Twilight at the Equator: A Novel

5. The Day Carmen Maura Kissed Me

5 The Day Carmen Maura Kissed Me I was on my way to the Algonquin Hotel to have a drink with my friend Luis whom I hadn't seen in several years. It was 4 P.M. in mid-June, and looking up the vertical canyons of midtown Manhattan , I saw a lead-colored, spooky mist engulfing the tops of the skyscrapers, threatening rain. As I passed Sardi's, my eyes snapped a group composition made of three men, TV cameras, and a woman. Living as I do in Times Square, I've become used to TV crews filming in the neighborhood around the clock. But the reason I slowed down my pace was that there were no curious people hanging around this particular TV crew. The four people were not students, either-they were people my age. I noticed, too, they spoke in Castilian Spanish. Then, to my utter astonishment, I saw her: la divina Carmen Maura, as my friends and I called her. Almodovar's superstar diva was taping a program with these men outside Sardi's. It's not like I'm not used to seeing movie stars in the flesh. O'Donnell's Bar, downstairs from where I live, rents frequently as a movie set. Just last week, coming home, I ran into AI Pacino filming in the cavernous watering hole. You could say I'm star-struck, though; and I'm the first to admit it was my love of the movies that lured me to America. But after ten years on Eighth Avenue and Forty-third Street, I'm a jaded dude. Carmen Maura, however, was something else. She was my favorite contemporary actress. I looked forward to her roles with the avidity of someone whose unadventurous life needs the vicarious thrills of the movies in order to feel fully alive. I adored her as Tina, the transsexual stage actress in Law of Desire. But what immortal- ized her in my pantheon of the divine was that moment in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown when, putting on a perfectly straight Buster Keaton face, she orders the girl with the cubist profile to serve spiked gazpacho to everyone in her living room. After I saw the movie, I fantasized carrying with me a thermos of gazpacho to offer a cup to (and put out of circulation) all the boring and obnoxious people I encountered in my humdrum routines. Carmen stood on the sidewalk, under the restaurant's awning, speaking into a microphone, while the cameraman framed her face and Sardi's sign above her head. Riveted, I stood to the side of the men and diagonally from the star, forming a triangle. For a moment, I fantasized that I was directing the shoot. What's more, I felt jealous and resentful of the technicians working with Carmen. To me they seemed common, unglamorous, undeserving of existing within range of the star's aura. I stayed there, soaking in her presence, thinking of my friends' reactions when I shared the news with them. Momentarily there was a break in the shooting and, getting brazen, I felt compelled to talk to her. The fact that I was dressed up to meet Luis at the Algonquin helped my confidence. I was wearing what I call my golf shoes, a white jacket, a green Hawaiian shirt, and a white baseball cap that says Florida and shows two macaws kissing. Therefore, Carmen was unlikely to mistake me for a street bum. As I took two tentative steps in her direction, I removed my sunglasses so that she could read all the emotions painted on my face. I smiled. Carmen's eyes were so huge, liquid and fiery, that the rest of the world ceased to exist. For an instant I felt I existed alone in her tunnel vision. I saw her tense up, and an expression of bewilderment, unlike any I had seen her affect in the movies, showed in her face. Carmen exchanged looks with her men, who became very alert, ready to defend their star from any danger or awkwardness. "Carmen," I popped, in Spanish. "I love your movies. You've given me so much happiness and I want to thank you for it." The star's full-toothed smile took me aback. Her men smiled, too, and went back to loading their camera or whatever they were doing. "We're taping a...