Eva unwrapped the cloth. It was full of dry leaves and black roots. They smelled smoky and sour. Mamá—slim fingers wrapped around a jar, gilded by kitchen sun. She wrapped them back up and stashed them between her mattress and the wall, and from the next room she heard a groan, then low-down grunting, must be an older man.
She didn’t need bundles like this, not anymore. She lived in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. She went to poetry readings where nobody, nobody, knew she was a waitress, a laborer’s daughter, a girl who once cowered in a stack of leather boots and lost her legs and drank strange teas to get them back. She could re-create herself, just like that radio actress—the one who shared her own name and had become the mistress of the man who was vice president and secretary of war. Eva Duarte. She’d cut her picture out of the newspaper. She kept it in a drawer beneath her bras. She studied the clipping as if it were a blueprint: the blond gloss of hair, the gems at her neck, the working girl smiling in triumph. She wore diamonds but still spoke out for the poor. Behind the wall, the older man climaxed and went quiet. Then began the shuffling with pants, belt, cash. Eva thought of the photo, the way its ink smeared her skin. She would arrange her own dark hair in a tall sweep. She would pluck and pencil her eyebrows. She would study herself in the mirror, and marvel at the art of making oneself anew.
There was quiet magic too, waking up in Andrés’ room. Not the first waking that hauled her out of bed—she did that alone. Andrés’ room held the next part, the slow road to alertness that uncoils over rounds of
mate
. They sat side by side on Andrés’ bed, his hair askew, his eyelids puffed from sleep. Weak light crawled through a dusty window. She poured water through a gentle silence.
“More, Andrés?”
“Of course.”
She passed him the gourd. “The
yerba
is so bitter here.”
“I like it.”
“Are you going to the reading at Libertad tonight?”
“I’ve got to work.”
“Oh.”
“You go, Eva. Don’t wait for me.”
Eva nodded. She would not go. The last time she’d attended a reading alone, a man with a handlebar mustache (a painter, he claimed) had cornered her in conversation.
I want to hear your poems
. She’d glistened for a moment.
I want to paint you nude
. For the first time, that night, she’d missed La Diablita. Even the thought of Pepe’s posturing stirred some warmth.
“Maybe next time.”
Andrés brought the
bombilla
to his lips. “Next time.”
The tip of the metal straw disappeared into his mouth. She wanted to follow it. She wanted his hands to wrap around her wrists and pin her to the wall, roam all over her and tear off layers of clothing, clasp each other as he begged her to come to bed, begged for her legs and everything above them and between them. She would see how much he needed her. And then she would unfold herself, open for him the way the sea opened for Moses, wide, vital, miraculous. They would be this to each other, sea and supplicant, sinner and salvation. They would be together after that, his wanting would be clear. Now it was still murky; he was polite, a gentleman. He respected her. She would need to be more bold. But not yet, she thought, week after week, as winter spread its wetness through the streets. Not until they found more solid ground.
One October afternoon, she asked, “Have you thought of writing home?”
Rain drummed against the window. Drops leaked from the ceiling into a bucket. “No,” Andrés said.
What happened to his face surprised her. It fell; something covering it fell; she glimpsed the raw darkness underneath. He looked down at his hands. Brown drops fell from the ceiling.
Eva thought of the letters in her drawer, full of Coco’s small invasions. “Your mother’s worried.”
Andrés turned away. Eva stared at the back of his head, the dark little waves that clung to their scalp, the cockroach weaving like a drunkard on the wall behind him. Don’t go, her mind railed at him.
When he turned toward her it was over, he was back, the subject of Coco gone as if she’d never raised it.
“Can you believe Perón was arrested?”
Eva dropped the subject too. Anything to keep the ease between them. Because she could not be alone in this vast city; because she could, in fact, believe that Perón was behind bars, that the unions he spoke out for were enraged, that Eva Duarte’s radio voice demanded that the people rise in protest (“Perón loves you, workers; how else could he love me?”); and because, when the masses marched and spread a vast human blanket through the boulevards, an electric crowd, rife with banners, chanting,
Freedom for the worker, freedom for Perón
, Eva shouted along from her window but didn’t dare descend, didn’t roam those streets, couldn’t be alone in a sea of strangers, needed Andrés to recall that she was safe, not-whore, in a city that held, in its mazes, a corner of home.
Perón was released. Spring descended on the city with its ample, humid arms. Customers swarmed Don Rufino’s linen tables, shaking off the winter chill, hungry for Chianti and hot
churrasco
. Eva worked further and further into the night, swigging gin in the back room to wash down Don Rufino. Every other waitress did it too. They laughed at his jokes, smiled when he groped them in the kitchen, country girls clawing their way into city life. She could handle him. She’d mastered the art of coasting by, quickly, agreeably, too hard a worker to slow down for his hands. Still. He’d started to seem impatient and she wasn’t sure how much longer she would last. And how much longer did she want to last? She wondered this, standing under a tower of dry goods, emptying a gin flask into her mouth. Four months into her Buenos Aires life and not a
poem published, not a word of love professed. What had she come here for? To scrape together rent and fight off another boss while the man she wanted did God knows what at a cabaret where women—not just any women but Buenos Aires women,
porteñas
, gorgeous, flashy—enjoyed his wit and face and body? While she, stupid girl that she was, waited for his move like she was some kind of white lily, like she thought she had a place in some bouquet. She barely even wrote anymore. She pulled the gin bottle from the shelf and refilled her flask. The cooks’ broad voices rose down the hall. One last swig, back to work, tonight she would stop waiting.
The moon had set by the time she arrived in San Telmo. The street lamps shone brightly. She wove past the prostitutes with their bare throats, the men lounging on fire escapes, the accordion player who bent his instrument with scarred hands. The stairs creaked as she climbed them. Light crept under Andrés’ door. When he opened it, she smelled the detritus of his night, faint perfume and cigarettes and sweat.
“Can I come in?”
“But of course. Have a seat on the chaise longue.” He gestured toward his rusty bed. He looked tired. “How was work tonight?”
“Long. You?”
“About the same.”
“Demanding customers, these
argentinos
make.”
“Indeed.”
“And demanding bosses.”
He nodded. He picked up two black shoes and began to polish them with a rag. His fingers moved deftly over their curves, and she was sure that they were warm.
“Have you found any nice
porteñas
out there?”
“They think they own the world. The rich ones. Others are nice.”
“No. What I mean is have you met anyone?”
“Me? No. Have you?”
“No.”
“Not found a
nice porteña
, then, but maybe a nice
porteño?
”
She laughed. Andrés flicked his rag along two heels.
“I know what you meant,
¡bandido!
But no, there’s no
argentino
catching
my eye.” She leaned forward. “Come on. You know it’s long been caught.”
“That so?”
“Yes. By a certain
uruguayo
.”
He kept his eyes on the shoes as he put them down and sat beside her on the bed. He searched her, dug through her, trying to exhume an answer to who knew what question, and she was closer now, on her way into his darkness, close enough to sense the wick of him, pure, charred, exquisite. She wrapped her hand around his. His face strained as though about to weep. She brought his fingers to her face, ran them along it, trailing heat and shoe polish on her skin.
“Eva,” he whispered. “You’re insanely beautiful.”
Their lips brushed, pressed, opened. His mouth was moist and musky, wetness pulsing slowly into hers. His hand plumbed her hair. Her hands were on his buttons, slid under his shirt, his skin was taut and hot and soft and she was greedy for it.
“Eva.”
“Andrés.”
“Wait.”
His fingers left her scalp. He pried her hands from him and held them like bruised birds. “I—” he said, and stopped. “Let’s not do anything we’ll regret.”
“I won’t regret this.”
He stared at their hands. “What’s done can’t be undone.”
“So what? I’ve already done it.” She realized how this sounded, and shame rushed into her. “With my heart, I mean.” Andrés didn’t move. She withdrew her hands. “You don’t want to?”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“Then why—”
“Come here.”
He pulled her into his arms, toward his heart, so that she felt it pump against her ear. She stiffened, wondering what he meant and what was happening, but then the pure embrace of him surrounded her, she wanted to resist but her body melted into him, traitorous body, hungry for this place, greedily surrendering to this place; and she saw her father’s
face; his hands, calloused and open, gathering her in, a little girl who’d just said yes to a shoe store; something rose against her will, broke through her throat, heaved her back and forth with a force she couldn’t stop or shape or keep from turning into sobs that grew more violent when she realized, to her horror, that she was leaving trails of snot on Andres’ chest.
“There, there,” Andrés said. “
Ya, ya
.”
She cried until she had no moisture left for tears. She leaned against his sweaty skin and gave herself to sleep.
She awoke in her own bed, to the sound of the couple downstairs yelling, fighting, throwing a lamp or chair or child against a wall. Pain pierced her head. She sat up groggily. Through the wall to her right, more sounds, a customer who groaned like a crow.
Mate
, she needed
mate
for this hangover. Perhaps Andrés would already have hot water; Andrés; last night rushed into her mind.
She rose. An envelope lay at the threshold of her door. She opened it, and found sixty pesos and a note.
Querida
Eva
,
You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. Here is a little money to help you along the way. I’m sorry this is so sudden. For any pain I’ve ever caused you, I am sorry
.
Be good to yourself
, chiquilina.
Yours
,
Andrés
The words knocked and knocked at her mind’s obdurate door. She ran from her room into Andrés’, stood there, an empty woman in an empty room, nothing there, tear the sheets off the bed, nothing there, yank the drawer open, nothing, yank another drawer, find it empty, slam it shut so hard that the whole dresser bangs back against the wall. The sound startled her. She stared at the dresser, from its chipped top to its stubby legs. A copper-colored vial peered out from underneath. Lipstick.
She picked it up. She knew that men had women—her father did, and so, for that matter, did Andrés’ father—but even so, to be lied to. To be left. She opened the lipstick. It was bloodred. She dropped it on the floor and watched it clatter and roll away. It was cold inside her, brittle and cold, brittle enough to break.
Everything could roll away: warm
mate
on wet mornings; forgotten lipstick; her only friend; the girl who thought herself a lily; the fragile tether that keeps a person in this world.
Sola
. Alone.
She sank down to the floor.
She’d just sink, sink, roll away, far from the sting of cold and this city pushing at her from all sides. Sinking is easy when you have, when you are, nothing. Deeper, deep down to that dark leather cave, where damp walls hold you, where all things can be swallowed. It was still there. She knew exactly what to do. Just curl up curl up curl against the sole, watch the faces form around her, glowing with slow fever: her father first, rearing up, blood vessels strained as if shouting, though no sound came from his mouth; then Pietro, leering over her too, leering laughing fusing with her father’s face and floating apart again, floating fusing leering floating on.
Time’s cord stretched beyond recognition.
Pietro, Papá, Pietro, they turned into each other, they turned into Andrés, who pressed her into the heel of her shoe-cave with knuckles the size of her head, bearing down, over and over. Beatriz laughed, far away, she was laughing in the warmth of La Diablita; Eva heard the poets’ voices in a great big rope of sound, arguing, crooning, roaring with laughter, roaring without her, roaring without end, until, slowly, their roars turned into terror as Nazi bombs rained on them, their voices blearing into a riot of laughs and shrieks, dig deep dig deep into the toe of this place because the sounds were a violent river that could tear her up and carry her away in pieces.
A voice cut the darkness.
“Señorita. Did you hear me? This is not your room.”
She sat up. Night had fallen long ago. She squinted to adjust her eyes and saw her landlady, a distortion of powdered wrinkles and eagle eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Two roaches tickled their way across her arms.
“Really? Well, some of us have work to do. Get out of this room before I throw you out of your own.”
Eva pulled herself up from the floor. She stumbled to her room. Her head throbbed. She looked at her clock: it was almost midnight. She was four hours late for work. She changed her blouse as fast as she could, and ran out.
Don Rufino greeted her with a puff of cigar smoke.
“If it isn’t Princess Eva.”
“Señor, I’m so sorry—”
“Sorry? For leaving me shorthanded on our busiest night?”
“I had an emergency. It won’t happen again.”
“It certainly won’t. You’re fired.” Don Rufino leaned closer. His glass eye scanned the floor. Its pupil was red, because he was half devil, he liked to say. His thick stomach pushed into hers. “Of course, there’s one way for you to make amends.”
Eva held her breath to keep his smell at bay. “
¿Sí?
”
“I tell you what. Come back tomorrow afternoon. Meet me in the storeroom.” He touched her the way a shopper tests the wares he’s haggling over. “We’ll see what we can arrange.”
Back at home, Eva sat down on her bed. The rooms to both sides of hers were quiet. She didn’t want to think, didn’t want to let tomorrow into her mind. She lay down and let sleep crush in.
When she woke up, it was morning. She tried to sit up but could only prop her torso on her elbows. She poked her thigh. Nothing. Her legs had frozen. She could not feel them: they were empty, uninhabited, unreachable. There would be no storeroom today, no red glass eye, no white-linen tables or cash in her hand. She would not rise. The heave of the world could stay where it was, hanging just above her bed, waiting for her to lift up and yoke into it. She would not rise. She was paralyzed, she could not move, it had already been decided. It was easy: she would let it be easy, she would just close down, take-me-deep-inside-you-deep-black-boot-closing-down, shutting out the noise of Buenos Aires, the chain of failures, the vacant room next door, the red glass eye; lying numb like this, she could just wait, she would simply wait to die.
Time swung, shape-shifted, crept and raced and crept again.