West 47th (15 page)

Mitch, on the other hand, tried to imagine what Maddie might be up to this time. He recognized the music but didn't know the name of the piece (“Pena Penita”). It was a fast one by the Gipsy Kings.

Maddie played the Gipsy Kings frequently, but not like this, not at such a decibel that it caused Mitch's latchkey to veritably vibrate when he inserted it to let himself into the foyer of the apartment. Where the Gipsy Kings and their seven guitars were louder yet.

Usually, when Mitch arrived home, along with his first step inside he'd call out to Maddie, her name. Often she beat him to it, would call out to him to let him know which of the apartment's five rooms she happened to be in.

Mitch liked when that happened. It was evidence that her waiting for him hadn't been an ordinary wait but more a yearning honed and dilated with impatience.

There'd be none of that today, though. Not even a full-out scream would do. He went down the connecting hallway, glanced into the kitchen on the chance that Maddie might be using the music for frame of mind while having a try at some complicated, loudly spiced Spanish recipe.

But no, nothing cooking.

On to the living room, the Persian carpets there were rolled up and the chairs and tables were moved aside, creating an expanse of hardwood floor. The same in the adjoining study.

Maddie was in the study, standing between the stereo speakers. At point-blank range of their blast. She had one foot up on the seat of a side chair. The most she was wearing was her favorite Spanish guitar, slung by a woven strap around her neck. Otherwise only sunglasses with mirrored lenses and a pair of black patent pumps with klutzy heels.

The double French doors that gave to the terrace were wide open. The white skin and the windows of the upper reaches of the General Motors Building were like a backdrop closer than across 59th Street. A rhomboidal shape of sunlight was striking the floor, barely missing Maddie's bareness.

Her aviary, situated against the wall opposite the balcony, was also open. All her beloved finches were out and around. Some were making passes at her, attention-seeking swoops and dives, fluttering her forehead and shoulders. Bishop Weaver finches from Sudan, orange and black and brown. Twinspot finches from southern Ethiopia, brilliant green and polka-dotted. Several exact look-alikes were in a row on the top edge of the draperies, an audience in the cheap seats.

Mitch was certain Maddie had no idea that he was there across the room from her. She was completely caught up in keeping up with the Gipsy Kings, the fingers of her left hand scurrying up and down the neck of the guitar, working the frets, the fingers of her right raking the strings with such swift force it seemed she was inflicting punishment.

This afternoon interval was obviously meant to be Maddie's alone. Mitch felt the intruder; however, he rationalized, wouldn't it be wrong to interrupt, make his presence known? Either he should leave, return to street level and perhaps go to a Central Park bench, buy one of those bags of overpriced peanuts and shell away some time or, the other option, remain undisclosed where he was, play the peeper, the adoring thief.

Watching her. From the start of them it had been a pleasant diversion for him. By now it had become a need. The extent that he indulged in it was, of course, made possible by her sightlessness.

He thought of it as stealing, but had long ago exonerated himself. How privileged he was to be able to steal like that, to witness so much of her physical privacy, unlike most others to never be deprived by self-consciousness or shame. The thing about it that bothered him, though, was its one-sidedness. Many times he thought the wish that he and Maddie could exchange circumstances for a while, let her have the advantage of seeing him without being seen. To have her steal and steal, learn his most intimate and private self and still want and love him, would, he thought, even them up perfectly.

He removed his suit jacket, tossed it and his folio onto the nearest displaced chair. He admitted to himself that not for a moment had he really considered Central Park over this. He slipped his tie loose, unbuttoned his collar and cuffs. Arms crossed, nonchalantly leaning against the jamb of the connecting wide archway, he gave in totally to being the compulsive spectator.

Look at her, just look at her, he thought, what a remarkable love she was. He wouldn't have her be any less unpredictable. He fed, thrived on her eccentricities.

The music didn't seem so loud now. With her as she was in his eyes the complaint of his ears was being ignored. The rhomboid of sunlight was creeping up on her, had overtaken a lower leg. She stopped playing, raised the guitar in order to get at a place to the left of her navel. Three scratches there and she went on playing, picked right up with the tempo and chords.

A pair of lady finches, evidently overcome by the need to be more involved, flitted from somewhere in the room to light upon the upper end of the guitar. They weighed next to nothing, so they weren't a bother. They improved their grasp, settled and hung on through the various bobbing and dipping motions caused by Maddie's playing. Just as they would had they been perched precariously on a bough in an erratic breeze. Tiny participants, they weren't startled enough to fly off even when in Gypsy flamenco style she thumped and drummed on the guitar's soundboard. They took the ride all the way to the vocal.

One of the Gipsy Kings sang it. He got a head start and Maddie had a devil of a time catching up. The lyrics were too rapid and run together for her just passable Spanish. No matter, in this kind of singing the meanings of the words weren't as important as the wail with which they were supposed to be coated. An effect accomplished by creating a stricture at the outlet of the throat in order to more emphatically convey the excruciating possibilities of love: love cruel or prohibited, misunderstood or, for any of the countless reasons, tortured.

The requirement of flamenco singing to be somewhere off the notes and seldom on them suited Maddie. She had a dreadful singing voice, couldn't even carry “White Christmas.” It was as though she couldn't hear herself. When she went around attempting Broadway numbers for example, such as something from
Phantom of the Opera
or
Evita
, Mitch would wince and look sick. “Don't cry for me Argentina …” Ughh. He was thankful that no words had been set to Ravel's “Daphnis and Chloé,” although there was Maddie's humming, which also had the disease.

Now well into her flamenco duet, faking it, keeping a partial beat behind so she could imitate, she got reckless, missed one of the higher notes so badly that she kept veering with it and was unable to recover.

She segued into a laugh.

Broke herself up.

She took off the guitar and set it aside. Mitch thought that next she'd switch off the stereo.

She stepped forward onto the bare floor. The bright rhomboid was like an inaccurately aimed spotlight catching the lower half of her. She raised her arms above her head, straight up and stiffly like a gesture of surrender, then relaxed them a bit and formed them into an arch, the wrists gracefully rounded, the fingers close to touching. She tensed her buttocks, tucked them, causing a thrust to her pelvis. Raised her chin, put stretch into her neck, turned her head a quarter turn so her point of view was away, over that elevated shoulder. All her weight was on her left foot.

What sort of posturing was this? Mitch asked the situation. Did she have in mind some sort of yoga exercise?

She snapped her fingers like castanets and began.

First, a single stomp with her free foot, the substantial heel of her shoe brought down with such force it was like the report of a shot.

It was now obvious why the carpets were rolled out of the way.

Maddie tattooed the bare, hardwood floor with her heels, did a rapid-fire series of flamenco stomping with both feet.

What came to Mitch's mind was the demonstrative protests of a spoiled child who hadn't gotten her way; however the incongruity of that association was at once made apparent by Maddie's mature figure, the way her movements were causing her fully formed breasts to respond, the triangular forest of fair floss at her intersection.

Now she went into long, dipping strides, an exaggerated, haughty prance and some swirls. Punctuated with exclamation points of stomping.

Where and when had she learned this? Mitch wondered. She was no María Benítez but obviously this wasn't her first go at it. The people who lived in the apartment below had never complained. As far as he knew.

Fists on hips, elbows out, she flamencoed past him and on into the living room. Typically, her attitude shifted from aloof to defiant to sensually promising. She knew the apartment by steps, its dimensions, so there were no collisions (another of her enemies, collision), only near misses. Even though Mitch doubted she was entirely there. With make-believe overlaid upon her blackness, something that was ordinarily easy for her, made easy by the blackness, she was probably somewhere in Spain. Seville perhaps. Being a Carmen.

On her way back from the living room she paused to flamenco in place a short ways from him. Facing him, she came closer, and even closer and did five sharp stomps that seemed to Mitch to be expressions of reprimand. He saw himself in her mirrored lenses. Their convexity distorted him, gave him a big, lopsided nose.

Maddie snapped her head back dismissively and spun away, holding the imaginary hems of imaginary flouncing petticoats.

The music ended.

The Gipsy Kings were gone.

The apartment had been so full of sound it now felt vacant.

Mitch, the spectator, was stuck in place by the sudden quiet. It wouldn't take Maddie long to detect him, he knew. She had collapsed over the fat arm of a sofa chair down into its lap. Was breathing hard. Should he speak up, pretend he'd arrived that moment, hadn't witnessed any of her performance? He'd merely inquire about the furniture being out of place, the carpets, and accept any fib she offered.

He'd do better than that.

He silently removed his shoes and stocking-footed it out to the foyer. There he put his shoes back on and, imitating his usual arrival, opened the entrance door noisily. Called out to Maddie. Slammed the door shut.

“In here!” he heard her shout, which reassured him that his ruse had worked. On the way to her he exaggerated the sound of his walk on the bare floor, his own flamenco. For some reason he felt a flush of well-being and realized it probably should be attributed to the stealing he'd done, his brain having processed it and triggered some neurotransmitters. Overanxious endorphins, no doubt. He'd gotten about a two-thirds erection while stealing Maddie, which, he had to admit, was rather gluttonous considering how erotically sated he'd been with her little more than a dozen hours ago.

She was still in the sofa chair, knifed cross-wise, legs over one of its arms, head resting upon its other. She was perspiring. Her hair was damp and stringy. Her mouth let it be known that it expected a hello kiss.

Mitch delivered it. An upside-down kiss, noses to chins, brief, not so brief that she didn't get in a single dart of her tongue.

What a rascal she is, Mitch thought. He was such a fortunate lover.

“Home early,” she said.

“Rearranging the furniture?” he asked.

She didn't reply.

“Felicia's been helping you, I hope.” The live-out housekeeper.

Mitch still didn't get the fib.

“Warm in here,” he said after watching a rivulet of perspiration run from her collarbone to an aureole.

“The air conditioning is on,” she said.

“Won't do any good with the terrace doors open. Besides, aren't you afraid your finches might fly out?”

“They wouldn't. They'd never betray me.” The birds had returned to the aviary, were chattering, sounded as though they might be commenting on the merits of the Maddie performance and having an after-show bite.

Mitch went to close the terrace doors. He caught a glimpse of office workers gathered at some of the windows of the fluorescent-lighted spaces across the way. Gapers, voyeurs. What were they expecting, an encore? He was tempted to flip them off. Instead, he decided what had been had been and just closed up.

Maddie was gone into the bedroom.

Mitch put together a vodka and tonic and took a couple of gulps before attending to the carpets and furniture. He got everything back in position by the time Maddie returned.

She'd showered. Was now in a long, pale silk kimono tied by a sash fringed on its ends. Mules of a matching shade with a pouf of Maribou on their insteps. She went directly to the sofa, as though knowing it was back in its familiar place. Sat and crossed her legs. The silk poured expensively around her.

“I'm having a drink,” Mitch said, “want one?”

“Just a Perrier, thanks, and, as Mother Elise would put it,
avec glace.”

While Mitch decapped the Perrier and poured he thought the wish that there was some way of obliterating Elise from Maddie's mind, cauterize her, at least stick her in some way out of the way sepulchral niche.

Maddie chug-a-lugged the Perrier and chewed on the ice. “I'm too fair-haired for a convincing flamenco,” she said.

“Huh?”

“A black wig might help but I'd still otherwise be blonde. Unless, of course, I wore a merkin and that would be a mess and a bother. Anyway, you didn't seem to think much of my dancing.”

Mitch tried to choose what he should say. Her teeth crunching ice didn't help.

“You didn't applaud or anything, not even a bravo,” she said.

“How did you know I was watching?”

“I sensed you were.”

“Don't give me that.”

“I always know.”

“Come on.”

“Okay, I usually know.”

A dubious grunt from Mitch.

“Sometimes I know,” she admitted in a tone that implied rock bottom.

“Okay, where was I standing?”

She told him precisely. “I got a whiff of you when I went by and on the way back I zeroed in.”