The Color of Summer: or The New Garden of Earthly Delights (32 page)

Yes, she would leave the island, but not without taking her swim fins with her and not before her novel,
The Color of Summer,
was completed. And thinking about that novel she picked up the pen that she’d slipped in her pocket not long ago at a reception for Carlitos Olivares, the Most In-Your-Face Queen in Cuba, and started writing again.

Coco Salas’ dream had come true at last! He owned a leather belt a good eighteen inches wide with a buckle that was
more
than a buckle—it was two enormous, gleaming harness rings. It was a
wonderful
belt. Halisia Jalonzo had brought it back with her from one of her trips to Europe. Coco cinched the belt around his waist and contemplated herself in the mirror at the foot of her bed in the Hotel Monserrate. Squealing with delight, she clinked the buckle-rings together two or three times and as she paraded all about the room she practically
crowed.

One had to admit that the change the belt made on the old queen was amazing. Coco Salas was one of those cases that are totally thin and bony yet have a huge potbelly. Right in the middle of that ironing-board figure there bulged a
big round mound—
she looked like a boa constrictor that had swallowed a whole chicken. And what that potbelly blooming so unexpectedly out of that sack of bones did was, it made Coco’s ugliness even uglier. But
now!
—now that marvelous belt did away with the bulge, or at least held it in a bit. Coco Salas still looked like a boa constrictor (a bald, skinny boa constrictor standing on its tail, “the garter snake from Holguín,” as Delfín Proust had called her), but now a ringed one, without that disfiguring bulge. But it wasn’t just that the belt favored her physically; it also did her a world of good emotionally, and it
had
to help in the pecking order. After all, it had been a gift from Halisia Jalonzo, the world’s primeríssima prima ballerina (that was what the island newspapers said) and intimate friend of Fifo. Oh, what a terrible blow it would be to Coco’s friends and foes alike (and in the life of a queen they were almost
always
alike) when she showed up in public with that wonderful belt. And as for the men—how would they ever be able to resist her? How could she not be the center of attention with those brightly gleaming harness rings?
I bought it right across the street from the cathedral in Segovia,
Halisia had told her;
between you and me, I think it has magical powers, my dear, because the same day I bought it, La Pasionaria keeled over and died. Put it on, Coco darling—you’ll knock ’em dead.

And that same night, Coco Salas cinched the belt tight around his waist and (almost unable to breathe) headed for Coney Island. When she made her entrance at the Coney Island Amusement Park in Mariano, even Ye-Ye (Miss PornoPop to you, Mary), who in her own special way was the most sophisticated queen in the world, had to put her cruising on autopilot for a minute and inspect that belt; even the Flower Boys, who were there to be looked at, not to look, looked. Hiram, La Reine des Araignées, who was up on a dais choosing the prettiest of the teenagers, those who would take part in Fifo’s private party for all the high muckety-mucks in the government, paused for a moment in her probing, testing, and speechmaking to gaze upon the luminescent apparition. And she, Coco Salas, walked regally down the rank of gorgeous boys picked out by Delfín Proust and elbowed her way into the crowd where even Eachurbod, indefatigably searching for a man, halted for a moment in her eyelash-fluttering to contemplate the leather-queen bound by that
devastatingly
butch belt. Even the hustlers from Sandy Creek made a mute but unmistakable (and
very
masculine) gesture. Peerless Gorialdo cupped his balls when the queen passed by. But Coco Salas continued onward, rigidly at attention (the belt kept her from walking any other way), through the multitude that parted as it gazed in wonder at her wonderfulness. The Dowager Duchess de Valero, La Reine, Divinely Malign, and SuperSatanic put their chicanery and machinations on hold to stand in petrified amazement as Coco martially marched past in her marvelous belt. Heavens, and when Mayoya, unable to contain her curiosity, asked Coco where
on earth
she’d found such a belt, and Coco told her it was a gift from Halisia, a thousand fairies and assorted queens, including La Reine des Araignées and the Dowager Duchess de Valero, bowed in reverent respect before the boa constrictor honored by the witch. But the boa constrictor honored by the dancing hag continued her progress through all of Coney Island without a moment’s pause at any compliment, wink, or whistle, or even the obvious erotic gestures made by the most
stunning
pistol-packers. One could only assume that she felt there was no one at Coney Island worthy of screwing a queen who possessed such a glamorous girdle.
My grandeur prevents me from fraternizing with anyone who is not of the stature of my belt,
Coco said to herself (though she was unable to swell with pride as she’d have wished, since the belt was fairly strangling her). And she continued walking through the crowd of inferior creatures clad in their rustic clothes and plastic belts. It was only toward midnight, in one of the most out-of-the-way places in the park, that the regal personage discovered a love god worthy of her light-emitting harness rings. But the love god, precisely because he was God, didn’t so much as look at her. The queen, making the belt clank even more and rubbing the rings to make them shine all the brighter (in fact, they now seemed to emit bolts of lightning), circled the apparently unimpressed love god several times, but to no avail. He just kept looking off toward the Ferris wheel, whose revolutions traced rings of light in the dark sky.
This cannot be,
said the queen to herself,
that I, the protegée of Halisia Jalonzo, with this wonderful belt on, should be ignored.
And at that, all asparkle, she approached the love god. The love god was one of those sophisticated, breathtaking,
irresistible
street thugs, a child of sixteen with a body, face, and hair that would have made Antinous himself turn green with envy. Yet no one in the multitudinous world of Pansyland had ever known that delicious boy to have anything to do with fairies. The sweet young hunk’s reputation was such that he became known as the White Angel of Marianao. But a queen wearing that marvelous belt was not some mere mortal queen, she was a love goddess in her own right, and there was no way she was going to be intimidated by an angel. And so, my dear, without preamble, she planted herself before that angel and spoke these wingèd words: “You can follow me if you want to. I’m going into that stand of palm trees over there.” It was the command of a crown princess whose sweet loins were set off by a sparkling girdle. And without looking back, Coco Salas walked with poise and serenity into the stand of palm trees. She stopped beside a tree and turned. In the light of the powerfully gleaming harness rings that cinched the girdle to her waist, she saw the Angel of Marianao approaching. Few were the words spoken.
The gods have ways of understanding one another,
said the love goddess to herself. And swiftly she began unbuttoning the God’s shirt (since she had already capitalized Him), unbuckled his plastic belt (bought with an H-190 ration coupon), and weighed his celestial attributes in her cupped hand. Coco started to bow down before those divine dimensions to bestow a kiss upon them, but her glamorous girdle would not allow it. And taking off her belt was like asking Elizabeth Regina to remove her crown. Coco, loco, imprisoned by her belt, continued to caress the angel’s divine prepuce, which swelled ever larger by the moment.
Turn around, I want to stick it to you,
the angel said to the love goddess, who twinkled within the palm grove like some huge lightning bug. And the queen turned, and the angel began to embrace her from behind.
You turn me on, bitch,
said the angel, and the love goddess thought she was going to melt.
Come on, let me stick it to you,
the angel insisted as he fumbled at that glorious belt and tried to push her pants down.
No,
said the love goddess, making a supreme effort,
I don’t want you to take my belt off.
 . . .
Well, I can’t do anything with it on,
the angel said, his celestial member pointing straight as an arrow at her heart.
And besides, with all that sparkling, somebody’ll see us.
And the love goddess, swayed by such persuasive suasion, allowed the angel to unbuckle the magnificent belt and pull down her pants.
Get down on your hands and knees,
the angel begged her, a tremulous hitch in his voice, and the queen of queens could not refuse a request so sublime. And so on all fours under the palm trees, she knelt in readiness for the angelic benediction (with a capital Dick). But then, across her naked buttocks waiting expectantly, tremblingly, for the scepter of the love god, there exploded
a horrible pain!
What’s happening!? shrieked Coco, and she saw the angel holding her wondrous belt by one end and raising it to deliver yet another mortal blow. The angel was thrashing the queen of queens with the gleaming buckle of her glorious belt. Coco Salas tried to run away, but with her pants around her ankles it was hard to do—the only thing she could manage was to scurry away on all fours. And so hoist, as it were, by her own petard, she desperately (agonizingly slowly) scrambled toward Coney Island while the two huge luminescent harness rings pummeled her pained and reddened buttocks. With ever-increasing fury, the angel, a.k.a. Lisa’s Tatica, lashed her—until the four-legged love goddess could finally manage to reach the lights. And then the gorgeous boy put on the belt and walked away. The bloody, bowed, and belted (though disbelted) love goddess, once more sporting an enormous round potbelly, pulled herself to her feet on a fence—the fence that surrounded the Ferris wheel, which was still making radiant circles in the sky.

Reinaldo put the finishing touches on the story of Coco Salas’ belt and smiled; then he lay back once more, his head on the manuscript that lay atop his swim fins. Skunk in a Funk gave a quick look down the wooden bridge she was sunning on, writing on, resting on, and cruising on, and took an inventory of the more than a hundred fairies that had gaggled together on it. Over there were the Three Weird Sisters knitting endless pullovers, underwear, and bathing suits with which they attempted to seduce the beachgoers. And a little farther on were Miguel Barniz showing off his misshapen body and César Lapa, the Mulatto of Fire, making those grotesque gestures that she thought were
divine.
Making up the predictable coven over that way were the Duchess, Sanjuro, La Reine des Araignées, Uglíssima, and SuperSatanic talking about Carita Montiel’s last movie, which they’d just seen. Poor creatures, thought Skunk in a Funk, they think that old movie from the seventies is
le dernier cri
—why, I bet they don’t even know that Carita’s dead, I think at the age of a hundred and twelve. In a little corner of the bridge the Dowager Duchess de Valero was chatting with Teodoro Tampon, Clara Mortera, SuperChelo, and Carlitos Olivares, the Most In-Your-Face Queen in Cuba (a title he wore on his wing, I mean sleeve). In another nook, somewhat removed from the rest—oh dear!—the Ogress was exposing her scabs and bulges to the sun. And way over there were Tomasito the Goya-Girl, the Brontë Sisters, the cunning Mahoma, and the Siamísima Twins Brielíssima and Singadíssima, joined at the navel. At that horrid sight, Skunk in a Funk (who wanted to go on thinking about her novel, not get involved in stupid chatter) hid her face in her arms and rested, her head on the manuscript of her novel and her beloved swim fins. The fierce sun of summer made her drowsy. When she awoke, an angel was hovering before her eyes. It was a
gorgeous
boy, of harmonious hunklike proportions, with curly yellow hair and sweet nostalgic eyes and a towel over his shoulder. It was (dare I say it?) Lisa’s Tatica, the White Angel of Marianao. So lovely was this teenage creature that no one could tell by looking at him, not even those few people who
knew
him, that he was a common (and
common,
my dear) thief. That’s how such a chaste and angelic myth had been able to grow up around him—he didn’t look like the thug he was. The dreamboat gazed at Skunk in a Funk so tenderly that she simply
had
to sit up on the edge of the bridge and say hello.
How’s it going,
Skunk in a Funk said to him, trying to control her nervousness at being in the presence of such a vision of delight.
Kinda boring,
said Cinderella’s Prince,
the only interesting kid around here is you, the rest of ’em just chatter away.
Omigod! The Fair-Haired Child had called Skunk in a Funk, that hunchbacked old thing, a
kid!
And Skunk in a Funk fell for it. Oh yes, she was a kid, a guy, a young hunk who could still run up the Mount of the Cross without getting winded, the way she’d done thirty years ago. But Gabriel, out of the past, rushed to Skunk in a Funk’s rescue. He made her see herself the way she was now—an old queen lying spread-eagled on a bridge at Patrice Lumumba Beach, looking glassy-eyed and openmouthed at the beckoning bulge that bulged
for what seemed like miles
in the almost transparent bathing suit of a common criminal. Oh, but the common criminal had scooted a little closer to Skunk in a Funk, and while he stretched his lovely legs, brushing Skunk in a Funk’s legs as he did so, his voice grew ever more intimate.
Nobody knows how lonely I feel,
the thieving angel murmured,
it’s so hard to find anybody you feel like you can talk to. . . . I wish I had a friend, a real friend, somebody that didn’t just want to go to bed with me. . . .
Don’t pay any attention! Reinaldo shouted at Skunk in a Funk from somewhere deep inside Skunk in a Funk herself. Don’t be an idiot, just keep working on our novel! . . . But the diabolical angel, with his increasingly angelic smile, asked Skunk in a Funk if he could stay there a while, next to her.
No!
shouted Gabriel from Holguín.
Tell him you’re not buying any of this bullshit,
Reinaldo whispered from down inside. Of course you can stay here, Skunk in a Funk replied. It’s a free country. Thanks, answered the angel, who stretched out facedown (the whole hunky length of him) alongside Skunk in a Funk. Look at him there, all gold and honey, life force radiating forth from him like a beacon, bubbling forth like a fountain of youth before your bulging eyes. He’s dozed off. He’s closed his eyes and dozed off, safe in the assurance that you will watch over his sleep and guard his lovely white towel. His lo-o-ong eyelashes have fluttered closed like the wings of some fantastic bird. And the queen watches over the sleep of the Golden Prince, and naturally she makes sure nobody runs off with his towel, she protects him from the thuggish looks and vulgar pawings of Peerless Gorialdo and the notorious chickenhawks of Arroyo Naranjo, who pass dangerously close to the towel several times. Oh, she is the Fairy Guardmother watching over the Angel’s sleep, property, and life—that snow-white angel who had so innocently trusted in her, the monstrous Skunk in a Funk. She saw it now—reality contradicted what she herself had written about this man-child. How could such a sweet teenager be bad—he was Goodness itself, that’s what he was, a poor misunderstood kid, a jewel in the rough, perhaps a great poet in a mud puddle. The angel slept for more than an hour under Skunk in a Funk’s watchful eye. By the time he woke up, Skunk in a Funk had already planned how she would invite him up to her room, over there, near the beach; they would talk like real friends, none of that wanna-do-it stuff. She and the Golden Boy would traverse the trash heap of life together; they would do battle together against the world. She would defend her Prince against the terrible chickenhawks that wanted to rape him, against the queens that wanted to swallow him whole. No one would harm her Angel; she would take care of him. Maybe—why not?—in a gesture of brotherhood she would kiss his balls once in a while. Uh-huh, but that was all, that was all, and then she would rock him to sleep. Oh, maybe, if the man-child absolutely
insisted,
she would kiss his prick. Uh-huh, but that was all, that was all. All right, maybe, when the poor creature couldn’t bear the suffering of the world any longer, she would lie down beside him, kiss him ever so delicately, and allow herself to be ravaged by the Boy-Prince, to prove to him that he was not alone in the world. Uh-huh, she might do that, but that was all, that was all. Other times, giving in to the constant pleadings of the Princely Hunk, she would rear back, rock back against him as fast as she could and be skewered by the child, and they would live that way, forming a single harmony of coupling, for year after year. Uh-huh, but that was all. . . . Adaze in these erotico-domestic meditations was Skunk in a Funk when the Golden Boy, springing up so fast she couldn’t figure out what was happening, pulled on her brand-new swim fins and dived into the water, vanishing as if by magic. Skunk in a Funk, unable to
conceive
that the Child of Glory, whom she had just been so tenderly watching over, was capable of such a thing, looked out at the ocean expecting to see the young man leap out of the water and return to her side. But Tatica, swimming underwater, was not coming back; he was swimming away (with the swim fins) as fast as he could swim. When Skunk in a Funk came to her senses, she realized that she was sitting all by herself on the wooden bridge at Patrice Lumumba Beach beside the only thing the Golden Boy had left her to remember him by—an old, holey, shit-covered towel. Skunk in a Funk looked around and saw all the fairies and queens that she knew so well—her natural enemies—making sarcastic remarks; some were falling on the ground, they found it all so hilarious. All of them were laughing at the queen who had just been made a fool of. . . . But even if it was too late to save the swim fins, it wasn’t too late to save some face. And so Skunk in a Funk stood up on the bridge and called out to Tatica as though he were swimming along underwater right there underneath the bridge—
Tatica, honey, I’m tired, I’ll wait for you in my room. I’ll take your towel so these thieves all over the place won’t steal it. . . .
And with the graceful and self-assured air of a true lady, and carrying the shit-stained towel as though it were the scepter of a real-life queen, Skunk in a Funk made her way through the cackling and camping and retired from the beach. But oh, my dear, when she stepped off Patrice Lumumba Beach, she realized that she had forgotten the manuscript of her novel—she’d left it on the bridge. Reinaldo ran like the wind back to the beach. There were the other faggots, laughing like hyenas, but the manuscript was nowhere to be seen. How could he question those pansies, it would be so humiliating. Besides—if they had taken the novel it was only logical to think that they wouldn’t give it back to him. Gabriel looked desperately down into the water under the bridge, expecting to see pages of the manuscript floating there, because there hadn’t been time for it to sink entirely. But not the slightest sign of it. So Skunk in a Funk arrived at the unfair conclusion that that evil Tatica himself, out of sheer innate malignity, had stolen her novel, too, just to spite her. . . . But she couldn’t show her dejection in front of this pack of cackling fairies that were watching her consternation from the bridge, fluttering their wings and feathers. Even Oscar was frenziedly beating his huge beat-up wings, like some great vampire bat. And so, screwing up her courage, and putting her best face forward, and smiling like the trouper that she was, Skunk in a Funk walked over to the railing and called out to Tatica once more as though the Golden Boy were right there, swimming among the piles of the bridge:
Oh, and thanks for remembering to throw out the paper I was writing on, the way I asked you to. I was telling the story of all my friends, and it could have done a good deal of damage. Thanks for being so understanding, sweetheart. . . .
And even more regally than before, Skunk in a Funk walked off the bridge and off the beach.