“Insólito!” she cried from her hospital bed. “Look at your poor Friducha, falling all to pieces and dying. Let me have that basket.” She wore only half the usual pirate’s chest of jewelry today, but her hair was pinned up the usual way. She must have nurses and stretcher-bearers at her command at the Hospital Inglés.

“Did you stop by my father’s house to give him some of this?”

“Of course. Señor Guillermo sends you his heart.”

“He’s going to starve, with Mother gone. She’s the only one who ever ordered those servants to get up off their nalgas.” She pulled out the napkins and silver, arranging her bed for dining as carefully as she sets the table at home.

“With respect, señora, his housekeeper is the same one who managed to keep you alive through your childhood.”

“My point exactly. She’s ancient. It’s like an archaeological ruin over there.”

“Everything is fine at Allende Street, you shouldn’t worry. Perpetua hired two new housegirls. Belén and something. Today they were planting lilies in the courtyard.”

“Lilies! The whole house needs repairs and a good coat of paint. I would make it plumbago blue. With red trim. What’s the news from home?” she asked, tearing into the rellenos. She had an excellent appetite for a dying woman.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Meaning? Has Diego replaced me already?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. It’s all the same people coming over in the evenings.”

“The painters?”

“Mostly the writers and the theater ones.”

“The Contemporáneos. Oh boy, you’re right, I don’t want to know about them. Villaurrutia with his Nostalgia for Death! Just go ahead and drink the poison, muchacho, get it over with. I think he and Novo are having an affair with each other, they’re both impervious to flirtation. And Azuela is just gloomy.”

“Mariano Azuela? That’s him? The author of Los de abajo?”

“The one. Don’t you find him gloomy?”

“He’s a very great writer.”

“But very cynical, don’t you think? Look, that character Demetrio in Los de abajo: What kind of hero is he? Fighting in the Revolution without a single idea in his head about why. Remember the scene where his wife asks him why he’s fighting?”

“Of course. He throws a rock into the canyon.”

“And the two of them just stand like a pair of dummies, watching the rock roll all the way down the hill.”

“It’s a moving scene, Señora Frida. Isn’t it?”

“Maybe if you’re a rock. I’d like to think I’m being pulled through history by something more than the force of gravity.”

“But gravity is winning. Look how short you are.”

“This is no joke, I’m warning you, Sóli. Be careful of your heart going cold. The Mexican writers are cynics. Our painters are the idealists. Take my advice, if you ever need a party to cheer yourself up, invite the painters, not the writers.”

She cocked her head, like a cat inspecting a mouse prior to consumption. “But…you are a writer, aren’t you? You write at night.”

How could she know that? Now they will make it stop.

“Pages and pages. César told me that. He said it’s like you’re possessed.”

No confession.

“I also believe you find it most interesting that Novo and Villaurrutia are sleeping with boys instead of girls? Don’t you.”

None.

“I’m not charging you with crimes, you know.”

“No. No secrets, Señora Frida.”

“What a lot of mierda. You always call me señora when you’re lying. So tell me, how are things in the soap opera of Los de Kitchen?”

“The same, Frida. We’re just tedious little servants.”

“Sóli, you are neither small nor tedious. Sooner or later you’re going to have to confide in me, one pierced soul to another. Sleep on it, Sóli. Consult your pillow.”

4 May

A visit with Mother, to take her to La Flor for her birthday. She was dazzling as always in a violet frock and dyed-to-match wool cloche. Her new plan is to win the heart of an American engineer contracting for the government. She describes him as “plenty rugged.” Also plenty married: they met when he came in the dress shop to buy a gift, not for his wife but his mistress. “Former mistress,” Mother calls her hopefully.

“It’s inspiring, Mother. You never shrink from competition.”

“What about you? That girl came in the shop again last week. This is the Rebeca I told you about, the friend of that little jelly bean you took to the Posadas last winter, and if you ask me, this Rebeca is ten times prettier. If the other one is a wet sock, that’s your good luck. She was a half-portion, if you ask me. But the friend is really swell.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

“Rebeca, this one is. Write it down, mi’ijo, at least pretend you’re interested. Or am I going to have to hire a puta to get a woman in your little pinche life?”

“A pinche life full of women, thanks all the same. One more and it might split open like a pomegranate.”

“I mean a woman in bed.”

“That house is ruled by a woman in a bed. Completely.”

“Mi’ijo, you exasperate me. This Rebeca, look, she’s a smart one like you. She wants to go to university, but right now she’s a seamstress. Did she stop in? I told her where you’re working. I didn’t tell her the kitchen, of course, I said you were some kind of a secretary. Intending to become a lawyer. It isn’t a lie to say you’re intending.”

“Let’s go back to your love life. It’s more interesting.”

“It had better get that way soon, let me tell you. Forty! Look at me, I’m a rock of ages.” She covered her face with her hands. Then peeked through, because the watermelon salad arrived. “And you, almost twenty! It’s unbelievable.”

“Half a rock of ages.”

“And what will you be doing on your twentieth birthday, mister?”

“Cooking, probably. The señora has the same birthday. She doesn’t know it.”

“Listen, if we go anywhere together now, you are not to say you’re my son, do you hear me. Look at you, a man! How could you do that to me? That’s it, mister. The men nowadays want fillies and pips and sweet patooties and no-o-o dotie brodies.”