Chapter Twenty-Two
Armando thrust Martillo back at arm’s length, still exclaiming his wonders. Then he caught the younger man’s gaze and turned, laughing. In Spanish, in a conspiratorial undertone, he said, “Ah yes, we both have triumphs to celebrate today. Let me introduce you to my own prize in this very same game.”
So Martillo’s emotions were a bit muddled as he leaned across the embroidered linen sabana to take Dancy’s hand. He had nothing he could say to her, just nodded his head to Armando’s effusive introduction. Dancy had recovered her poise at that point, and could clearly see that Martillo had not. Martillo felt like he might never recover, ever.
Seating Martillo in the extra chair, Armando was avuncular as he called for espresso and champagne. “I’m feeling fortunate here,” he beamed, “Watching a legend meet a goddess.”
Dancy batted eyes demurely, murmuring, “It’s always so stimulating to meet a legend in the flesh.”
Martillo simply sat and stared. She was talking about it. It was real. She was real. It was the damnedest thing that had ever happened to him. He just sat there and looked at her, while Armando chattered about some drivel involving boxing and Peruvian negotiations. She kept up her part of the conversation, too. He was stunned by each movement of the muscles and planes of her face. He could smell a constellation of odors coming off of her. Each affected him like a shot of Commemorativo, like a breath of pink cocaine. At times, he also spoke, said things to her and Armando. That’s what they were doing, sitting here talking. With each other. It was the damnedest thing ever. His dick was so hard it’s amazing he could close his eyes and his balls were drawn up so tight they should have just popped back up inside him. But that wasn’t what was really winding him up.
He had suddenly realized that he knew who she was. He’d seen her riding in the calandria beside him the day he started boxing for money, a woman beautiful as dawn, a solar blaze of gold. In that vision, he had ridden in front of the Hospices Cabanas with her, surrounded by mariachis and swirling colored skirts and fountains and fireworks. And then it had been more of a chariot, with her standing beside him in a chaste white and gold robe, he wearing laurels and golden armor, hearing the cheers, the olés, the adulation of the crowd. The very idea of that swept him back, standing in the ring with his arms raised, Dancy beside him, smiling up into a shower of flowers and coins. He realized, with a pummeling jolt, that she was exactly what he’d wanted all his life. And here she was. Smiling at him, remembering making love to him in Eden, but belonging to the last man in the world he could ever betray.
At some point Armando glanced at his watch and apologized, but it was important he make a call on the elaborate ship-to-shore rig in his office. “A little too bulky to bring out here to the table,” he smiled as he stepped away. “I’m sure you two can entertain each other here. Ask her about tennis. She’s pretty amazing.”
Martillo didn’t know from tennis, but he knew amazing. As soon as Armando was through the door, he turned the full intensity on Dancy, who didn’t quite know how to play this one, but certainly wanted to hear what he had to say.
If she’d been expecting anything coy or sophisticated from this trim, handsome guy with the tailored suit and Patek wristwatch, he disabused her instantly. He’d had fifteen minutes to react to the re-emergence and miraculous incarnation of the waterfall goddess and knew that the situation called for nothing less than a full declaration.
She couldn’t look away from his eyes as he leaned slightly toward her, his fists in his lap, and told her, “Now that I see you again I know what I want from life, what I have always wanted. I am in love with you. I burn for you. I am nothing without you. You are with Señor Lios Leyva now, I know that. And I could do nothing to shame him or you. But I don’t think you will always be his. I think things will change, the way things have brought you back to me twice already. And that someday I will be able to speak of my love for you and marry you in the Church.”
Dancy was speechless. She couldn’t very well just say Wow! to that. But what could she say? “First of all. Thank you very much. Nobody has ever said anything that strong and sweet to me in my entire life.”
Martillo waited, staring, not moving a follicle.
Dancy was treading as nicely as she knew how, and therefore lacerating him with every word. “You impress me. I want to know you better. You are a very beautiful man and you make love like…” An otter? A geyser? “…I don’t know. Wonderfully. I’ll never forget it.” She saw Martillo flinch slightly at the “never forget” line and mentally booted herself. Why not tell him you could be friends while you’re at it, Barbie? The demure was doing more harm than good. Putting him down, but not discouraging his affections. She leaned back in her chair, drew off to a distance.
“I didn’t know who you were. I just thought you were…well, frankly, I thought you were some sort of mythological spirit.” There was the Armani to consider, but still.
Martillo flamed up, so wrought that his hair seemed to be standing up like a cat’s. “Si! Exactly! That’s what I thought! What I still think!”
“That’s sweet, too. It was quite an afternoon, all right. But look, I’m going with your boss. And I don’t fuck the help. Even if they’re imaginary satyrs.”
Martillo deflated, his spirits moving back into himself, leaving his face wooden and flat. For the first time, Dancy thought of him not as Mexican, but as an Indian. Why hadn’t she seen it before? “I understand you,” he said. “You didn’t know what I was. You are the woman of Number One and have no time for Number Two.”
Dancy felt like patting his hand, somehow touching him. Because he was touching her. But she made no move, just said, “It’s not like that. I think you’re terrific. I hope I see a lot more of you. I really do. Do you understand?”
Martillo understood very well what second place was all about. It was losing, it was nowhere, it was hell. He’d never tolerated it for one second since the first time he’d stepped into a ring. You don’t get to retire undefeated by accepting defeat gracefully. But he just didn’t know how to fight something like this. He realized that winning her would be more difficult than any other prize he’d ever fought for; that this one would not be against somebody else, but his own loyalty and honor. A fight he couldn’t win, but couldn’t walk away from.
But he did try. He forced his eyes off her face, forced his knees to straighten and lift him away from the table, forced himself to turn around, to ignore the feel of her sitting there behind him, to lift one foot then the other and walk off the patio, down the stairs and out the front door. And he did it because he wanted to. He really did try.