Vanishing Beauty

“You seem lonely. Can I sit with you?”, she asked him suggestively, as she approached him with a catwalk and with a sinuous sway in her hips, like waves lost in the deep ocean.

Her script sounded well-practiced, tiredly repeated over many nights, asand her voice echoed with emptiness. She was carrying a Bellini cocktail in her hand. Lush peaches simmering in clear champagne bubbles.

The air of the end of February was dry and warm, and the wind brought sand with it.  White, lLarge, white umbrellas lined the beach area, and the blue of the sky merged with the line of the horizon, fusing into a picturesque image that reminded of a seaside watercolor. People sat in small black tables, wearing hats and sun shades, sipping colorful cocktails. The sun was starting to set, and the dark outline of the palm trees made a stark contrast with the oranges that painted the sky. They were the same hues as of the peaches in her Bellini, warm pale orange, and they tasted sweet and dry and iced.

He looked at her for some seconds, studying her. She was wearing a flapper dress and a feather hat over a pair of fishnet tights. She was dressed like an all-American girl, but you could easily tell that, deep down, she tasted of sweet, ripe mangoes. Her long, straight hair contrasted sharply with her luminous skin and accentuated the depth of all the jungle she carried in her eyes.

She was a whore, he concluded.

And he was right. She was a whore. And proudly so. It was better than being a battered woman that had to beg her husband for money, like all the other women back in her small town, whose whole purpose in life was to birth and raise children and feed the hands that hit them. Her life as a prostitute was better than the life she would have had with the old man her parents arranged her to marry, a 90-year old landowner that had gotten obsessed with her figure when she was shy of 15 years old. Her life as a whore meant she was not shackled by society, she did not have to submit to the whims of a single man, and she did not have to live up to the expectations of the Catholic church. Yes, she was a whore, but she was a free woman. Unlike other women, she was free to dance under the glitter of the stars and the magic of electric lights until the mystery of the night kissed the clarity of the morning, or her body protested her recklessness. She was free to own her small apartment near the Central Avenue, much to the amusement and dismay of the old women that threw poisonous looks at her when she passed by clanking her heels on the street. And she was free to use her money to buy exuberant sequin hats, and luminous feather scarfs, and boisterous heels that could tap along with her at the rhythm of foxtrot under the lights of the big city. She was a free woman, a woman whose body men could rent and caress and squeeze for $50 an hour. That was a lot of money in 1925.

“I can only dance tonight, dear” he finally replied with a sigh, and with a knowing look that tried to communicate her that he was aware of the services she offered.

He was used to the mechanics of women for rent, but he usually hired the services of women older and less polished than the one standing in front of him. He wasn’t sure he could afford her.

“I could do that. I’m having a slow night, after all,"”, she said, taking the last sip from her Bellini.

Swift accordion huffs and wooden maraca beats mixed with the smoothness of the metallic, mellow voice of a saxophone. It was a mix of foxtrot and tipico and vallenato, and it splashed over the murmurs of voices inside the bar. The bar was hidden among some old houses in a shabby area of town, slightly covered by an old almond tree that grew in the corner street. The door didn't have any sign or name that could help people find the small bar, and the door led to a room where military men and expats and men that had escaped the horrors of Europe went to drown their sorrows. Inside, chandeliers hanged from the ceiling, and women taunted feathered hats and gleaming jewelry. In a corner, an old record player emanated music, and the atmosphere smelled of aniseed and languid desire.

He stood up and she led him to the dance floor, to fuse with the mosaic of dancing couples enthralled with the rhythm of a swift foxtrot.

It was Prohibition era in America, but alcohol flowed freely down south, in Latin America, flooding the streets and encircling in inebriated vapors the short colonial buildings. Tons and tons of alcohol arrived in barrels arranged in long rows over the boards of monstrous ships, large carcasses with bivalves stuck to their metallic shells. The wooden barrels were large enough to house a small woman inside, curled over herself. Imported ethereal vodka and bitter Irish Scotch. Smooth German beers and light pale ales that melted in your mouth, and local sour beers fermented in tanks that sprouted in the middle of the jungle. And of course, there was rum. Pale and transparent and dark rums distilled from the sweet molasses that poor countryside men wearing straw hats squeezed from sugarcane with their sweat. Rum that blended with drums that powered the frenzy of parties and nights.

Just as alcohol, prostitution was legal in Latin America, as it has always been. Building a strictly Catholic society comes with a price. Men cannot satiate their urges with women they have not yet married, and that drives up demand for women that can quench their lust. And, if Jesus was kind enough to forgive prostitutes and welcome them into the Kingdom of the Lord, why wouldn’t the laws of the sinners and the mortals be kind to them too? So, prostitutes have always roamed freely during the day, under the biting Caribbean sun, wearing flamboyant dresses and sitting alone in tables, drowning pitchers of beers by themselves. And they have always been able to sell their services freely in the middle of the deep blue and humid tropical nights. Especially during the decades of the American occupation, when twice the number of single men flooded the streets, and prostitutes of all colors under the Sun walked up and down the brick streets lit by the moon and by the incandescent lights that flanked the roads. Prostitutes didn’t have to run away when a police car drove by. They could just wave and mutter a breathy ‘hi’ and flash their ample bosoms, and maybe hook up a new client if the police officer was feeling frisky that night. Finding clients was an easy task. They just had to scout for men with hungry eyes and approach them with a catwalk and with a knowing voice and with a look that spoke to all the experience they had gathered as the moons aged. Being a prostitute was a legal and fruitful business.

They danced to foxtrot until their legs felt heavy and their hearts melted together. One step after the other, one foot hurriedly following the other, they learned to merge physically like two resonating forks vibrating in unison. They were now tired, and she needed to stop to catch her breath and have something to drink.

“Oh Helen, dear, we haven’t danced like this in ages,"”, he said, as they made their way through the people.

A cold breeze hit her face and a glacial shiver ran down her spine. She flinched and tensed as she heard him utter those words. But then, she resolved to react calmly. Many clients had made the slight mistake of calling her by their wives’ names, so it was better to not get agitated over such a small mistake. She then relaxed and said with a light voice, almost teasing him.

“Oh dear, you must have confused me with your wife, or maybe your girlfriend. But my name is Camila. I don’t even know your name”

He turned around and said with a sweet voice.

“You almost never remember my name, Helen”. Then he added, “I’m Daniel, your husband,” he said, pulling her by the arm and guiding her to where the refreshments were located.

This guy is crazy, she thought. The tone he used to add the last phrase was serious and it scared her. It sounded like a prayer, a string of words repeated by heart, and with a condescending, understanding voice. She didn’t like the tone he had used, so she pulled her arm to let go of his grip.

“I’m sorry, sir. But we don’t know each other,"”, she said, expanding the distance between them “We are two strangers that met tonight and danced together. I’m not your wife,"”, she said, preparing to run. Her heart was racing.

He grabbed her by the shoulders. His two arms squeezing her firmly and gluing her to the floor. He started shaking her.

“Helen, please look at me. Calm down. It’s me, Daniel”.

She looked him in the eye. Her head was throbbing. She felt dizzy and it was hard for her to remain standing. She gathered all her strength to scream.

“You, fucker. Did you put something in my drink?!"!”, she screamed, slapping him in the face.

She wanted to create a scene. It was her safest best to alert all the surrounding people and get some help. Yet, somehow, his face started melting. Her heart sank. The world around her was melting.

The scene inside the bar looked like a ripped painting, with holes everywhere. The light of life escaped with screams in the wind. Blots of black paint were pouring everywhere, saturating all the crevices of time. The voices inside the bar were huffed like sounds drowning under the sea.

 “He slipped something in my drink!” she managed to scream again.

Two men from the crowd came running towards her. At first, she was relieved that somebody had responded to her cry for help. But then, the two men grabbed her and started dragging her away, each of them pulling her by one arm.

Daniel stood still looking at her with a deep, knowing look. “I am sorry, Helen, dear,"”, he said.

 The gravity of her situation dawned on her.

“No! Please! Someone, please help me! They are taking me away!”

Nobody responded to her cries. The crowd just stood there, immobile, watching her as she was taken away.

The two men dragged her through a long, grey hallway, and after their first turn, they opened a door. Inside, there was a bed covered in white sheets. The room was dark, and other men were waiting inside. One of the men dragging her tossed her on top of the bed, while the other one tied her hands to the head of the bed. It was a swift, calculated move; a practiced move. A third person approached her and started removing her clothes. She fought and screamed and tried to bite him. He removed her dress and then slid his hands over her body to remove her underwear. The air became rarified. Every one of her organs flinched and curled. The entire operation was well orchestrated; the men performed their roles like a well-oiled human machine. These fuckers must have planned everything in advance, she thought. She closed her eyes. Tears burned like acid against her eyelids. It all reminded her of that one time when her 90-year-old husband tried to rape her, pinning her to the bed, and holding her down against her will. But if she had survived that, she would survive this, she convinced herself. She prepared for the worst.

Everything was swirling around her. Shards of reality gleamed and cracked on top of the floor. And she was asphyxiating. Her voice was trapped inside her throat and she didn’t remember how to expand her lungs. She felt like she was dying.

*****

Explosions. Explosions bubbled over every inch of my neck and shivered icily all the way down to my spine, while I dived in warmness. Bubbles popped frantically all over my skin, over my neck, against my face. Soft, creamy, and warm. Warm water pressed against my skin. The night painted a turquoise kaleidoscope above me, and fireflies floated somnambulant near the lakeshore, tracing languid swirls.

Her feet were tiptoeing on the border of the long deck, while I floated in the warm, dark waters. And she was laughing hard, crying my name. Screaming on top of her lungs the memories of all our sunsets together. And her laughter sent ripples through the water, still like a morning wish, ebony like the whispers of the mountains. The stars underneath me danced up and down with her voice. Silver dust in a fanfare of joy. And I could feel the intensity of her gaze conquering the mysteries of our paths together, yet untraced.

That is how I remember Helen.

For me, she is frozen in time, frozen in the night we went skinny-dipping in a lake in Nevada. We spent hours floating among the stars, naked, talking about our futures, and I poured my heart and insecurities on her. And I kissed her. I kissed all the star-like freckles and moles that covered the mountain ranges of her body, and I then invited her to see the other stars more closely, through the lenses of an old, giant telescope.

Back when I was 20 years old, I had the keys of an abandoned telescope that had been rescued from prototyping experiments carried out by the NASA. I was a mathematician in college. A young guy that hoped to have all the best decades of my life ahead of me. And like most young mathematicians, I was obsessed with the stars and with Saturn and with the mysteries of the universe and with the origins of the Sun. Helen called me ‘Jupiter guy’. I used to wake up at 3 am to see the planet rise, regardless of whether it was snowing or raining or if there was a windstorm. I would climb up the stairs of the giant old telescope, open its big metal belly, and immerse myself in the fantasies of unexplored dreams above us, stars like glitter that paint the ceilings of our lives.

I met Helen at a fundraising event on a lovely evening. I had gone to the event with my friends, she had gone with her group of friends, and we spotted each other across the room. The eye contact was magnetic. Whenever a friend of ours made a joke, she would look at me, to cautiously check if I was laughing and looking at her. And I always was. My laughter was boisterous, and her laughter was diaphanous. The wine we were drinking helped and we drank one cup after the other, my head spinning with excitement and joy. She left her group of friends and sat beside me, and we ended the night sharing the same chair. It was scandalous, but I was elated. I was ecstatic the most beautiful woman in the room found my theorems and my equations and all my maps of how the comets revolve around the Sun fascinating.

And Helen was certainly beautiful. Light loved her. Golden light, the ephemeral kind that shines during the brightest minutes of the day in the morning, clung romantically to the softs and depths of her face. She was beautiful, but she was troubled. A troubled, sad beauty was she. At night, she would get naked in front of the mirror, and turn around, to examine her back and all her nonexistent folds of fat contrasting with the undulations of her vertebrae. I noticed early in our relationship that she didn’t eat. And when she did, she went to the bathroom right away and spent minutes throwing up. I was reserved about it during the first few months we dated. But as our relationship became more serious, I confronted her. I told her that I was worried more about her health than about her figure. She admitted that there were days she ate less than an apple. She blamed her father, her authoritarian father, who was a famous Senator down in the South. I imagined her, sitting under the willow trees, in front of her perfectly white wooden house, rocking back and forth in her swing seat, weeping along the weeping willows. Weeping because her father didn’t want her to see Europe, because he said the world was too big and could harm her. Weeping because she was forced to study Art; he said that good girls don’t study Math. Weeping because she felt trapped inside her house, like a small bird in a cold golden cage. Poor Southern belle. She wept in my arms as she told me all of this. I had never seen Helen so fragile between my arms. And from that day on, I felt a terrible sense of duty that soaked all my decisions and fears. I needed to protect Helen. To shield her innocence and her light and her dreams from all the darkness of the world. I cooked for her to teach her to enjoy the taste of life, to nourish her soul and to strengthen all the warmth she had awakened deep inside of me. But I couldn’t protect her forever. There are things that just can’t be helped. And love only lasts so much.

I still loved Helen when the golden light of her youth left her face and her skin turned dry and her smile lost some of its luminosity. But new light clung to her face and found a home in her eyes. I remember her enveloped in the cold lights of her hospital bed when our first son was born. I arrived at the hospital late. It had been raining and I got stuck in traffic after I left work. David, our first son, arrived a day earlier than we expected. Huge droplets of rain fell loudly against the windshield of my car. I drove for hours, and for miles, and when I finally made it to the maternity wing of the hospital, Helen was already holding our firstborn between her arms. She looked at me with a faint, tired smile. She was joyous but too tired to welcome me with words. But all the love she sent me through her eyes was enough to make my heart flutter. I was a father, the father of a tiny boy, a tiny boy enveloped in a soft blanket the color of the sky. And the wonderful woman carrying him was going to help me raise him.

Our second son was born four years later. Christopher kept us up at night during the first few months, crying with all the mighty that David never had, and eating more than David ever did. Helen was tired and large, dark circles clouded her face, but we were both joyous when David first glanced over his baby brother’s crib. David’s face lightened up, and he asked his mother when Christopher was going to be able to play with him. Give him some years, she had replied with a smile, the warm motherly smile that Helen used when she looked at our children. David was quiet, and Christopher was loud. David spent hours reading, curled next to the large window of our living room, while Christopher hunted for grasshoppers outside under the Sun, always carrying a giant plastic net, always flipping stones, and searching for bugs in a nearby creek. David loved the stars and the moon like me, and Christopher had the fire of life in his eyes like his mother. They fought sometimes, and Helen would run around the house screaming at them to calm them down, and then she would come to our room and sit next to me, running her hands through her hair in frustration. She also cried when they became older and both boys became feisty and argumentative about all her decisions. She cried silently by my side. I would just hug her and hold her and tell her that David and Christopher would age someday and that someday, we would laugh about it all together.

We aged together. Helen and I aged together, and our bones started aching around the same time. But her head starting aching before mine, and I started losing her, one day at the time. It all started with her lost keys. She never remembered where she had left them. She soon started confusing our sons’ names, and she ended up creating a new name to which both my sons responded. ‘Alan’; it wasn’t as creative as ‘Jupiter Guy’, but it worked. We all got used to her flares of temper and to her momentary delusions and to the wide lagoons in her mind. It’s hard to love an empty body. It’s hard to love someone who no longer remembers your name. It’s hard to curl up at night next to somebody that thinks you are a shadow from their past. I still cared about her, but it was hard not to imagine how would have my life been had I married someone else. But I stuck by her side, and I tried to protect her.

We got Helen a nurse, Ariana, somebody who could help us take care of her since I no longer could. Ariana became the new light of my life, a renewed hope, a fresh breeze in the middle of my chaotic days, someone who understood all my hurt and who helped me fight the emptiness that crept around me and asphyxiated me at night. So we lived together, the three of us, for some years. Helen didn’t mind since she didn’t even recall being married to me. I was just another roommate from her youth, and Ariana was my girlfriend. And Helen took a liking for Ariana, and the two of them spent their days together while I left for work, reading, watching soap opera, and gossiping about their nonexistent classmates. Sometimes, Helen had moments of lucidity, and she welcomed me home, and she danced with me. Ariana played pretend and played the role of our housemaid, cleaning the dust left by crushed memories and unmet dreams. The two loves of my life lived in harmony, though Helen didn’t remember anything about our romance in our youths. I was a stranger, and all our nights together under the stars were erased from her memory. So, over the years, I hand-picked the memories I kept of her, and these I share with her whenever she recognizes my face, which happens every once in a while. I tell her that we went swimming late at night in a lake in Nevada and that I still remember laughing and kissing her under the stars. I tell her that we used to watch the stars and the moon together and that she used to call me ‘Jupiter Guy’. I tell her about our kids, about how they grew up and went to college, and about how one of them already has a child. She cries. She cries because she doesn’t remember any of this and because she has missed out of so many decades of our lives. She also cried when Ariana left me because she lost her best friend and I was left alone, without a girl, to cry all alone by myself at night. Ariana got tired of our weird living situation and opted for a more normal life. I can’t blame her, but her goodbye left my house emptier than before, so Helen and I moved to a nursing home in Florida. And we sometimes still dance together, like that night, under the stars.

*****

Dr. Patel didn’t enjoy working at a nursing home. He would have preferred to work at a big hospital, one with a famous name, like all his friends. But his wife didn’t want to move to a new city after his fellowship, for the sake of the kids, so he was stuck working in a small beach town, surrounded by his rancid patients. At least he didn’t have to clean their shit and empty their bedpans. There were nurses for that. But he had to deal with their hallucinations and their lapses of lucidity and the Alzheimer and all the dementia patients that got violent and screamed and crashed their glasses on the floor.

Just right now, he had to visit Ms. Camila Benavides in her room. Ms. Benavides was 84 years old and her Alzheimer made her lash out with violence on occasion. She was on Donepezil, but her dementia was so advanced that it sometimes didn’t have any effect on her, and they had to calm her with a dose of Abilify when she attacked other residents. Today, she had slapped Mr. Daniel Mason in the face after dancing the foxtrot with him for hours. Because of that, he now had to do an extra round at night to check on Ms. Benavides, consult with her psychiatrist to maybe adjust her Donepezil dose, and he also had to check on Mr. Mason, who was still crying after the incident.

 “Good afternoon, Ms. Benavides,"”, he said, entering the room, and washing his hands with a clear hand sanitizer.

Ms. Benavides was screaming, and shaking and moving uncontrollably on her bed, even though she was tied with a cotton blanket.

“Please help me! They slipped something in my drink! They are trying to rape me!” she managed to scream. Long, dry screams full of horror.

Several nurses were trying to calm her down, and they had managed to change her clothes. She had spilled her drink over herself, and then Mr. Mason had vomited on her due to the impression. Her clothes were tossed on a side of her bed, completely soaked in Mr. Mason’s stomach juices. One nurse, a woman, was looking at the clothes with disgust.

Dr. Patel looked at the nurse and asked, “What happened, exactly?”

The nurse replied, “Ms. Benavides asked Mr. Mason to dance with her. They had foxtrot today at the weekly thematic night”. The nursing home had weekly thematic nights every Wednesday, and this week, they had decorated one of the large dining halls with golden lights and had hung paper chandeliers to give the decrepit room some allure. “Mr. Mason obliged, and they danced for hours. Everything was fine. They both seemed pretty lucid. But then Mr. Mason confused Ms. Benavides with his deceased wife. He sometimes forgets that Helen died four years ago; he calls for her and asks us about her. Do you remember his wife, Helen? She lived with him here for some years. They shared a room”

Dr. Patel nodded, “Yeah, I remember Ms. Mason. Hers was a terrible case”

The nurse then continued, “Yeah, well, Mr. Mason confused her, and Ms. Benavides got irritated and that triggered her flare of aggression. She slapped Mr. Mason and hit the nurses that tried to control the situation and cursed and insulted everyone in the room. Mr. Mason had a small panic attack and started crying for his wife”

Dr. Patel sighed heavily, “Ok. Have you given her anything to calm her down?”

“Not yet. We were thinking of giving her Abilify as usual,"”, the nurse replied, picking the dirty clothes, and tossing them into a large, transparent plastic bag.

“Yeah, give her some Abilify and get her some sleeping pills too. She needs to calm down”

The nurse nodded and left the room to get some pills. Ms. Benavides kept screaming and pulling at her arms, trying to free herself.

“I don’t want more pills! I’ll tell the police! They slipped something in my drink! Please help me!”

Dr. Patel sighed, hating his job, and then calmed down, and looked at his patient in the eye.

“It’s Ok, Ms. Benavides. Everything is Ok. In a few hours, you won’t remember any of this” he said. And you won’t remember anything about your life, as usual, he thought, irritated.