Catherine would love that love talk. In Portuguese it sounds lovely. In English it sounds like bullshit. Take your pick.

But I can’t tell Catherine about him, though, because one day I’d discover him staring down at me from some museum. This strange man. All black above the navel, all white below it, and people wondering what was the symbolism, what was the metaphor. And some woman saying, “Why, it’s the country, my dear.” And another: “Well, shouldn’t he be white above and black below?”

I did get him to be braver, though, to go for a walk with me on the beach and even wear his bathing trunks.

“They don’t know what manner of man I am,” he whispers. “Or what kind of woman you are to be with such a man!”

26

The walls of the room look like they’ve been polished with talc and oil. Lace curtains hang at the windows—pattern of two birds of paradise facing each other. Kissing? Shades lowered. Lemony smell. You’d swear it came from the carpet—thick and yellow. Catherine would love them. Gilded mirror. Ensinanco made it himself when he worked one summer in a mirror factory. A bench-like love seat, the dresser, the bed, the mirror, carpets, and that’s all. Paradise.

27

“Come here, Amanda,” Catherine says. “I want you to speak to someone.”

She’s holding the phone out to me, the cord wrapped around her wrist, so that she has to unwrap it before I can take it.

“Who is it?” I whisper. Behind her the sun is orange.

“Someone for you.”

I pick it up and he says, “Darling, is that you? How are you?”

As if I’d never left, as if I were only in the apartment next door, visiting neighbors, as if I’d never left.

I slam the phone down, while Catherine’s standing there smiling.

“Don’t do that again.”

“I thought you’d be happy. I thought hearing his voice would make you happy.” She’s perched against the back of the couch, her arms folded.

“Don’t meddle in things you don’t know anything about. I put up with Koshoo but not this.”

“Then tell me about him.”

“It’s all my business, you hear. How did you learn his name anyway?”

“You’re the little fool,” she says. “Who else but a little fool would be divorced and go around with their fucking luggage tag still saying ‘Mrs. Lantis Wordlaw,’ and giving the old fucking address and telephone number?”

I say nothing. I would go now and tear the tags off and replace them with new ones. But I’m too lazy and I don’t want to see her gloat more than she’s doing now. So I merely stand there and watch Catherine, whose mouth is shaped like a Cheerio.

“Lantis, that’s an unusual name,” she observes.

“It’s short for Atlantis. His parents named him Atlantis, but the children teased and kidded him too much. Lantis was easier.

When he grew up, he had it legally changed.”

“I like Atlantis better.”