Red: A Love Story Read online

  And, at those words, color ripped through his voice. It was red. Crimson, scarlet, coral, rosy, almost white… and then the cut sealed up again. In silence, Marco stared at the window pane where rain teardrops spattered.

  Marisa entwined her fingers in his. The stones on the ring sparkled.

  “You know it’s a lost battle, Marco. We can’t change the past, only accept it and learn from our mistakes. Then everything is worth it. All experiences, good and bad, shape us into what we are today. You try to suppress your hurt, but it’s no use keeping it in a drawer under lock and key. You need to open that drawer, forgive Lorena and yourself.”

  “I’ve tried, believe me. I tell myself I’m gonna erase it all and pretend none of that happened. But it’s hard.”

  “Forgiveness isn’t a magic pill that you take and instantly changes everything. It’s a process. You can forgive gradually and in your own terms. But you have to forgive. Otherwise resentment will grow deeper roots.” Marisa caught herself half-smiling as she thought of Sérgio. “When I say that to you, I’m actually saying it to myself too, because sometimes I don’t listen to my own advice. But forgiveness is the only key that unchains us from the past and unlocks the door to the future. Wasn’t it Lao-Tzu who taught that if you feed your resentment and seek revenge, you better dig two graves?”

  “I believe it was Confucius.” Marco smiled, and his gaze softened. “I know, my love. I’m learning. You’re teaching me. Please, I don’t want you to fill your head with nonsense. You’re the one I want, not Lorena, not another woman, do you understand? Sometimes I feel…” He stared at Marisa for a long moment and picked up the menu, changing his tone: “Shall we order our food?”

  Marisa respected his reticence. They checked the menu and, as had already happened on several occasions, the two ended up choosing the same dish, this time salmon in a ginger and lemon sauce. Then, as a habit, they shared dessert, a chocolate mousse with Grand Marnier and orange zest. By the end of the meal, both were relaxed and content.

  As they exited the hotel, they faced traffic. An impatient Marco consulted the clock on the car panel and took a backstreet. He now zigzagged across town to avoid busy streets. It was a computer game: the car, a silver rectangle in a glistering grid of asphalt, gliding, halting, bypassing, threading. Marco entered another backstreet and accelerated. Marisa asked why the rush. Concentrated on the wheel, he didn’t look at her. But he smiled.

  “Shhh. I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.”

  17. Behind the Peephole

  Marco threaded his way from the hotel to Downtown, dropped the car in a parking garage and, taking Marisa by the hand, dashed along the sidewalks still damp with rain. The two followed an avenue. At the end of it, converging to an overpass above the valley, they reached the illuminated frontispiece of the Municipal Theater. Renaissance statues perched like angels on the façade that stood out against the backdrop of skyscrapers and a starless sky. The lobby sparkled with art nouveau and baroque minutia in a profusion of marble, bronze, mirrors and stained glass.

  “Here we are, right on time,” Marco announced. “I thought the opera would be something different for celebrating your graduation.” And since Marisa was getting all excited: “But hold on, you may not even like it that much—”

  She silenced him with a kiss.

  They took a box seat near the stage. Above them, the ornate dome supported a massive chandelier, poised like a sun with the radiance of thousands of crystal pendants. It slowly dimmed out until the rows of red velvet seats submerged in shadows. The stage came to life, revealing a 19th-century Japanese residence sided by a cherry tree. Madame Butterfly’s tragedy began.

  Cio-Cio San is a fifteen-year-old geisha who falls in love with Benjamin Pinkerton, a US Navy officer visiting the country. He weds her in a marriage of convenience and soon departs to the United States, promising to return. Pinkerton then marries an American woman, unaware that Cio-Cio is pregnant. She waits for him for three long years. Pinkerton eventually comes back with his new wife for his son. Desperate, Cio-Cio bids farewell to the child and commits hara-kiri.

  At the theater exit, as they walked to the parking garage, Marisa remained quiet, shaken by the presentation. At the time of the story, not few American naval officers visited Japan and married Japanese women, abandoning them upon their return to the United States. According to the records, Madame Butterfly was real.

  The sidewalks had dried up, streets filled with people and laughter punctuated conversations in bars. With the thermometer registering eighty-eight degrees, the air was like a viscous mantle that smelled of concrete, beer, sweat and perfume. Marisa contemplated the half moon with a halo of frayed clouds—a ghost enveloped in tatters. With sudden uneasiness, she squeezed Marco’s hand.

  As usual, he stopped the car on the corner of her street. Marisa crammed the wig into her purse and picked up a bunch of textbooks that had been left on the back seat at their last tryst. In the morning she had a practice exam and, as always, still needed to finish her notes before going to bed. With her hand on the door, she paused and stared at Marco. In an impulse, she dropped the books, kissing him somewhere between his chin and mouth.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he asked in flattered surprise.

  “Thank you, Marco. For everything.”

  The two did not want to part. Their hands said it when they entwined. Marco touched Marisa’s face. She brushed her cheek against his. Their hands met once more, fingers mingling, imprinting caresses on the palm and back, mingling again—waking up the body. Heat, shiver, hot, cold. All the things imagined. Their bodies couldn’t be united in that moment. Their hands could, and that’s what they were saying.

  See how I caress your flesh on the mount of Venus, here below the thumb? It’s just that I’d like to do the same to all of you. See how the tip of my index trails your fingers one by one, going up and down like this? That reminds me of the curves of your body, which I would so much like to kiss now, like dew on the petal of your skin… picking with my mouth the bud on your breast and the blossomed flower on the plane down below, until you quiver inside your dress…

  And me, I feel my body pulsating at your touch, I brush my palm on yours in circles, this is what I would like to do, brush my belly against yours while I feel you in me, as a part of me, giving me so much pleasure like only you can give… I scratch your palm to give you a shiver. Afterward I stroke your hand with the back of mine, and it’s as if we were lying together, skin with skin, arms and legs entangled, and me touching your face…

  A world at the fingertips, in the palm of the hand.

  “See you tomorrow night, then?” she finally asked with a sigh.

  “That’s right.”

  “Dinner and a movie?”

  “Dinner and a movie. Then the flat,” he added in a suggestive tone.

  “How about we stop by before dinner?” Marisa caressed his nape and nibbled on his earlobe. “Just to check if your orchids are all right.”

  “Do you reckon they’ll need watering?”

  “Lots of watering. Before dinner. And afterwards.”

  “We have to look after the orchids, don’t we?”

  “Yeah. That Selenependium alone requires some care.”

  “Selenipedium,” he corrected, wrapping a lock of her hair around his finger. “Ah, we need to do something about your Latin, Marisa. Such a shame. A promising student like you. Tomorrow we’ll revise a couple of terms that I find particularly enjoyable. While we water the orchids.”

  “I’d love a private lesson, Professor Fares. Your diction is perfect. You’re so intelligent, so cultured, so strong. You know so many things.”

  “Hmm. I like that. What else, Miss Constant?”

  “Well…”

  Marco didn’t wait for the answer. He demanded Marisa’s mouth, one hand rolling from her hair to her shoulder and following a slow path down
her arm. It lodged briefly on the waist before ascending to skirt her breast. And there it remained, splayed, as it kindled the flesh in a circular motion. With an impatient gesture Marisa pulled his hand. It closed around the crown of her breast and then opened to envelop all of it.

  She moved her thigh against his pelvis, against the beginning of the erection, as she girdled Marco and pulled him closer. He reclined the seat and covered her with his body.

  “I’ve wanted to do this since you arrived at the restaurant,” Marco whispered, brushing his lips across her shoulder.

  “Me too. If it weren’t for the physics practice exam…”

  “Tomorrow I’ll book a room in that hotel. How about we celebrate again?”

  Her acquiescence was implicit in the way Marisa fondled his body against hers, inhaling the new cologne and closing her eyes for an instant to detect his scent. She proceeded to investigate underneath his shirt, felt the smooth flanks and then the abdomen down and the soft hairs on the chest. With a sigh, she slid her hands to the back pockets of his pants, far from being satisfied. She desired more. To sip everything hiding beneath those clothes while his mouth travelled over her body. The two of them turning and turning, until her head was between his legs and his head was between hers. And then, at some point, the two would turn again and become one.

  Just the thought of it… Ah. Damn practice exam.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Marco said in her ear, his warm breath awakening a shiver in Marisa. He stamped a moist kiss on her neck, eliciting a languid hum from her.

  “You do?”

  “I can give you a hand.”

  Marco leaned back and, hooking his index in her dress neckline, tugged it downward to her midsection. He kept it like that and, with his free hand, ran his fingers on the exposed groove between her breasts. Marco moved north and south, and now he strummed her skin with his fingertips. Very lightly, taking off and touching down, taking off again and touching down on another spot. He sent tiny shocks at each passage, and her flesh tingled in anticipation, uncertain as to where that energy would drip like a thick and hot liquid. Honey melting on his fingertips. Honey strewed across her belly, thighs and loins. Honey on the fingertips harvesting her honey.

  She arched back, half-closing her eyes. Her head tossed from side to side, until her upper body stiffened when his hand quickened the motion simultaneously within and without. A jarred moan. Marisa hovered on the verge of climax. She plunged into a whirl, floating adrift on her senses, expanding in vibration. Climax rippled through her. And rippled and rippled.

  Marco teased Marisa with a raw lunge of his hips as he sought her mouth and filled it—the way he wanted to fill her body—in a hypnotic swell that ebbed and flowed, stroking lightly, slithering, deepening. They danced in place, his solid build in contrast with her softness, together to the right and left, slowly slipping in opposite directions to intensify the contact. Then Marco smoothed out Marisa’s dress and returned to his seat. He licked his fingers, smiling.

  “We better stop,” he said in a husky voice. “Or I’ll have you naked right here.”

  “Marco, you’re mean,” she murmured, readjusting the seat. She still felt his presence on her body. She wanted all of it. To take it with her mouth, hands, core. To make him float too.

  His smile became sinful. His obsidian gaze.

  “Tomorrow night I’ll show you how mean I can be.”

  Deep house on the radio, H2O’s Nobody’s Business track with lyrics from the 1920s.

  I’m going to do just as I want to, if I should take a notion to jump into the ocean, ain’t nobody’s business if I do…

  Reluctantly, they said goodbye and Marisa went down the street. Marco noticed one of her books under the seat and called after her. Since she didn’t hear him, he picked it up and chased her, reaching Marisa as she entered the building. In the deserted lobby they exchanged a brief kiss and, the moment Marco was about to leave, he turned back and they kissed again, this time in a long promise for their next date.

  After the two parted, Marisa stepped into the elevator, her expression aerial and her thoughts still with him. The first thing she heard upon entering the apartment was a scream followed by a burst of gunshots: her mother watched a gangster movie on TV.

  “How was the party?” she asked.

  “Great. The principal delivered a moving speech and I danced a lot.”

  While two men in dark suits exchanged punches onscreen, the mother studied Marisa from head to toe.

  “That dress fits you well after all.” She smiled. “And your dad’s gift matched it. For Christmas, I’m going to get you a sapphire ring to complete the set.”

  Marisa smiled back and remembered to hide in her purse the ring from Marco. Concentrating on the TV, she asked about the film, to which the mother shrugged: she wasn’t very keen on Mafia stories but couldn’t find anything better on. Marisa offered to help her out and they explored the TV guide together. There was a German-Turkish comedy her mother hadn’t watched yet.

  “Soul Kitchen: In a suburb of Hamburg, Zinos struggles with his restaurant on the verge of bankruptcy, the departure of his girlfriend to China and the swindles of his ex-convict brother. As if it weren’t enough, he gets himself a hernia, health inspectors are on his back, and his apartment catches fire. Yet the worst is still to come…” Marisa’s mother made a doubtful face. Was that actually a comedy? Yes, lots of fun. So they tuned into the film: funk music soundtrack, a pile of destroyed plates and a gawky Greek, all wrapped up to go with a side order of fries—soon both mother and daughter were laughing and sharing a pack of caramels on the couch. Until Marisa remembered she needed to be up early the next day and kissed her mother goodnight.

  When she closed the bedroom door, Marisa heard the cell phone beep. She sat on the bed, fumbling with her purse to retrieve it. There she found the text message from Marco.

  Check your email.

  She accessed her inbox and saw it: the photograph of a red rose bouquet wrapped in Mário Quintana verses from The Everyday Song. It was about how good it felt to live day by day, enjoying the moment like the clouds in the sky—with a crazy wind rose tied to his hat and without giving a name to any river, for the waters moved and thus it always became a new river flowing in an eternal beginning: “And with no memory of former lost times, I cast the rose of the dream into your distracted hands…”

  To which Marisa replied, with the pen of poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, that one should not take the word love lightly, for it was delicate and beautiful like a soap bubble, a sacred name that held perfection on earth and should not be desecrated. (We keep this sacred name between us, my dear Marco, and the truth in this poem comforts me.)

  As she undressed, a bossa nova song came to play on her lips. It must be noted that Marisa wouldn’t be singing had she suspected the commotion that gurgled eight stories below. It had all started that very evening when Ms. Rosaura, the gossipy neighbor from the ground floor, faced a couple of very inconvenient mishaps. Her pot of soup burned while she rushed to the market for parsley, and the malfunctioning TV decided to convert the prime time soap opera into a silent movie.

  The first problem Ms. Rosaura solved with a cheese sandwich (very tasty mozzarella, only $4.99). The second problem was skirted with one of her favorite pastimes: snooping through the peephole. All in all, Ms. Rosaura concluded she should buy more of that cheese. She also concluded that, sometimes, the attractions in the lobby of the building turned out to be far superior to those on TV.

  18. A Shadow of Doubt

  On Saturday, Marisa woke up early to study and went to school for her physics practice exam, which rendered her more dispirited than hopeful about her performance. When she got back home with Valentina, she immediately sensed something wrong: the TV was off. In the apartment hovered a dense silence, so dense it seemed like a living creature breathing within the walls. The m
other sat on her usual blue sofa—this time, reading the Bible.

  “Very nice.” She closed the book. Her mouth, no longer used to smiling, curved downward like a waning moon in a somber sky.

  “What’s the matter?” Marisa glanced around and frowned. “Did I forget the light on?”

  “Don’t you have something to tell me?”

  The mother’s irises sparked while she tapped her fingers on the Bible resting by her side. Toc, toc, toc… From the kitchen came the sudden sigh of the pressure cooker and a waft of lentils.

  Marisa sighed too.

  “Why don’t you just say what the problem is?”

  Toc, toc, toc…

  Valentina looked from one to the other. Tension crept into the room under the vigilant eye of a congregation of Czech crystal miniatures. Marisa grew impatient and crossed her arms. A dramatic pause ensued, with welling eyes and a certain overcalculation when the mother raised one accusing finger.

  “I heard that yesterday you were in the lobby making out with a man old enough to be your father. What the heck is going on, Marisa?”

  Discomfited, Marisa wondered how the mother had found out her secret. Then it dawned on her and she became furious.

  “Who told you that? Was it the gossiper neighbor from the ground floor?” Marisa acted offended. “That’s an exaggeration. I didn’t make out with anyone. A friend gave me a lift and kissed me goodbye on the cheek. That’s all.”

  “So Ms. Rosaura was exaggerating, huh?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Mom. That woman is senile,” Marisa ventured, but she could see skepticism all over her mother’s face.

  “Do you think I’m stupid or what?” she vociferated, red with indignation. “What have I done to deserve this? I try to give you a good education and that’s what happens. You’re really a lost cause.”