“You’ll visit,” Yesenia said, tugging at her arm and giving her a hug. “Look, nothing’s happening here for us. And you can expect more of the same. This is a window of opportunity, a limited time offer. Come with me, chamaca. None of us, Nataly, are going to be young artists forever.”
Later Nataly said to her mother, “Can you imagine? Basically she’s telling me I’m going nowhere. I don’t even know if I want to see her again.”
“Can I visit you in New York?” her mother said.
Eric kept asking her out, and Dr. Roeg had not been into the restaurant in what seemed like weeks and weeks. Probably on a luxury cruise with his wife and kids. Probably staying at the Ritz in Paris or London or river rafting the Amazon. Probably not thinking about me at all. At all, at all.
Her therapist said, “You realize you’re being neurotic.”
Nataly said, “Of course I realize I’m being neurotic! That’s why I’m here with you!”
The Thursday after Yesenia’s going away party, where Nataly had made the mistake of bringing home an overly-impressed-with-himself musician, Nataly stepped down from the bar with her tray of sidecars, seabreezes and Belvedere vodkas and almost missed a step. She recovered swiftly, held onto the tray tight and passed Dr. Roeg at Table 12. She smiled in his direction, but his eyes were closed, and he was rubbing his forehead.
She set the cocktails down in front of the four middle-aged businessmen. Nataly had figured out long ago how to identify an alcoholic: he checked out the size of his drink before he sized up her breasts. This party was evenly split.
She passed the doctor, smiled and said, “I’ll bring that vodka gimlet right out.” He nodded and said, “Make it a double.”
As she placed the order at the bar, Eric murmured in her ear, “I see your boyfriend’s back.”
Nataly smiled, hoping for enigmatic.
Eric said, “I figured out why some women don’t like nice, simple guys.”
Some women meaning me. Nice, simple guys meaning you.”
Eric nodded. “They don’t want nice, simple. They want exciting, complicated.”
“Imagine that.”
“Their loss,” he said, with no smile on his face.
Nataly thought Eric looked quite handsome at that moment, with his stubby pony tail and that wisp of wistfulness on his face. Was he really that interested?
“You know, Eric, if I had your inflated ego, there’d be a waiting list a mile long for my art work.”
He smiled. “You haven’t seen the best part of me inflated.”
“Thank you. You forget that I did. And I almost liked you there for a minute.” Nataly set the doctor’s drink on her tray and stepped down to the restaurant.
“Hello, stranger,” she said. “Ready to order?”
There he was, those perfectly broad shoulders, the clean manicured hands, the hair spiking upwards. But he didn’t look the same, not really. The creases across his forehead seemed deeper. His eyes appeared weary. And something else. He looked so piercingly at her that Nataly glanced down at the tablecloth.
He cocked his head and said, “Did you miss me?”
Nataly glanced back into those eyes and found herself unable to speak, the way he looked at her. What color were they? Gray. Green. The color of sex, colored by loss.
He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. I’m not in a hurry tonight. Let me think about it.”
Nataly nodded, walked away, a kind of furious activity going on deep in her rib cage—hidden, she hoped, from everyone else.
It turned into a busy and lucrative shift. Nataly didn’t have time to personally deliver his salmon caviar on blinis drenched with clarified butter and a dollop of crème fraiche. Or his dover sole. After the rush had subsided, she was able to make her way to his table to see if he wanted dessert.
“How about a decaf espresso?”
Nataly noticed that he nursed the espresso for half an hour. She set down his credit card and lingered as he tabulated and signed his receipt.
He reached inside his wallet, pulled out a business card and scribbled something down. “If you ever want to talk,” he said. “Just talk.”
Later that night Nataly again inspected the small, beige business card, cut on heavy stock.
Dr. Peter Roeg
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Pediatric Oncologist
His office number was listed, as well as a pager number. On the back he had written a third number and under it private. She set the business card on her night stand next to her phone.
That seemed like too much of an invitation so she slipped it in her night stand drawer. She pulled it out to investigate his handwriting. Eleven numbers and one word. She decided she couldn’t tell much. She decided not to think about that gold band on his hand, which actually told her everything.
Chapter 5
Jolene, that was the name of the waitress, Nataly recalled. Blonde, with thick eyelashes, heavy mascara and hot pink lipstick. It wasn’t just the way she touched him, but the way her father looked at Jolene. What did you do with that awful knowledge?
She certainly didn’t tell her mother.
Nataly went into her work room. She had been pleased with her model and was now making progress on her piece. Working on her loom, she got into a rhythm with the heddle and shuttle and fell to thinking of her father, always full of surprises. During the divorce, Nataly had pitied her father. It had been easy to do. The bluster of his well-tailored suits, the sheen of their fabric, never masked the doleful eyes he had when he spoke of Mercy. He was turning into a pathetic figure, and her mother remained beautiful. Once he had been gold, and her mother had been silver. Before Jolene. During the divorce he was a smoldering brown.
The divorce had proceeded without outward bitterness or acrimony. When Nataly talked to Celeste, Celeste was so cold, blaming their father for mismanagement, possibly malfeasance, practically accusing him of being a criminal! Then blaming their mother for being blind. When Nataly spoke to Sylvia, she, pregnant with Miriam at the time, was appalled that her mother had joined two dating services. All of the daughters had penciled the date the divorce was to be finalized into their agendas. Two against one, Nataly thought. Two for their mother, one for their father.
The surprise came on the day her parents’ divorce was finalized. That day Nataly had picked up a bottle of champagne and driven from Pasadena to their old home, now her mother’s alone, in Orange. She didn’t want her mother to be alone and depressed in that huge and empty house which had been remodeled while she lived there—five bedrooms, three baths, one inhabitant. She didn’t want her father to be alone either, but figured he was with one of those women of his. The glimpses she had caught told her they were of a type: white, lean, hungry. What a crock of shit marriage was if you could live together for thirty years and never know each other. Unless, of course, her mother did know her father and accepted him anyway. And what did that unpleasant information tell her about her mother?
She gnawed on this during the forty-five minute drive south on the 5, the ugliest highway in southern California. Past the dying factories, the industrial areas zoned for smog, noise and waste.
What did that tell her about her mother? Nataly was nauseated. It was a combination of the drive, the diesel fumes, the traffic and the thought that her mother was a willing participant in this marriage now dead. She put her hand on the bottle of champagne. It was warming up in the sunlight coming in the front window.