The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [14]
“Oh, that looks great,” Leonarda said. “And besides, you need it.”
“Why?”
“You’re such a reptile. Feel,” she said, touching my hand. “Your hands are so cold.”
I wondered how she knew that my hands were cold. “Then what are you?” I asked.
She shrugged, looking cute. “A warm, furry creature.”
“Somehow I doubt that very much,” I said.
She laughed. She fumbled around again in her bag, pulled out some cheap apple-green block heels and put them on instead of her sneakers. “Okay, now makeup.”
I had a little makeup on, not much. “Here, let me do your eyes,” she said. She put makeup, more makeup than I’d ever imagined wearing, on my eyes. Then she took off her baseball hat and made herself up. Already, without the baseball hat, she looked transformed. With the makeup, she gave herself a kind of cat eyes, then put on cherry-red lipstick.
Along the street, there was a dark wash over everything, gleaming. As night fell, the streetlights, sensitized to the dark, went on one by one. Leonarda took my arm. We whisked around a corner covered with graffiti. The street was deserted, dark. I had read somewhere about the use of pharmaceuticals that make mice behave as nonchalantly as if they were taking a stroll, with the gravest dangers nearby. Now I thought of that. But I was already distracted.
The cars screeched by. They halted in a lurch at the light. Leonarda coughed, a deep lung-cough. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “Let’s go get a drink. But first we have to cross the railroad tracks.” Her voice was suddenly hoarse. “It’s dangerous there. Let’s take a cab.”
She stopped a cab. “Hey, you crossing the tracks? Can we come with you? We don’t want a cab. We just don’t want to be raped. Okay, great, thanks a lot.”
We got into the cab. The area around the railroad tracks was deserted and piled with gleaming garbage. Leonarda stared out the window. “It’s awful you’re seeing Buenos Aires this way. It’s because of the crisis, you know. But soon everything will get lovelier and lovelier.”
The cab stopped on the other side of the tracks. “Hey, thanks a lot,” Leonarda said, as we scrambled out.
We walked a few blocks. On a street corner up ahead were plastic tables and chairs set out as if it were a beach scene. A red strip of carpet led the way inside. The bar inside was dark, with storefront windows looking out. There was a large Plexiglas case above the stairwell.
“Ohhhhhhh!” a guy yelled when he saw Leonarda. He was holding his pink arms high in the air. Downstairs were small square mattresses, another little bar, with a tall bird of paradise stuck in a jar. The light was rosy. It smelled strongly of nardo, that nearly sickening flower smell. Leonarda and I ordered drinks and fell onto the mattresses. The pink guy brought us flowers.
“Are you married?” he asked.
Leonarda smiled. She looked at me. “I don’t know if she wants to marry me,” she said.
The pink guy went away.
“Were you ever married?” Leonarda asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m divorced.”
“Really?” She looked at me, getting up on all fours on the mattress. There was something breathless in her face, rapt, delighted.
I nodded. I felt drunk already, though I’d only taken a few sips of my drink. Maybe it was something else, I thought. I felt a glimpse of a new feeling, woozy, reckless.
“Oh, I want to get married too,” Leonarda said.
“You do?” I asked. It wasn’t the way I pictured her.
“Is it marvelous?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It had its marvelous moments.”
She laughed. “No, no,” she said, still breathlessly. “I wasn’t really thinking of marriage. I was only joking. I’ll never get married.” Her eyes were shining.
“Oh, well, I didn’t mean that,” I said. I lay back on the cushions. I felt careless in the nicest way. It was partly the drink, but mostly the presence of this woman who, I sensed, was really actually wild, while I myself was not. “Maybe you should try it. It’s a kind of adventure, like everything else.”
“Okay, maybe I will get married,” Leonarda said. “But if I