'So what do you believe in?' I asked her.
Her dark gaze ran with pleasure along the warm cinnamon tile, the beaten copper hood over the range. 'I believe in living as I like. I see a Stickley lamp, a cashmere sweater, and I know I can have it. I own two houses besides this. When the ashtrays are full in my car, I'll sell it.'
I laughed, imagining her bringing it back to the dealer, explaining why she was selling. She probably would. I could hardly fathom someone living so close to her own desire.
'I just spent three weeks in Tuscany. I saw the Palio in Siena,' she said, strumming the words like the strings of a guitar. 'It's a fifteenth-century horse race through the cobbled streets. Would I exchange that for a husband and kids and happily-ever-after? Not to mention the likely outcome, divorce and overtime at the bank and shaky child support. Let me show you something.'
She picked up the small quilted bag on her counter, found her wallet, opened it for me to see the wad of cash as thick as my finger. She spread the bills, at least a dozen hundreds among the others. 'Love's an illusion. It's a dream you wake up from with an enormous hangover and net credit debt. I'd rather have cash.' She put her money away, zipped her purse.
Then she put her arm around my shoulder and led me to the door. The amber light fell through the bubble glass against our cheeks. She hugged me lightly. I smelled Ma Griffe, it was warmer on her. 'Come again, anytime. I don't know many women. I'd like to know you.'
I left walking backwards so I wouldn't miss a moment of her. I hated the idea of going back to Marvel's, so I walked around the block, feeling Olivia's arms around me, my nose full of perfume and the smell of her skin, my head swirling with what I had seen and heard in the house so much like ours, and yet not at all. And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.
12
I LAY ON MY BED, wondering what I would be like when I was a woman. I'd never thought much about it before, my possible futures. I'd been too busy sucking fish juice, burying myself in the sand against the killing rays of desert sun. But now I was intrigued by this future Astrid that Olivia had seen in me. I saw myself sort of like Catherine Deneuve, pale and stoic, the way she was in Belle dejour. Or maybe Dietrich, Shanghai Express, all shimmer and smoke. Would I be fascinating, the star of my own magic theater? What would I do with a wad of hundred-dollar bills?
I imagined that money in my hand. My mind went blank. So far, my fantasies had centered completely on survival. Luxury had been beyond imagining, let alone beauty. I let my eyes rest on the striped curtains, until the stripes themselves formed a sculptural shape. Ray had seen it in me. With Olivia's help, I could own it, create it, use it. I could work in beauty as an artist worked in paint or language.
I would have three lovers, I decided. An older man, distinguished, with silver hair and a gray suit, who would take me traveling with him, for company on long first-class flights to Europe, and stuffy cocktail receptions for visiting dignitaries. I called him the Swedish ambassador. Yes, Mother, I would lie down for the father, gladly.
Then there was Xavier, my Mexican lover, Mother's Eduardo reconstituted, but more tender and passionate, less silly and spoiled. Xavier spread camellias on the bed, he swore he would marry me if he could, but he had been engaged since birth to a girl with a harelip. It was fine with me, I didn't want to live with his overbearing parents in Mexico City and bear his ten Catholic children. I had a room of my own in the hotel, and a maid who brought me Mexican chocolate for breakfast in bed.
The third man was Ray. I met him in secret in big-city hotels, he sat in the bar with his sad face, and I would come in in a white linen suit with black-tipped shoes, my hair back in a chignon, a scarf tied to my purse. 'I wasn't sure you'd come,' I said in a deep, slightly humorous voice, like Dietrich. 'But I came anyway.'
I heard Marvel calling to me, but she was in another country, too far away. She didn't mean me. She meant some other girl, some drab hopeless thing destined for the army or else beauty school. I lay with my legs wrapped around Ray in a room with tall windows, a bouquet of full-bloom red roses in a vase on the dresser.
'Astrid!'
Her voice was like a drill, penetrating, relentless. If I had a choice, I'd rather be a man's slave than a woman's. I pulled myself out of bed, stumbled into the living room where Marvel and her friends sat on the flowered couch, their heads pressed together over sodas tinted space-alien colors, hands in the snack mixture I'd made from a recipe on the cereal box.
'Here she is.' Debby raised her horsey face under her curly perm, eye shadow layered like strata in sedimentary rock. 'Ask her.'
'I'm telling you, the car,' Marvel said. 'You come back and you're still living in the same dump, still driving around the same old shitbox. What good does it do?'
Linda took a hit on her cigarette, fanning the smoke away with a pearl-nailed hand. A blond with blue eyes perpetually wide with surprise, she wore shiny eye shadow like the inside of shells. They all went to Birmingham High together, were bridesmaids at each other's weddings, and now sold Mary Kay.
It was the new Mary Kay brochure, illustrating the prizes they could win if they sold enough mascara wands and lip liners and face-firming masques, that they'd been arguing about. 'They used to have Cadillacs.' Linda sniffed.
Marvel finished her soda, smacked it down on the coffee table. 'Just once in my life, I'd like a goddamn new car. Is that too much to ask? Everybody's got a new car, the kids at the high school. The slut next door's got a goddamn Corvette.' She handed me her glass. 'Astrid, get me some more Tiki Punch.'
Debby handed me hers too. I took them back to the kitchen, and poured Tiki Punch from the big Shasta bottle, getting momentarily lost in its irradiated Venusian pinkness.
'Astrid,' Linda called, her feet tucked under herself on the flower-print couch. 'If you had a choice between two weeks in Paris France, all expenses paid, or a car —'
'Shitty Buick,' Debby interjected.
'What's wrong with a Buick?' Marvel said.
'—which would you take?' Linda picked something out of the corner of her eye with a long press-on
