David Unger - The Mastermind

To his surprise, Maryam is not there. He takes a four-top corner table and waits. The waiter comes up, asks how many people are eating. Guillermo raises two fingers into the air. Then he asks what kind of Scotch they have, and when he learns they only have the scandalously bad Vat 69, he orders a double highball. He downs his drink quickly, sucking on the ice cubes and then munching on the stale cashews and peanuts served on a chipped little plate.

The minutes crawl by like snails. The waiter who served him the drink comes by again and puts a dish of dried sausage on the table, and two salad bowls holding the obligatory iceberg lettuce chunks with spicy tomato dressing on top. Guillermo orders a second drink and texts Maryam a curt message: What’s up?

It is only one fifteen p.m., but Guillermo is about to fester. He texts a second message, ??!!??!! less than five minutes later, but again receives no reply. The Scotch arrives and he takes it down gulp by gulp. He is thinking that as soon as Maryam shows up, he will have to give her a good dressing down and explain to her the rules of the game.

Guillermo asks the waiter if anyone has called the restaurant and left a message for him. The man simply raises his eyebrows as if he has just been spoken to in Tagalog or Mandarin. He does not seem to want to understand.

Guillermo is fulminating internally. He considers his options: order a third drink and get truly soused, or simply leave.

He looks around the restaurant with its framed posters of bullfighters, the erstwhile Picasso drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on horseback, Goya’s La maja desnuda , Velázquez’s Las Meninas , and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, which after two drinks is possibly the worst painting he has ever seen in his life. He shakes his head at the half dozen winebotas with their absurd red rings and shrunken black penis spouts dangling from the walls. Dirty chandeliers with low-watt bulbs hang above each and every table — he is sure they were purchased from his father’s store fifty years earlier.

What the hell is he doing here waiting like a stupid old secretary for her boss? What is he waiting for?

He decides to call Sofia Muñoz. He leaves her a message on her cell phone to meet him at the Stofella at precisely six p.m. This is the first time he has ever left her a voice message. It is a risk since she is married to an insurance agent who might know how to retrieve her messages. Guillermo doesn’t care. He does not want the day to go totally to waste. And he will have to leave the Stofella at exactly seven thirty p.m. because he is meeting his children across the street at Tre Fratelli for dinner and then going to the nearby Oakland Mall to see the ten o’clock showing of Kung Fu Panda .

He puts a five hundred quetzales on the napkin dispenser and walks in a straight but lumbering line toward the front door. From the corner of his eyes he sees his waiter begin to approach him, then angle over to the table, probably to examine the bills.

As he starts to push on the door, someone pulls it open. It is Maryam.

“What the fuck,” he says as he crashes into her.

She keeps him from falling, but he is annoyed for having lost his balance. Before he can express further displeasure, however, she kisses him on the lips and whispers in his ear, “I’m sorry. I was running late. The rain, the traffic, my car stalled, I forgot my cell phone, please don’t be angry—”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says huffily, pulling away from her. Her lips taste of mango chapstick. His head is spinning.

“Yes, I know.” She tries to grab his hand, but he impulsively pulls back. “I’m not really that hungry,” she says to him. “Can we go somewhere else?”

She is wearing gray woolen leggings and a matching gray sweater top. A maroon skirt, more for show than comfort, hugs her hips. A knit scarf is tightly wound around her neck. She’s holding an umbrella and sporting yellow Hunter rain boots.

“Sure,” Guillermo says. She hooks her arm into his and they leave the restaurant. It is still raining, so he borrows her umbrella and goes to get his car — she’ll leave her Mercedes in the lot — while she waits for him under the overhang.

As they drive away, he notices the car beside his put on its lights. It is the blue Hyundai.

* * *

At the Stofella Guillermo gets his key at the reception desk while Maryam waits by the elevator. As soon as they walk into room 314, she takes off her clothes and throws herself stark naked on the bed. She closes her eyes, letting out a childish little giggle. Her ample breasts flop to the sides of her chest.

“I’m waiting for you,” she says.

Her undressing has happened so fast that Guillermo doesn’t know if he is pleased or upset. This is not how he had planned things would play out. Instead, he struggles to take off his shoes (still stained with mud), his brown suit, his brown tie, his cuff-linked white shirt, his T-shirt — like a college sophomore.

Because Maryam is ten years younger and is married to a much older Lebanese Arab, Guillermo has imagined that Samir is the only man she has ever slept with. He assumes that though she has sensuous qualities, she will be shy in bed and terribly inexperienced. But already she has outflanked him.

He has imagined a more traditional encounter: some goofy and awkward talk, slap-dash touching, then a couple of deep kisses, a hand into her blouse or a detour under her skirt, Maryam’s feigned reticence — the lady doth protest too much — tearing off her clothes, exhorting her to relax, to enjoy the explorations. . he would be the aggressor, but in time she would surrender to his entreaties.

Instead, Maryam watches him, amused as he struggles to take off his clothes. When he is nearly naked, she sits up on the bed on one elbow and looks at him mockingly. “Are you going to make love to me wearing your black socks?” And then she laughs.

Guillermo glances down at himself, black socks up to the ridges of his knees and his penis ascending through his baggy white jockeys toward his belly button. He feels ridiculous. If he could watch himself from a distance, he too would laugh, but he finds it impossible to see humor in his own absurd maneuverings. He is even ashamed of his penis flagpoling through his shorts.

“Off with them, off with them,” she commands, swinging a forefinger in the air as if signaling decapitation.

Guillermo sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his socks. His head continues spinning because of the Scotch, and he wonders if Maryam’s friskiness is also the result of drinking.

He turns to her and starts kissing her deeply, as deeply as he can go. He is grateful that he can still taste the mango flavor of Maryam’s lips. She does not resist, begins exploring his mouth with her tongue. They are both enjoying the rise in passion. He pulls his underwear down to his ankles and perches over her. Sitting on her thighs he begins rubbing her nipples softly. She arches her back and purrs with pleasure. He flattens his body against hers and tries to place his penis into her, two or three times, but each time she closes her legs.

“Is anything wrong?” he asks, feeling totally lost, adolescent, and out of his element. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t put on a rubber. He is nagged by the memory of catching herpes from Chichi and so he typically protects himself when screwing women for the first time. Once his trysts evolve he insists that his girls be checked for AIDS almost monthly and take the morning-after pill as soon as they are done making love. He does not let them go until they have taken a pill, or otherwise proved to him that they will not become pregnant. He doesn’t need any illegitimate children.