Laura Furman - The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

“You permit this?” he hissed at Roberto.

“I encourage it! It redounds to my glory.”

Roberto began to mention affairs he was having. He sought out different companions, he claimed, so as to slake his urges without overtaxing his wife. Under the guise of divulgence, he would fish for advice. Describing some demand his mistress was making of him, he might slip in, expectantly: “Have you ever had to cope with that sort of thing?”

I’d laugh: “You need more Schumann!”

Rosario was wise to what was going on and saw no reason to protest. For her, the essence of the marriage was maternity. “I’m a scatterbrain,” she would say, “but this I take seriously”-indicating the zone of her womb.

Roberto and Rosario were accustomed to spending a week or two at the beach every summer. This year, one of Roberto's partners had fallen ill, saddling him with an extra load at the office. Also, Roberto had just embarked on a liaison with a young ballerina. If he could persuade Rosario to go on vacation without him, he would provide himself an open field while affording her a rest. Sending her off unprotected would, for him, have been out of the question. He had thought of the ideal escort: Miguel, who combined the most expedient features of a bodyguard and a dame de compagnie. At first, Miguel balked. It required a lot of wheedling on Roberto's part to bring him around. He didn’t have an easy job with Rosario, either.

I listened to her deliberate: “Naturally, Lilí would come with me. But can I trust Roberto to eat properly? And Miguel has been overworked. Wouldn’t he be happier unwinding with his handsome friends than chaperoning me?”

They went. While they were away, I attended a recital by Claudio Arrau. During the intermission I noticed Roberto, at the rail of one of the boxes, deep in conversation with a wiry, chignoned gamine. After the last encore, filing out of the auditorium, we ran into each other. He hesitated for a moment, then introduced his chum, the dancer.

“What a terrific evening!” he said a bit too loudly.

I concurred.

“That Carnavalw as a real treat,” he rattled on. “Such a charming piece, isn’t it?”

At his next lesson he asked: “Why did you look at me that way when I said I liked his Carnaval ?”

“You called it charming.”

“Well, sure. Papillons and all that. You can’t deny it's pretty stuff.” “A cadaver comes up to you and wants to dance-you consider that charming?”

“What are you talking about?” “Listen to Carnaval .”

When Miguel returned from the vacation, his playing grew soberer, solider, focused. Some chronic misgiving seemed to have been resolved, some inner reorganization effected: the same chord, voiced more cogently. Yet he was also feverish, brooding; one day a confession, long pent up, gushed out of him:

“We took the train down to the coast. The motion of the carriage kept jogging our arms against each other-hers cool, mine hot. I was in a sweat. The craving in me! What I’d felt for the others was-froth. All that time longing for Rosario, courting her from behind my mask-and now to have this chance. It gave me qualms. And there was Lilí, curled up across our thighs, sucking her thumb.

“The train arrived late. The hotel clerk informed us that we’d forfeited our reservations: the only thing he had available was a room with a double bed and a cot for the little girl. Rosario winked at me: ‘I don’t think it would kill either of us to sleep together.’ Was it that I couldn’t bring myself to abuse her naïveté? Or pure cowardice? I slipped the clerk a thin wad. Adjacent rooms materialized. Rosario and Lilí, at least, got a good night's sleep.

“The next morning, early, I heard them stirring. I washed up and joined them for breakfast on Rosario's terrace. As soon as we’d finished, we grabbed our bathing gear and made for the beach. I hired a cabaña. While Rosario and Lilí changed, I scanned the panorama. The sand, the air, the sea-all sparkling. I felt sparkling myself. The cabaña's door opened, and Lilí flittered out. Then Rosario stepped onto the deck. She tossed her mane, loosening it to the breeze. I couldn’t swallow. I could hardly breathe. It hadn’t occurred to me to prepare for this sight-not that I could have. The swimsuit was a sleek one-piece, modest compared to the bikinis that many other women were sporting-but what it concealed, it revealed more than nudity itself, including the precise, sand-dollar forms of the nipples. It was her utter lack of self-consciousness, as much as anything, that undid me. I scuttled into the dressing room.

“When I emerged, Rosario was sitting on the sand, watching Lilí romp with some children in a tidal pool. I sank down beside her. She stretched her limbs and let out a groan of relaxation, as if only at that moment had she shed her burdens. ‘Would you rub some lotion on my back?’ she asked, not taking her attention off her daughter. The swimsuit was cut low in the rear, almost to the sacrum. The flesh was smooth as meerschaum, except for a tiny heart-shaped mole near the fifteenth vertebra (I counted them in an effort to calm myself). My hand was on fire. A crushing ache had me in torment. I tried to relieve this through speech, telling Rosario how voluptuous I found her. The liberties I allowed myself only inflamed me more. Of course, I was also testing the waters. ‘Oh, Miguel,’ she said, ‘you and your flattery!’

“Don’t do anything rash , I cautioned myself. Bide your time. Didn’t the sheer freedom to luxuriate in Rosario's presence amount to progress?

“We had lunch on the patio. Lilí was transfixed by the fan-pleated napkins, the staff's uniforms, the Noah's ark of new faces. A waiter brought her a cushion to perch on and helped her choose from the menu. He was lame. After he left, she said to us, quite stricken: ‘That poor man, he's like Esmeralda’-her doll, who had lost a foot. She laid out the seashells she’d collected, and aligned them by order of preciousness. When the waiter presented the check, she shyly pushed her three prize specimens in his direction.

“While Lilí had her nap, Rosario and I sat on the terrace. The canvas awning cast a shadow that stopped on her thighs just at the line where her skirts usually fall. The sun floodlit those legs of hers. I kept glancing at them, insatiable. She appeared to be drowsing. It sounds absurd, but I would swear her knees caught me spying. More than once I’ve been unnerved by the way that her gaze-which I live for-suddenly retracts. Well, now she locked her legs-rigid, canted off to one side-and her entire body seemed to retract. I actually shivered. Then they did something negligible, and momentous-to this day, I have the impression it was the legs alone, independent, that did it. They opened far enough for a fist to slide in between them, and the farther one slowly rose about an inch, as if to gauge my reaction. The movement was so-brazen.

“Somebody began to whisper with furious intensity, telling Rosario all my secrets. Only as the torrent subsided did I realize who was talking. Rosario jumped to her feet. Had I outraged her? Was she storming off to phone Roberto? A hoarse cry-‘Mommy!’-came from the room. Rosario must have picked up an earlier cry that I, in my agitation, had missed. For a second, she stared at me.”

The doorbell rang. Miguel, stranded on the sunstruck terrace, blinked.

“My next student.”

“Ah.”

“Roberto.”

I went and let him in. Seeing Miguel, he smiled.

“Did you mention my idea?” Roberto asked him.

“No… I wanted you to.”

“Miguel and I both need to work on mechanics, right? Why not coach each other, to accelerate the process? One week, say, Miguel practices leaps: I zero in on the problems. The next week he does the same for me. That way, we’ll get to the four-hand repertoire before we grow long beards! Maybe once a month, we could have a joint session with you, to make sure we’re not leading each other astray.”