door beyond the living room.
“Let her,” he said, clinging to her presence. This moment alone was a gift, possibly planned by the Señora, prolonging her bath so her scribbler and her nurse could be alone. She was like that in her sense of fun, her meddling. “Will you know when she’s ready to come out?”
“She’ll ring her bell, and I’ll hold up a big towel in front of my eyes.” She added seriously, “I’d better check on her.” Disappointed, Lockwood watched her march toward the bedroom. Even as medical fashion tended to pastels, the Señora liked Perla in white because it was the professional color for a nurse. Lockwood was both attracted and frustrated by her crinkly whites, the panels of starched fabric boxing and masking the roundness of womanly shapes, boat-like shoes and opaque hosiery inhibiting his imagination.
When the job of day nurse to Señora Mercè Casals had been posted, Perla had called immediately. Señora Casals explained the position. “I want you to wear a uniform at all times. No, I’m not sick, and beyond handing me my pills at the appointed times and informing my personal physician, Dr. Velasco, when my blood pressure reads high, you will hardly need to do anything medical at all. But wearing your nurse’s uniform will keep our relationship serious. It’s too easy for two women spending day after day together to become too chummy. I need you to remain a professional. We will become friends, of course. I like you already.”
“Gracias, Señora.”
“But it’s even more important that you like me.” The Señora had sighed, as if she were already despairing of the young applicant’s rising to such a challenge. “I will be able to tell, you know, no matter how cheerful and efficient you are. If you are covering up negative emotions, your hands will give you away. I will ask you to rub my neck when I feel a headache coming, massage my feet when they swell, spread lotion on my back when my skin is thirsty. I cannot bear to be touched by someone who holds back. It’s a special, rare gift to be able to touch another person and let her feel the goodness of your heart by the weight of your hands and the movement of your fingers. Timing is all. If you withdraw your hands too soon, I will sense reluctance; if you prolong touch past a certain point, it will be cloying and insincere. You will also bring my morning coffee and afternoon tea. And you will tell me the story of your life and your dreams and fears because we will have much time to get to know one another. But mostly, you will spend a lot of time by yourself staring at the wall. That’s the most difficult part of the job.”
Perla smiled. “I have some reading to catch up on. There’s TV. I can write or call my family in Mexico.”
“Unfortunately, no, not when you’re on duty,” her new employer said firmly. “I wouldn’t want to feel I’m interrupting a greater pleasure when I call you. You can knit or crochet. You will be happy to answer my call.”
IT WILL BE YOUR WORDS.
After years of dealing with corporate clients and their concrete objectives, Lockwood had felt out of his depth for the job interview. Six months ago, he’d waited in the gloom of Mercè Casals’ shuttered condo and tried deep breaths that came up short on oxygen and long on the blended scents of cut flowers and dishes of potpourri.
Standing before wall-to-wall windows, he parted the heavy brocade curtains. From twenty-eight stories above the ocean, he imagined he could see south to Cabo San Lucas, north to Santa Barbara.
The Señora wore rhinestone sunglasses with lenses so dark she would haltingly feel her way from a wall to a lamp to her chair. Her world was fragile: chalky bones in the hips, knees, shoulders. Around her, glass cats and goldfish and frogs by Lalique. Chinese vases and Murano bowls. Tiny Limoges boxes in fanciful porcelain shapes—trunks, clocks, purses, pianos, pea pods and dogs, clown hats, and party shoes—all down to the details of the enameled latch and the interior glaze, with the signature that said they were a higher class of knickknack.
On that first afternoon, the Señora’s aspiring writer waited on a velvet couch that drew him into its pillowy depths, a silk-and-feather quicksand that rose all around him, giving way under his butt and elbows and spine, so that he felt his knees rising and the whole of him curling up.
Lockwood reached down to the end table beside the couch and plunged his fingers into a candy dish. He grabbed a couple of chocolates wrapped in heavy gold foil and put them in his pocket as Mercè Casals emerged out of the shadows into the living room. She went to him, extending her hand and smiling warmly. Lockwood started to rise, but he had sat so low that his knees had lost their leverage and his character its will. His hand let go of the softening chocolates.
“I see you’ve been admiring the goodies,” she smiled. It took long moments before he realized she was speaking of the figurines on the shelves.
“I’m a bit of a collector myself.” He exhaled with relief. “You know—books. Good books, old books, unread books. It’s a writer’s obsession.”
She smiled benignly from her wingback chair, as if waiting for him to go on and explain why he was here. “You are not at all what I expected,” she said, trying to be diplomatic. “My agent, our agent, Mr. Holloway, assured me you were a real writer. That you have earned your living writing for twenty-five years and that therefore you would certainly look the part. Silly me, I was expecting horn-rimmed glasses and a pipe, and a jacket with leather patches on the elbows.”
“I have a corduroy jacket somewhere.” He heard the strained lightness in his voice and feared his eagerness was too obvious.
“Has lovely Perla offered you something to drink?”
Lockwood wasn’t thirsty, but the possibility of getting another look at the nurse prompted a request.
“Anything diet would be fine,” he said. “Diet Pepsi is the elixir of poets.” Then he added, as if needing to explain himself again, “Especially of the overweight ones.”
“But you’re not a poet,” she said. “You are the exterminator.” She explained: “Someone hired to flush the rats from my past.”
“I wish you wouldn’t look at it that way.”
“Oh, let’s move on, shall we?” she said. “I already have a first impression of you.”
“A bad one?”
“Heavens, no,” she laughed. “I’ll just have to reconsider my idea of what a writer should look like. Rumpled khakis and a baggy shirt with pockets for notebooks and pencils might yet fit in with my idea of a real author. But a tie might indicate a professional attitude.”
He was glad for the respite as Perla brought Pepsi and ice in a tall glass. He tried to catch her eye and smile in gratitude, but she resolutely avoided his gaze. “Gracias,” he said.
“What makes you think you’re suitable to write my story?” He could feel the Señora’s gaze behind the sunglasses.
“Experience.” Lockwood found himself at a loss for words.
“As a music expert?” She smiled.
“Well, no. I write about everything.”
“Everything?”
“Sex, drugs, teenagers, farm machinery, weather patterns, horses, computers, retirement plans, insurance policies, shopping malls, sleep apnea, mobile-home bank loans, periodontal disease, gardening, cooking, digesting—”
