Gaudi Afternoon (19 page)

“That's too bad,” I said, fidgeting.

“We lived in Manhattan. Father lived uptown, Mother lived in the Village. My father was convinced my mother was a slut and a bohemian; my mother thought my father was a dull old fart. I was their only child; eventually Mother remarried but Father stayed a bachelor. I haven't seen them for years. I can't forgive them.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Hamilton?”

“I'm trying to tell you that I know what it's like to be the child of divorced parents.”

Hamilton bowed his head so that his receding hairline took on a tender, vulnerable edge.

“I hated to see Frankie and Ben quarrelling about Delilah. I thought maybe if I took Delilah myself they'd see how foolish they were being.”

“But how'd you know where Frankie was?”

“She's not very smart really,” he said. “She sent a taxi driver with a message that Delilah was okay. I had the
portero
hold him until I got downstairs, then I gave the driver a large tip and got the name of the hotel.”

“At least Frankie thought to tell Ben that Delilah was okay.”

“Ouch.”

“When did the taxi driver show up?”

“While you and Ben were at the airport.”

“So April knew where Frankie was keeping Delilah?”

“No.” But his eyes slid away.

“She did know. That's why she's hiding from me.”

“What do you mean she's hiding?”

“I mean that April got me to help her slip away from La Pedrera this morning to confess to me that she'd helped Frankie abduct Delilah. Then she said she had something to tell me, and agreed to meet me later for lunch. But when I turned up she wasn't there. Nobody knows where she is.”

“She said she had something to tell you?”

“Probably that you'd taken Delilah, right? You two must have hatched this plan while Ben and I were at the airport last night. She wanted Delilah out of the way and you agreed to help her. Don't give me all this bull about divorced parents and lonely children.”

“But it's true.” Hamilton looked depressed. He got down from the table and walked around the room. “I wonder what April's up to.”

“Who cares? The important thing is to get Delilah back to Ben and Frankie. They're worried sick.”

“No,” Hamilton said, and looked at me. “Please, Cassandra. Let me talk to them, please. Otherwise you know how it will go. They'll be at each other's throats, and Delilah will keep suffering. Let me arrange a meeting with them tomorrow morning. A healthy, calm meeting where we'll lay all the issues on the table and discuss them like rational adults.”

“You call them then and tell them that you have Delilah. Right now.”

Without further argument Hamilton moved to the phone and dialed. The room was almost completely dark now and Hamilton seemed shadowy and insubstantial, almost pathetic. I needed to remember that he wasn't just the lonely and fought-over child, but a competent adult, capable of love and music and even great deviousness.

“Ben,” he said. “It's me, Hamilton. Look, I don't want you to worry, but Delilah's with me. Yes, I know. Yes. Yes. I'm really sorry. It seemed like the best thing. Listen, please, now don't get upset, Ben. I want to have a meeting with you and Frankie. I think we need to have a talk about the effect all this fighting is having on Delilah. I'm really concerned. Now don't yell at me. I'm only doing what I think is best, no I'm not going to tell you where she is yet. Is Frankie there? Good. The two of you need to sit down and really talk. I want you to talk, not just call each other names. I'll call you later, and if you haven't made any progress tonight I'll keep Delilah until tomorrow. Don't yell, Ben.”

He hung up. “That woman has a loud voice.” He turned on the overhead lamps and the room was flooded with light.

“But she agreed?”

“She wasn't happy about it, but yes, she agreed. I guess she knows that she and Frankie can't go on like this. That they need an outside mediator.”

“Didn't she ask where April was?”

“Maybe April's back at La Pedrera.”

“I don't know about April,” I shook my head.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, first of all, it's really hard for me to believe that you and April are old friends. You just don't seem the type.”

Hamilton shrugged. “What type is that? We were close as… once. There's a basic loyalty there.”

I scrutinized him through narrowed eyes. “Just don't be fucking me over, Hamilton.”

“You're one tough lady, you know that.”

“Speaking of ladies—”

“You mean me? Yes, I cross-dress sometimes. I've done it all my life and I enjoy it.” He looked at me a bit defiantly. “I find that wearing women's clothing gives me access to the feminine part of myself, to the softer, gentler aspects of my personality. It's hard being a man, Cassandra.”

“So I've heard.”

“You'd be surprised, Cassandra, at the cues people pick up on to distinguish gender. Cross-dressing throws our rigid dualistic thinking into chaos. It's very liberating. You should try it sometime.”

“Just call me
señor.
”

We went back into the kitchen where Ana and Delilah were getting on splendidly, drawing pictures of dinosaurs on butcher paper. Hamilton sat down with them and picked up a brown crayon. “I can draw a pretty good stegosaurus, want to see?”

“Yes!” said Delilah happily.

I guessed I didn't need to worry about her for the time being.

“Is there a phone here I can use?”

The cook pointed to the hallway.

I reached Carmen at the salon, and asked her the Spanish equivalent of “What's shakin', baby?”

“Cassandra! My mother had to go back to Granada suddenly. One of our relatives is ill.”

“Oh, that's too bad,” I said, wondering why she was telling me. “Do you want to cancel our date?”

“Cancel?” she said, affronted, and was silent.

Oh why was my Carmen such a moody, mysterious woman? Then it suddenly hit me.

“Do you mean I can come over to your house?”

“
Sí
.”

“Do you mean your mother won't be there?”

“
Sí
.”

“Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“We'll see.”

I was so excited that I didn't take the time to explain clearly to Ana what was going on.

She told me later that I came back from the phone in a state of high excitement and rushed out the door, muttering something about an illness in the family. If I had told Ana that I might be staying the night with Carmen she would have known where to find me when the shit hit the fan early next morning.

But it was left to the answering machine, once again, to be the bearer of bad news. How casually I turned it on when I came home the next morning from a blissful and unexpected night with Carmen, how dreamily I thought, It's Hamilton….

In a voice of hysteria too frightened to be fake, he said that somebody had taken Delilah.

T
HE MORNING HAD DAWNED HOT
and already I had lost the reckless desire of the night before. I stood there in the sunny, empty entryway by the answering machine, calling Ana's name and listening to the echo. I felt disoriented, as if I'd forgotten something essential or been gone for a very long time. Then I tried Hamilton's number at La Pedrera.

I let the phone ring a few minutes, imagining the sound beating like a heart in the fluid shapes of the Gaudí rooms.

The likeliest possibility was that Ben had decided she didn't want to wait to have a discussion with Hamilton about her parenting skills and had nipped over to the jazz club's kitchen and taken Delilah off once again. After all, she hadn't stolen her daughter yet; she'd probably been feeling left out. The reason that no one was answering at La Pedrera was that this time Delilah really was on her way out of the country, with her biological mother.

Of course Frankie could have been the one to steal Delilah again. Or maybe April and Hamilton had plotted something together. Maybe Hamilton's message on Ana's machine was just a bluff.

I tried to calm my mind. Whatever had happened I expected that I would know about it soon enough. There was nothing I could do anyway.

Accordingly I set myself to translation.

I had reached a chapter where past and present mingled, where María had finally managed to locate her mother and to arrange a meeting with her:

In her old age Cristobel lived in the shabby mansion that Raoul had left her. Whatever he had carried in his black bag from village to village had made him wealthy but most of that wealth had been poured into right-wing political campaigns or leached away by his evil habits. With the passing of Raoul a whole generation of men also began to pass away, as if the strange potion, the tincture, the aphrodisiac with which he had infected them was losing its power. Almost to a one the elderly men of the country, statesmen and peasants alike, began to lose their manhood. As they moved into old age they grew breasts and their voices softened; their potency decreased rapidly. Some said that was the common fate of old men, to become old women, but in the eyes of the men themselves, their potency had been due to Raoul and contents of his black bag. Without that secret ingredient (something from the rainforest that now no longer existed?) they were doomed to ignominious femininity and then death.

I was making good progress and again entertaining fantasies of finishing the translation sooner than I had hoped, when around noon there was a determined ringing at the street door.

“
Sí
?” I called over the intercom.

“Cassandra, we know she's there, let us in!”

I buzzed them in without joy. At some point I really was going to have to put my foot down.

Frankie gave me a big hug. “Hi, sweetie! I don't really suspect you, it's just that we have to make sure.” She swept inside. “Well, isn't this
fascinating.
What is it, a museum?”

Ben was grim and stand-offish. “I'm sure she's here.”

“Do you mean April or Delilah?”

“Delilah. Though I wouldn't put it past you to have April tucked away too.”

“Ben, Ben, Ben,” I sighed. “You keep suspecting me, but I'm telling you, I don't even particularly like kids.”

“You don't have to like a kid to steal a kid,” Ben said. She was back in her sleeveless tee-shirt and vest, with a red kerchief knotted around her neck. Her short blond hair had gel in it and stuck up like needles in a pincushion.

“To be honest, I thought you had Delilah,” I said, leading the way to the living room. “I thought you wouldn't have wanted to wait until Hamilton brought her back, that you would have figured out she was at the jazz club.”

“I figured it out,” said Frankie. “But to tell you the truth, I decided that Hamilton had a point, and I've said this to Ben before. All this ruckus and fighting isn't good for Delilah. Ben and I have to make peace with each other, Ben has to make peace with me. So I persuaded Ben to stay home and spend the evening discussing things. Though I think she also wanted to be there in case the errant April returned.”

Ben was ignoring us, swinging open closets, throwing herself on the floor to peek under couches, tossing aside drapes. If she was planning to really search this apartment she would be here forever. Even Ana's weekly housekeeper had areas she had long ago given up on.

My former employer lit a Camel and fluffed her curly wig.

“So what do you think happened to Delilah?” I asked Frankie.

“It's obvious. April alone or April with Hamilton has got her. I have no idea why, but I can tell you that when I get my hands on April, fur is going to fly.”

Ben was in the bedrooms, pathetically calling, “Delilah? Delilah?”

“Why aren't you out looking for April then?”

“Because,” Frankie struck a resigned attitude, “Ben refuses to believe that April is involved. We spent the whole morning at the consulate. You can imagine how wearing
that
was.”

“I suppose Hamilton told you he dressed up as a woman to get Delilah out of the hotel yesterday morning?”

“Am I supposed to be shocked? Yes, he told us.” Frankie paused and smiled. “Ben was shocked.”

We followed the sound of Ben's footsteps through the apartment. She was in my room, under the eye of the figurehead, pawing through the pages of my translation. “You won't find any clues there, Bernadette; even Gloria de los Angeles couldn't have invented this plot.”

Ben abruptly sat down on the edge of my bed and began to cry. “Oh, you can laugh,” she said. “You and Frankie can make fun of me all you want. It's not
your
daughter.”

“She is my daughter,” said Frankie patiently. “And I told you she wouldn't be here with Cassandra.”

“I don't know. I don't know any more who's telling me the truth,” Ben wailed.

Frankie sat down on the side of the bed and put an arm around Ben. I was struck by how practiced the gesture was, and how very tender.

“Look Ben,” I said. “I'm sorry, but I think you have to face the fact that April probably has Delilah.”

“You're just saying that,” she sobbed into Frankie's sweater.

Frankie rolled her eyes at me.

“You also have to face the fact that April and Hamilton have something going on,” I continued. “I don't know what but there's something.”

“Hamilton says he hasn't seen April since the night I took Delilah,” Frankie said.

“Lies, lies, lies,” Ben broke down completely.

I hated to see a woman go pieces like that, especially one who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe it was time for me to offer to help again.

Besides, I still had April's book,
Stories the Feet Can Tell.
And I thought she might be wanting it.