He sighs. “When do you have time to talk?”
I look at my watch. “I have a meeting in half an hour, and I wanted to prepare a few things.”
“Can we have lunch together?”
“Um…” My voice won’t even come out. “I don’t know, Marín.”
“What don’t you know?”
“If this visit fulfills the prerequisites of the terms that were…established between us.”
“I need to talk to you,” he says.
“Yeah, okay, but—”
“Look, I’ll wait for you on the terrace of Ramsés, okay? I’ll order a glass of wine for you…at around two?”
“One thirty would be better,” I say. “My day is a little…”
“Of course. So one thirty. See you there?”
I nod and bite my cheek. “You’re not working today?” I ask before he heads toward the door.
“No. I took the day off.”
When he opens the door and disappears under a curtain of rain, I try not to think about his clothes getting plastered to his skin even though I don’t know who I’m trying to fool.
“What did that guy want?” asks my boss, who just materialized next to me like a ghost.
“Fuck, Nati, one of these days you’re going to scare me to death.” I put my hand on my chest.
“I don’t like him for you.” She wrinkles her lip. “He looks like a…I don’t know, late-night rocker.”
“No. He’s not a late-night rocker. He’s a rising star of the music industry, but only I know that for now,” I say, half in a trance.
* * *
It’s stopped raining, but the Plaza de la Independencia is covered in a thin glistening layer of water that makes it look like a huge whale made of cement and asphalt.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.
I have two opposing forces in my chest: the one that says the time has come and the other that’s screaming there’s too much pain.
I seem to have an inner drive inside me that fights for my pride tooth and nail.
How else would I have found the strength to make the decision to distance myself from Marín?
I’m tempted to call Loren or Blanca and tell them everything, but I don’t know why. I have reservations. I don’t think I want to get them involved until I know whether this is fixed. So…I dial my mother’s phone number.
“Did you sell it?” she asks me as soon as she picks up.
“Yes,” I assure her. “She was very happy. She told me that it’s going to brighten up her penthouse in the Castellana. Mama…this girl must be my age, and she has a penthouse in the Castellana.”
“Well, you have a Jonathan Brothers poster in your closet.”
“You’re an idiot.” I laugh. “It’s the Jonas Brothers, and I ripped that poster down. Do you have a sec to talk?”
“Yes. Of course. I’m just drinking a Tom Collins.”
I can’t do anything but laugh. “He came back,” I hear myself say, suddenly much more serious.
“He came back? Marín?”
“Yeah. He showed up at the gallery this morning. He’s waiting for me at a restaurant. I’m on the way now.”
“And? Did he say anything?”
“No, but…I guess he came for…”
“Coco—your expectations. Control them. They’re like runaway horses. He probably just wants to tell you, I don’t know, something about his sister.”
“He would have called, right?”
“Well, let’s stop speculating. What do you want? What is it that you want from him? What do you need from him to be able to share your happiness?”
“My happiness right now is a lettuce leaf that someone accidentally put in the microwave. Am I making myself clear?”
“Am I making myself clear? Think about yourself, Coco! Your needs are the ones you should be worrying about. Nothing else. If you don’t take care of them, you won’t be the only one who suffers. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Ay, Mama.” I let out a kind of whimper.
“Okay, go. Talk to him. But if he wants to start a cult and he wants you to join and be his right hand…say no.”
Anyway.
* * *
Just like he promised, there’s a glass of white wine waiting on the table for me, next to his plain glass of water.
I see him, but he doesn’t see me. He’s engrossed in reading an old, worn, earmarked book whose pages started yellowing decades ago.
And I’m hit so hard by something it stops me in my tracks.
It’s a memory—a false memory, something that never happened, something that maybe never will happen.
It’s us, the two of us, next to the ocean.
He’s wearing a white shirt and has sunglasses on, and he’s reading an old book, like this one, like those books he buys in that old bookstore on Arenal Street.
He’s stroking the pristine white tablecloth covering the table in this “memory,” and it makes me laugh to think he always had such long fingers that even when he wasn’t touching me, I could feel it.
He looks up, and the superimposed image of this false memory bursts. He spots me. He smiles and stands up as he puts the book aside. There’s no kiss or hug before I sit across from him at the table.