Read Online After Delores by Sarah Schulman - Free Book Online Page B

enough. Strangers’ bodies are left lying in doorways or in backs of lots. They are collected, half rotten, by the police and carried away in plastic bags. Then a report is filed under the title ‘Unidentified Hispanic Male 20–25, Assailant Unknown.’ And that is the end of it.”
    â€œWhat is the second thing?”
    â€œThe second thing,” she said, jumping up from her chair, “is that we’re going to build a houseboat in here and a gangplank. The lights will be so beautiful. White and hot at noon, the way the sun falls directly on your head and dulls the water. Then in the evening it will be midnight blue, cool and cold, the breeze coming in off the sea.”
    She looked right at me again, her eyes very full.
    â€œI am not a monster. I am just a woman in all her complexities. We must be able to accommodate a wide variety of simultaneous feelings within the confines of our feminine bodies.”
    I watched her skin, primarily, and the way her wrists moved. She had the manner of inner grace and intelligent beauty that women only begin to realize in their late thirties. Everything is texture and wise emotions. It was in her voice, her gestures, in every habit. A certain familiarity with obstacles. She glanced, not fleetingly from side to side, but up and down, to herself and then back to me. Her eyes were deep and tired with wrinkles from the sides like picture frames. Beatriz’s veins stood away from her neck and those thin wrists, so beautiful—there I could see every sorrow and useful labor. I got excited for the first time in a long time, realizing that this was in my future as well. Not just knowing her, but myself, becoming that beautiful. It had been too long since I had such hopeful imaginings.
    â€œIn this play, Charlotte is the abandoned friend, a woman who lies to herself. When you walked in, I was planning a scene in which every line is a lie.”
    â€œIs that the play you were rehearsing when I met you the first time?”
    â€œOh no. That was a silly exercise. Charlotte doesn’t play naïve things. She must always be very frightening.”
    â€œShe sure scares me,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to get on her bad side. She looks like she could smash a chair over your head, just like that. Like she could destroy you if it happened to occur to her or she had nothing else to do.”
    â€œNo, no, no,” Beatriz said, a bit too aggressively. “Anybody can destroy another person. Only, most people won’t admit it. A good actress admits these things for us. That’s why we love them so much.”
    Beatriz had the voice of a reformed smoker, bluesy with a cough in her laugh. She was skinny from way too much energy.
    â€œCharlotte and I have been together for a long, long time. We have adapted to each other’s failings. Charlotte has affairs and as long as she pays attention to me, I tolerate it. I do that because I love her and want to be together with her. What is more important to me than the category or theoretical concept of the relationship is that I love Charlotte the woman.”
    â€œTriangles are a big mess,” I said.
    â€œNo,” she answered curtly, as though I was misinformed. “Everything can work, but all the responsibility is on the new lover. A romance is always more exciting than a marriage, and a new lover has moments of more power than the old one because you are not so familiar with their bag of tricks. Unfortunately Marianne did not have the grace to adapt to the limitations of her role. The best newcomer is one with a great deal of respect. They have to respect me and they have to be considerate of me. Then we can all be generous and each one satisfied on some level.”
    She took a large bottle of seltzer out of a paper bag and poured it into two well-worn cups. Without the sweet shot of liquor that I was used to, it tasted sickly, like gas.
    â€œMy old girlfriend, Delores, she