The scaffolding was waiting to lift them to the different floors, adjusting to the surface at each level as the building became narrower, like a pyramid, at the top. As if in a Teotihuacán made of glass, the workers began to rise to the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth floor to clean the glass and descend, in ranks of ten, armed with manual cleaning devices and tanks of a special glass cleanser on their backs, like the oxygen tanks worn by underwater explorers. Lisandro ascended to the crystal sky but he felt submerged, descending to a strange sea of glass in an unknown, upside-down world.
“Is that stuff safe?” Leonardo Barroso asked.
“Very safe. It’s biodegradable. Once it’s used, it decomposes into innocuous elements,” his Yankee partners answered.
“It sure better. I put a clause in the contract making you responsible for work-related illnesses. You could die of cancer here just by breathing.”
“Come on, Don Leonardo,” laughed the Yankees. “You’re tougher than we are.”
“Welcome a tough Mexican,” concluded the businessman.
“You’re one tough hombre!” cheered the gringos.
3
She walked with a feeling of thankfulness from her apartment on East 67th Street to the building on Park Avenue. She had spent Friday night in seclusion, giving orders to the doorman to let no one up, especially not her ex-husband, whose insistent voice she listened to all night on the answering machine as it begged to see her. Listen, sweetheart, let me talk to you, we were very hasty, we should have thought things through more, waited until our wounds healed. You know I don’t want to hurt you, but life sometimes gets complicated, and I always knew, even in the worst moments, that I had you, I could come back to you, you would understand, you would forgive me, because if the situation had been the other way around, I would have forgiven …
“No!” the desperate woman shouted at the telephone, at the voice of her ex-husband, invisible to her. “No! You would have gotten even as cruelly as you could. In your usual selfish way, you’d have enslaved me with your forgiveness.”
She spent a fearful night pacing back and forth in the small apartment, nicely appointed, even lavish in many details—pacing back and forth between the picture window, whose wool drapes she’d opened to give herself over completely to the sumptuous snow scene, while the distorting eye of the Cyclops at the door protects people from eternal observation, the city’s perpetual threat. The crystal hole in the door that allows the hall to be seen, allows one to see without being seen but to see a distorted, submarine world, as if through the blind eye of a tired shark that can’t allow itself the luxury of rest lest it drown, sink to the bottom of the sea. Sharks have to keep moving eternally to survive.
She felt no fear the following morning. The storm was over and the city had been dusted with white powder, as if for a party. It was three weeks before Christmas and the whole town was decked out, covered with lights, shining like a huge mirror. Her husband never rose before nine. It was seven when she left to walk to the office. She was thankful that the weekend would give her a chance to lock herself away and get something done, catch up with her paperwork, dictate instructions without telephone calls, faxes, the jokes of her office mates, the whole New York office ritual, the obligation to be simultaneously indifferent and witty, to have a wisecrack or joke at the ready, to know how to end conversations and phone calls brusquely, to never touch anyone—especially that, to never touch one another physically, never a hug, not even a social kiss on the cheek, bodies at a distance, eyes avoiding eyes … Good. Her husband would not find her here. He had no idea … He’d go insane calling her, trying to worm his way into her apartment.
That morning, she was a woman who felt free. She’d resisted the outside world. Her husband, too, was now outside her life, expelled from her physical and emotional interior space. She resisted the crowds that absorbed her every morning as she walked to work, making her feel she was part of a herd, individually insignificant, stripped of importance: weren’t the hundreds of people walking down Park from 67th to 66th Street at any moment of the morning doing something as important—or unimportant—as what she was doing, or perhaps even more important or less important.
There were no happy faces.
There were no faces proud of what they were doing.
There were no faces satisfied with their jobs.
Because the faces were also working, squinting, gesticulating, rolling their eyes, feigning horror, expressing real shock, skepticism, false attentiveness, mockery, irony, authority. Rarely, she told herself, as she walked rapidly, enjoying the solitude of the snow-covered city, rarely did she show them or they her a true spontaneous face, without the panoply of acquired gestures to please, convince, intimidate, impose respect, share intrigues.
Alone, inviolable, self-possessed, in control of her whole body and soul, inside and out. The cold morning, the solitude, a sure step, elegant, her own person—she was given all that on the walk from her apartment to her office.
The building was full of workers. She’d forgotten. She laughed at herself. The day she’d chosen to be alone in the office was the day they were going to clean the interior glass. They had given advanced warning. She’d forgotten. Smiling, she went to the top floor without looking at anyone, like a bird who confuses its cage for freedom. She walked through the corridor on the fortieth floor—glass walls, glass doors, they lived suspended in midair; even the floors were made of an opaque glass, the tyrant of an architect having forbidden carpeting in his crystal masterpiece.
She entered her office, located between the glass corridor and the interior atrium. It did not have a view of the street. The polluted air of the street did not circulate here; there was only air-conditioning. The building was sealed, isolated, the way she wanted to feel today. The door opened onto the corridor. But the entire glass wall faced the atrium, and at times she liked to feel that her gaze fell forty stories, transforming on the way into a snowflake, a feather, a butterfly.
Crystal above the corridor. Glass on both sides, so the two offices next to hers were also transparent, obliging her colleagues to be somewhat circumspect in their physical habits while nevertheless maintaining a certain degree of naturalness in their behavior. Taking off their shoes, putting their feet up on the desk—everyone was allowed to do that, but the men could scratch their armpits or between their legs, while the women couldn’t. But the women could look at themselves in the mirror and fix their makeup. The men—with some exceptions—couldn’t do that.
She looked straight ahead at the atrium and saw him.
4
Lisandro Chávez was alone on the plank they raised to the top floor. They’d asked everyone if they suffered from vertigo, and he’d recalled that he sometimes did—once on a Ferris wheel he’d had the urge to jump into the void—but he’d kept his mouth shut.
At first, busy arranging his mops and cleaning devices, but most of all concerned about making himself comfortable, he did not see her and did not look in. His objective was the glass. Everyone supposed there would be no one working in the building on Saturday.
She saw him first and took no notice of him. She saw him without seeing him. She saw him the way one sees or no longer sees the people fate assigns one when one rides an elevator, gets on a bus, or takes a seat at the movies. She smiled. Her job as an advertising executive obliged her to take planes to meet clients in a nation the size of the universe. She feared nothing so much as a talkative person seated next to her, the kind who tells you his miseries, his profession, how much money he makes—the kind who ends up, after three Bloody Marys, with his hand on your knee. She smiled again. She’d fallen asleep many times with a stranger next to her, both of them wrapped in their airplane blankets like virginal lovers.
When Lisandro’s and Audrey’s eyes met, she nodded a greeting the way one might, out of courtesy, say hello to a waiter, less effusively, say, than one might to a doorman. Lisandro had carefully cleaned the first window, that of Audrey’s office, and
as he removed the light film of dust and ash, she had begun appearing, distant and misty at first, then gradually closer, approaching without moving, thanks to the increasing clearness of the glass. It was like focusing a camera. It was like making her his.
The transparency of the glass restored her face. The light in the office illuminated the woman’s head from behind, giving her blond hair, which fell like a rope down her neck, the smoothness and movement of a wheat field. The light was concentrated on her nape and, as she pushed aside the soft white hair, it emphasized the blond waves of each strand rising from her back like a handful of seeds to find their earth, their thick, sensual fertility, in the mass of braided hair.
She was working with her head bent over her papers, indifferent to him, indifferent to the work of the others, servile, manual work so different from her own, from her efforts to come up with a nice catchy slogan for a Pepsi commercial. He was uncomfortable, afraid of distracting her with the movement of his arms over the glass. If she raised her head, would she do it angrily, annoyed at the intrusion of a worker?
What kind of expression would she have when she looked at him again?
Christ, she thought to herself. They warned me workers were coming. I hope this man isn’t spying on me. I feel spied on. I don’t like this. It’s distracting.
She raised her eyes and found Lisandro’s. She wanted to get mad but couldn’t. There was something in that face that amazed her. At first, she didn’t note the physical details. What seized her attention was something else. Something she never found in a man. She struggled to find a word—she who was a professional with words, slogans—for the attitude, the face of the worker washing the office windows.
It came to her suddenly. Courtesy. What there was in this man—in his attitude, his distance, his way of nodding his head, the strange mixture of sadness and joy in his eyes—was courtesy, an incredible absence of vulgarity.
This man, she said to herself, would never telephone me frantically at two in the morning, begging me to forgive him. He would restrain himself. He would respect my solitude, and I his.
What would this man do for you? she immediately asked herself.
He would invite me to dinner and then take me to my apartment. He wouldn’t let me go home alone in a taxi.
Fleetingly he glimpsed her large, deep chestnut eyes as she looked up, and he became upset, lowering his own. He went on with his work but immediately recalled that she had smiled. Had he imagined it or had it really happened? He dared to look at her. The woman smiled, very briefly, very courteously, before averting her eyes and going back to her work.
That glance was sufficient. He didn’t expect to find melancholy in the eyes of a gringa. He’d been told that Yankee women were strong, very sure of themselves, very professional, very punctual—not that Mexican women were weak, insecure, slapdash, and slow, no, not at all. The point was that a woman who came to work on Saturdays had to be anything but melancholy, perhaps tender, perhaps passionate. That Lisandro saw clearly in the woman’s expression. She had a sorrow, she had a yearning. She yearned for something. That’s what her expression told him: I want something I lack.
Audrey lowered her head farther than necessary in order to lose herself in her papers. This was ridiculous. Was she going to fall in love on the rebound, with the first man to come along, just to make the definitive break with her husband, to teach him a lesson? The worker was handsome, that was the bad part; he had that attitude of unusual, almost insulting gentlemanliness, totally inappropriate, as if he were taking unfair advantage of his inferiority. But he also had shining eyes in which moments of sadness and joy were projected with equal intensity, he had a smooth complexion, olive-toned and sensual, a short, pointy nose, trembling nostrils, black, curly young hair, a thick moustache. He was the complete opposite of her husband. He was—she smiled again—a mirage.
He returned her smile. He had strong white teeth. Lisandro thought he’d avoided all the jobs that would have humiliated him in the eyes of the people he knew when he was a boy with ambition. He’d taken work as a waiter in Focolare, and the situation had became painful when he’d had to serve a table of his old friends from high school. All of them had prospered except him. He embarrassed them, they embarrassed him. They didn’t know how to address him, what to say to him. Remember the goal you scored against the Simón Bolívar team? That was the nicest thing he heard, followed by an embarrassed silence.
He was no good as an office worker. He’d left high school after his third year and didn’t know shorthand or how to type. Being a taxi driver was even worse. He envied those of his fares who were richer and disdained those who were poorer, Mexico City and its tangled traffic drove him insane, infuriated him, made him shoot his mouth off, curse people out, be everything he didn’t want to be. Store clerk, gas station attendant—whatever there was, sure. Unfortunately, not even those jobs existed. Everyone was out of a job; even professional beggars were officially classified as “unemployed.” He was thankful for this job in the United States. He was thankful for the eyes of the woman who was now looking directly at him.
He didn’t know that she wasn’t simply looking at him. She was imagining him. She was one step ahead of him. She imagined him in all kinds of situations. She bit her pencil. What sports would he like? He looked very strong, very athletic. Movies, actors—did he like film, opera, some television program, what? Was he one of those people who tell how pictures end? Of course not. That you could see immediately. He smiled directly at her. She wondered if he was the kind of man who could put up with a woman like her, who couldn’t resist telling the man she was with how the picture turned out, how the murder mystery ended, everything but her personal story—no one knew how that would turn out.
Perhaps he guessed something of what was going on in her mind. He wished he could tell her frankly, I’m different. Don’t judge by appearances, I shouldn’t be doing this, I’m not this, I’m not what you imagine. But he couldn’t speak to the glass, he could only fall in love with the light of the windows, which most certainly could penetrate her, touch her; they shared the light.
He wanted badly to have her, touch her, even if only through the glass.
Distressed, she got up and left the office.
Had something offended her? Some gesture? Had some sign he’d made been inappropriate, had he gone too far because he didn’t know gringo manners? He was angry with himself for feeling so much fear, so much disappointment, so much insecurity. Perhaps she had gone away for good. What was her name? Was she wondering about his? What did they have in common?
She came back with her lipstick in her hand.
She held it there, open, pointing upward, and stared at Lisandro.
They spent several minutes looking at each other that way, in silence, separated by the crystal frontier.
Between the two of them an ironic community was being created, a community in isolation. They were recalling their own lives, imagining each other’s lives, the streets they walked, the caves where they took refuge, the jungle that their cities, New York and Mexico City, were—the dangers, the poverty, the menace of their towns, the muggers, the police, the beggars, the thieves, the horror of two big cities full of people like them, people too small to defend themselves from so many threats.
I’m not this man, he said to himself stupidly, not knowing that she wanted him to be himself, like this, as she had discovered him that morning when she woke up and said to herself, My God, whom have I been married to? How is it possible? Whom have I been living with? And then she found him and attributed to him everything that was the opposite of her husband—courtesy, melancholy, indifference when she told him how pictures ended.
He and she alone.
He and she, inviolable in their solitude.
Separated from the others, she and he face-to-face on an unusual Saturday morning, imagining each other.
What were their names? Both had the same idea. I can give this man the name I like best. And he: Some men
have to imagine the woman they love as a stranger; he was going to have to imagine a stranger as a lover.
It wasn’t necessary to say yes.
She wrote her name on the glass with her lipstick. She wrote it backward, as if in a mirror: YERDUA. It looked like an exotic name, the name of an Indian goddess.
He hesitated to write his, such a long name, so unusual in English. Blindly, without reflecting, stupidly perhaps, full of uncertainty—he doesn’t know even today why he did it—he wrote only his nationality: NACIXEM.
She made a gesture as if to ask for more, two hands held apart, open—something more?
No, he shook his head, nothing more.
From down below they began to shout to him, What’s taking you so long up there, aren’t you finished, don’t be so lazy, hurry up, it’s already nine o’clock, we have to get on to the next building.
Something more? asked the gesture, Audrey’s silent voice.
He placed his lips on the glass. She didn’t hesitate to do the same. Their lips united through the glass. Both closed their eyes. She didn’t open hers for several minutes. When she did, he was no longer there.
8
THE BET
To César Antonio Molina
Stone country. Stone language. Stone blood and memory. If you don’t escape from here, you’re going to turn to stone. Get out quick, cross the border, shake off that stone.
They arranged to meet him at the hotel at 9:00 a.m. in order to get to Cuernavaca and back the same day. Just three passengers. A tourist from the United States—you could tell a mile away—blond, pale, dressed in a Tehuana costume or something folkloric like that. A Mexican who kept holding her hand, a low-class boor, dark, with a big moustache and a purple shirt. And a woman he couldn’t place, white, a bit dried out, skinny, wearing low heels, a wide skirt, and a hand-knit wool sweater. Her hair was tied back, and if she hadn’t been so white, Leandro would have sworn she was a maid. But she spoke up for herself, loudly and aggressively and with a Spanish accent.