The Years with Laura Diaz

on dressed as an altar boy and singing “When I was an altar boy.” Instantly, nine or ten half-naked girls in banana skirts-the kind Josephine Baker made famous in Paris in the Folies-Bergere-and little stars glued to their nipples pulled off the altar-boy robes and began singing “Long Live the Proletariat!” while a tall, dark man wearing overalls served champagne to Soto-Morones.

“Thanks, dear brother Lopez Greene, you’ve helped me better than anyone. I ask only that you change your name to Lopez Red just to be in complete harmony, understand? Because we’re all red here and certainly not green-goes, right, girls?”

“Mutti, take care of the boys until I write again. And Auntie Maria de la O should stay with you too. I’ll send money. I have to reorganize my life, dearest Mutti. I’ll tell you everything. Meanwhile, Li Po can watch over you. You were right.”

8.

Paseo de la Reforma: 1930

“SOME MEXICANS LOOK GOOD only in their coffins.”

Orlando Ximenez’s bon mot was applauded by everyone at the cocktail party that Carmen Cortina gave to celebrate the unveiling of the portrait of her cousin, the actress Andrea Negrete. The artist, Tizoc Ambriz, a young painter from Guadalajara, had become, overnight, the society portrait painter most sought after by those who did not want to bequeath their image to the (Communist and monstrous) posterity of Rivera, Orozco, or Siqueiros, whom they referred to contemptuously as “the daubers.”

Carmen Cortina flouted conventions and invited what she herself called “the fauna of Mexico City” to her cocktail parties. The first time Elizabeth brought Laura to one, she had to tell her who the guests were, although it was impossible to distinguish them from the crashers, whom the hostess tolerated as homage to her social standing-after all, was there anyone who was someone who didn’t want to be seen at Carmen Cortina’s soirees? Vain and nearsighted, she herself had a hard time telling who was who, and people said she’d raised the senses of smell and touch to the level of high art, for all she had to do was bring her myopic face up to the nearest cheek to say, “Chata, what a delight you are!” or touch the finest cashmere to exclaim, “Rudy, how delighted I am to see you!”

Rudy was Rudy, but Orlando was rude. “Watch out!” Carmen called out in English to the star of the party, Andrea, a woman with a mother-of-pearl complexion and perfect facial symmetry accentuated by her hair, parted down the middle and, despite the sensual youth of her eternal figure, audaciously adorned with two white streaks at her temples. This was why she was disrespectfully called “Two-tone.” The irrepressible Orlando, especially, would say because of her skill at two-timing. Sooner or later, Andrea would be what was called an opulent woman, he noted, but not yet. She was like a ripe, freshly picked piece of fruit, challenging the world.

“Eat me,” Andrea said, smiling.

“Peel me,” said Orlando very seriously.

“Vulgarian,” laughed Carmen very loudly.

Tizoc Ambriz’s portrait was covered by a curtain in expectation of its being unveiled at the crowning moment of the evening, when Carmen and only Carmen determined that things had reached their climax, an instant before the boiling point, when all the fauna were assembled. Carmen was making lists in her head: who’s here? who’s missing?

“You’re a statigraphician of the high life,” said Orlando into her ear, but loudly.

“Hey! I’m not deaf, you know,” whimpered Carmen.

“What you are is hot.” Orlando pinched her backside.

“Vulgarian! What is a statigraphician?”

“Someone who practices a new but minor science, a brand-new way to tell lies.”

“What? What? I’m dying to know what that is.”

“Vargas is investigating it.”

“Pedro Vargas? He’s the radio sensation. Have you heard him? He sings on Channel W.”

“But, my dear Carmen, the Palace of Fine Arts has just been inaugurated. Don’t talk to me about Channel W.”

“What are you saying, that mausoleum Don Porfirio left half finished?”

“We now have a symphony orchestra. Carlos Chavez is the director.”

“Which Chavez is that?”

“The one who’ll give you a close chavez where you need it most.”

“Get lost, you’re impossible.”

“I know you like a book. You’re making lists in your head.”

“I’m the hostess. It’s my duty,” Carmen declared in English.

“I’ll bet I can read your mind.”

“Orlando, all you have to do is look around.”

“What do you see, my blind goddess?”

“The mixture, darling, the mixture,” Carmen went on in English. “Social classes have been abolished: doesn’t that seem significant to you? Tell me if twenty years ago, when I was a girl-”

“Carmen, I saw you flirting-with no success-at the Centenary Ball in 1910…”

“That was my aunt. Anyway, take a look. What do you see?”

“I see a weeping willow. I see a nymph. I see an aureole. I see melancholy. I see sickness. I see egoism. I see vanity. I see personal and collective disorganization. I see beautiful poses. I see ugly things.”

“Idiot. You’re a frustrated poet. Give me names. Names, names, names.”

“What’s in a name?”

“What, what did you say?”

“Romeo, Juliet, things like that.”

“What? Who invited them?”

Laura had resisted her friend Elizabeth’s importuning: you’re behaving like a widow without being one, Laura, you got rid of Lopez Greene at just the right time, the way I got rid of Caraza, she would say as they walked along Avenida Madero in search of bargains. It was Elizabeth who organized these expeditions to find sales on clothes and accessories that were beginning to come back to post-Revolutionary Mexico in the shops on Gante, Bolivar, and 16 de Septiembre. These hunting parties would start with a breakfast at Sanborn’s, continue with lunch at Prendes, and finish up with a movie at the Cine Iris on Donceles Street-where Laura liked going because it featured first run American films from Metro Goldwyn-Mayer with the best actors, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, William Powell-while Elizabeth favored the Cine Palacio on Avenida Cinco de Mayo, where they showed only Mexican movies. She loved to laugh with Chato Ortin, cry with Sara Garc a, admire Fernando Soler’s histrionics.

“Remember when we went to see fatso Soto at the Follies? That’s where your life changed.”

“A dead marriage kills everything, Elizabeth.”

“Know what happened to you? You were cleverer than your husband. Just like me.”

“No, I think he loved me.”

“But he didn’t understand you. You walked out the day you understood you were more intelligent than he was. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”

“No. I simply felt that Juan Francisco wasn’t up to the same level as his ideals. Maybe I was more moral than he, though thinking that now annoys me a little.”

“Remember fatso Soto’s farce? To be considered intelligent in Mexico, you’ve got to be a crook. What I recommend, my love, is that you become a liberated, sensual woman, your own kind of crook. Come on, finish off that ice-cream soda, drain those straws, and let’s go shopping and then to the movies.”

Laura said she felt embarrassed that Elizabeth was “shooting” so many things her way. That was the way you put it in Mexico City slang, which abounded in neologisms disguised as archaisms and archaisms disguised as