When Dolores woke up, it was late, after eight in the evening. The room was cold and damp. It had no heater, and it was raining outside. She could hear the rain and the thunder rumbling over the city. Exhausted, she’d slept without dreaming, or at least it seemed that way.
She sat up. She looked for her shoes on the floor, then snapped on the lamp by the bed. Maybe it will be soon, she thought. She wanted it to be soon.
She heard a knock on the door. “Come in,” she said. She thought it would be the old man, whom she was beginning to dislike. There wasn’t any one reason; she was just beginning to resent him. All his talk about Allah, perhaps. She didn’t really care about Allah. Allah belonged to children and old men, and people like Bin Laden who thought they were God. Allah hadn’t cared about her wanting to be a mother. He hadn’t cared about her husband. If there was a God, he seemed to love only Americans.
“It’s me, Collin. Are you decent?”
“Yes. . . . Come in, doctor.”
The door opened. She was glad to see him but didn’t want to admit it to herself.
“I was downstairs having dinner. I thought I’d look in on you. They gave me this.” He was carrying a tray with her dinner. She got up immediately and took it from him, embarrassed that they’d made the doctor carry the tray up the three flights of stairs.
“They shouldn’t have asked you,” she said.
“I offered, really. I need the exercise,” he said. “How’s the patient?”
“Better, thank you. I took a long nap. I’m still tired.”
“Good,” he said, “about the nap.”
She stood by the desk where she’d put down the tray. She didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re going to eat, aren’t you?” the doctor said.
“Yes. . . .”
“I’ll keep you company, if you like?”
“You must be busy,” she said.
“No, not right now. It’s nine o’clock. I should go to the hospital later; I’ve got a patient. An American college student—alcohol poisoning. Stupid, really. . . I’m sorry; I’m intruding,” he said.
“No. Please stay.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want to be a nuisance.”
“Yes. I hate eating alone,” she said, which was true. She ate most of her meals alone now, and she’d hadn’t gotten used to it.
“I do, too, but I do it all the time. I skip meals sometimes because I can’t stand another meal like that. You know, pretending to read while other people talk. I’d rather not. If you know what I mean,” he said. “Breakfast is okay. You can be alone at breakfast.”
“Yes, breakfast is easier,” she said.
“You don’t want to talk to anyone, then.” He laughed.
“No. You’re right,” she said, and smiled. I’m glad he’s here.
She realized he was lonely. It had never crossed her mind that a man could be lonely like that, a young man. She thought men always had something more important to do. He took off his raincoat, the same one he’d been wearing the day he first examined her, and tossed it on the foot of the bed.
“It’s chicken . . . ; it’s not good, and it’s not bad,” Collin said. “Your dinner.”
She smiled. It was the second time he’d seen her smile back-to-back.
“I’ve had it,” she said, and then they both smiled.
“Nothing worse than a Mexican chicken,” Collin said. “I don’t know what they feed them, but whatever it is—old tires, or shoes—must be hard to cook.”
“They can’t all be like that,” she said.
“The ones you buy in the city are. And an awful yellow color too, like those rubber ones you see in toy shops.”
This time she didn’t smile. He was trying too hard, he thought. That was it. You shouldn’t try that hard.
He’d come because he was intrigued with her. He wasn’t even sure why—her beauty, obviously. She had that kind of great beauty like Catherine Deneuve, the kind that compelled you to want to be with her, just to stare at her. But there was something else, too.
He let her sit down at the little table and uncover the dish of food. The silence wasn’t awkward.
She was hungry for the first time in days. She ate the rice and chicken. He could tell she was better from the way she ate. He hoped she would make conversation, but she didn’t. She just ate as if she were alone. He saw the postcard on the desk and reached for it.
“A friend in London?”
“Yes,” she said, looking up. She stopped eating for a moment and watched him. He turned the card back around and looked at the picture.
“An old picture. Before the excavations and all.”
“Yes . . . 1960,” she said.
“Someone’s scratched it out—the description.”
“It was in the drawer like that,” she lied.
He looked at her.
“Odd, what some people do.”
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
“When I was a resident, a friend of mine used to write love letters on old lab results, between the lines. He became a psychiatrist.”
She looked at him. Their eyes met.
“You look very young. Too young to be a doctor,” she said.
“Am I? I feel quite old sometimes,” he said. “Lately, especially.”
“Did you . . . skip grades?”
“Well, I’m afraid I did. I finished high school in three years. My father was very very proud of that. He bought me a car. That’s what he does if he thinks you’ve done something really good; he buys you something ridiculously expensive. He’s a doctor, too.”
“What kind of car?” she asked.
“A Ford Mustang . . . what are you doing here alone in Mexico, Dolores?”
The question took her by surprise, in part because she had difficulty reacting to the name Dolores. It wasn’t her real name, and at times it seemed silly to answer to it. It was as if he were suddenly talking to someone else in the room.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . I thought about it, and I’ve decided you’re much too beautiful to be traveling alone. Especially here. It’s not really safe,” he said.
“What color was it? The car,” she asked.
“The car? My car?”
“Yes.”
“Yellow.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes.” He laughed then. “I lost my virginity in it.”
“Is that what you do in America? Have sex in yellow cars?” she asked. She was talking to him like an anthropologist. It all seemed so strange to her. What kind of people were these Americans, anyway? Were they like other people, or were they different?
She knew they weren’t like the British. The British were simply preoccupied with themselves, like the French. But the Americans were more childlike, and so sure of their moral superiority. The French knew they weren’t superior morally—just culturally, they thought. That belief in the moral high-ground was Anglo-Saxon.
“Yes. But not just yellow ones. What about you? Were you born in the States?”
“No. No, I was born in . . . London.”
“Is that a secret?” he asked. She smiled. “The London part. Are you an international woman of mystery, like in the movies?”
“No,” she said.
“You seem like a woman of mystery. I always wanted to meet one.”
“I’m very ordinary. Really,” she said. She pushed the empty plate away.
“Could I paint you? Your portrait?” he asked.
She wanted him to leave then—one part, a small part of her, that was lonely and frightened, wanted him to stay. But most of her wanted him to leave.
“Fully clothed, madam. Very dignified, just in case you thought I was some kind of lech.”
“Doctor. . . .”
“Please don’t call me doctor. Collin . . . please,” he said.
She relented then in her heart. If she was going to die, she wanted to be like this with someone before it happened. At night talking, as if the world outside didn’t exist. Silly things. What could be more silly than having someone paint your portrait? It had been that way with her husband, too; they’d laughed a lot about silly people or silly things they’d seen on the television. They’d once seen a man on Al Jazeera with a toupee that blew off while he was being interviewed. He’d carried on as if nothing had happened.
“Okay,” she said.
“We would have to go to my apartment, there, across the street,” Collin said. “My things are there. You see, I’m thinking of becoming a painter. A real painter.”
“Will you be famous?” she asked. “Like Gauguin? I love Gauguin.”
Each of them had a love for Gauguin, and they started to talk about his life. She knew his paintings very well.
“Are you a painter?” he asked, a little stunned.
“No. Architect,” she said. It was the first time she’d confessed to being anything for two months. They called her the wife, Alzawja, in Saudi Arabia, where she’d been taken after she left Baghdad. She hadn’t had the chance to speak very much at all. In fact, she’d worn a veil for the first time in her life there. She was locked in a room in a wealthy man’s house while she waited.
“Big buildings and all that?” he asked.
“No. Houses for families,” she said. “That’s all I wanted to build.”
They heard the sirens then, the police cars turning down from the Zócalo. They heard the cars stop in front of the hotel, their red lights bouncing off the buildings below, the red light painting the room’s walls.
He went to the window and looked down on the scene below. He’d never seen so many police cars. They were still coming down the street.
“Are they coming here?” she asked. He turned and looked at her.
“Yes,” he said. “I think so.” She was pale. She came to the window and took his hand.
“I’m frightened,” she said. It was the first time she’d touched anyone like that since her son had been killed.
“I’m sure we’re all right. Probably some criminal staying here at the hotel. Exciting stuff,” Collin said. He felt her squeezing his hand very hard. He realized she was frightened, and he was surprised.
They heard boots on the wooden stairs—faint at first, then louder, then in the hallway outside. Then the door was kicked in. Two plainclothes Mexican policemen ran into the room, one with a machine pistol pointed at them.
“We’re Americans!” the doctor said in Spanish. He was indignant.
“Pasaportes,” the man said. “Downstairs! Passports! Take your passports with you.”