The Last Night I Spent With You by Mayra Montero
Burbujas de Amor / Bubbles of Love
characters:
Celia
Fernando
Elena - their daughter, just married to a man Fernando doesn't like
Bermúdez - works with Fernando, well travelled
Marianito - Celia's father's cousin, who Fernando believes she slept with
Julieta - older woman on the cruise, birthmark between her legs, grey-haired, divorced, alone on the cruise
setting:
cruise ship
San Juan
plot:
Celia says to Fernando of her daughter, "She hasn't died . . . . She's gotten married - come to think of it, that may be worse" (1). They had planned to take this Caribbean cruise around when Elena went on her honeymoon so that they would not miss her too much, but Bermúdez had been sick and so the trip was put off. They have dreamed about the trip for half a lifetime, and will be stopping at places where no one else stops. "After all, which of our friends, even the best travelled among them, had ever bathed in the turbulent coves of Marie Galante? Not to mention a brief call at Antigua and the happy conclusion, the culminating moment of the trip, that would take place when we docked at Martinique" (2). Bermúdez has warned Fernando that Celia will lose her inhibitions on the cruise. Celia is three years older than Fernando and the youngest woman he has been with. Fernando had only ever cheated on Celia when she had been away caring for her sick father, and was filled with remorse on seeing her and Elena each time. Her father's illness had invigorated his daughter's libido, a change that fernando attributes to the father's cousin, Marianito, who he suspects sleeps with Celia while they both care for her father
In italics, a letter from to Angela asking her to imagine being in the Caribbean with the speaker. The letter is signed Abel.
Celia wakes up happy and singing as usual and goes to the pool. Her perfume reminds Fernando of a woman he had loved who attracted men by mixing cinnamon in her face power. He had been jealous when she had another man over and covered her sex with the mixture and licked it later, and she had taken revenge by saying that he had licked up the other man's come along with the powder. Fernando finds Celia at the pool with an older woman named Julieta who has a birthmark between her legs. He puts sunscreen on his wife and then on Julieta, fingering her for a moment as he does so. He swims in the pool, and that night the three go on shore together in San Juan and Celia brings them to a sushi restaurant that had been recommended onboard. Fernando comes while eating a vulva-like piece of sushi while Juliet rubs his ankle. On the way back to their rooms, she tells him to meet her the next day after breakfast in Lisbon 16.
Sabor a Mi / The Taste of Me
characters:
Valentina/Consuelo
Cristóbal/Eduardo
Augistín Conejo - hospital employee
setting:
cruise ship
entering port of Saint Thomas on Charlotte Amalie
plot:
Letter addressed to Darling - Abel swears that even if they are always apart, he is hers alone.
Celia, who has read about the same phenomena in Fernando's Psychology Today magazines, is turned on by proximity to death. On the morning her father dies she is in bed with Agustín Conejo and does not answer Marianito's calls for her to come and help him because Agustín makes her stay and have sex with him. When she and the doctor arrive at her father's room it is too late. She feels is bleeding from anal sex and suspects that Marianito knows and is jealous. She sleeps with Agustín Gonejo a last time after the funeral and ends their relationship.
Celia thinks that Julieta is lying about her name and all the details of her life. She has thought of writing a story about baker named Consuelo who spends her life savings on a cruise where she lies about her identity, calling herself Valentina. Another man on the cruise, a movie ticket cashier named Eduardo, does the same thing and calls himself Cristóbal. They have a passionate and violent affair. In one ending, Consuela returns to her normal life and sees Eduardo when she goes to check about a wedding cake order that turns out to be for his daughter, and she writes "I will die with Cristóbal" on the cake (29). In another, Consuela goes to the movies where she sees Eduardo. She waits for him in the theatre but another man comes instead, and when she is kicked out of the theatre for lewd conduct she writes in lipstick on the cashier's window "I will devour your pubis, Valentina" (31). Fernando likes neither ending and wants the couple to die onboard as a result of their affair, and Celia never writes the story. Celia has noticed Fernando's attraction to Julieta but before she can say anything about it he distracts her with sex.
Letter addressed to Angela - Abel says that a woman staying with him is only a distant relative who's staying for the few months she needs to finish a book about animal sex.
As the ship approaches Charlotte Amalie, Celia sees huts and imagines black men in them with their arms around contented black women. She thinks she would like to trade places with a black woman. Celia describes the evolution of her affair with Augustín, who worked in the hospital where her father was. SHe had at first found him repellant but had started having sex with him in the bathroom of her father's hospital room and then at her father's house when she went home to eat, put Elena to bed and sleep. There is a nine-month hiatus in their relationship while Celia's father is well, and when he comes back is passionate and she finds that Marianito now also has a nightly visitor, a nighttime ambulance driver named Gustavo (Tavi to his friends) who studies nursing during the day.
Negra Consentida / Darling Black Girl
characters:
setting:
cruise ship, Charlotte Amaile
plot:
Celia has told Fernando about waking up with the lightening in the morning and going to the deck and thinking that she wants to be a black woman. She doesn't look well and Fernando puts her in the shower, and when she comes out she looks like she's aged years. Celia mentions Marianito, saying that Fernando met him at her father's funeral (Fernando had been in bed with kidney stones for the funeral, so this annoys him), and mentions that Marianito is gay. Fernando feels sick and has a fear of having a heart attack that only Julieta's sex can save him from. Celia insists on going to the beach that day and again brings up the subject of sleeping with blacks, asking whether Fernando has ever slept with a black man. He talks to her while imagining that the depraved Julieta must have slept with a black man. A band has been engaged for the trip from Charlotte Amaile to Antigua, and the captain announces that there will be dancing that night and the band will play boleros.
In a letter addressed to "Angela of my soul" Abel thanks her for a bolero record and dedication and describes how he imagines kissing her.
Amor, qué malo eres / Love, How Evil You Are
characters:
setting:
cruise ship
Antigua
past - Celia's father's house
plot:
Celia had told Agustín that she was ready for anything, and he had taken her to a fast food restaurant and told her that he wanted her to do to him two things that no one else ever had. He comes to her house that night with a dildo and says that he wants her to lick his anus and use the dildo to penetrate him. She hesitates, but then agrees.
Abel describes a tiny island named Marie Galante and asks Angela whether she will run away with him.
Celia describes Antigua and its strangeness. The night before she had made Fernando leave the dancing early, claiming a headache even though she did not want to leave herself, because of how attached Julieta had seemed to him. Celia reflects on how her life seems in some way sustained and organized by "a music, in my case, that appears and disappears in culminating moments, melodies that come and go in our minds to let us know that one phase is over and the next is about to begin" (53-4). Fernando turns pale and feels sick while onshore in Antigua, and on the way back to the dock Fernando, Celia and Julieta see a cow butchered by a man who drinks the blood straight from its neck. Julieta links the incident to the rape of sea cows by fishermen in Mombasa, a story Fernando picks up in National Geographic and only talks about in bed. Fernando mentions Elena in passing and Celia realizes she has no desire to return home. Celia says that the cruise is changing her and Fernando contends that it isn't the cruise but Antigua that has disturbed all three of them (Celia, himself and Julieta).
A letter addressed to "Woman, divine woman" - Abel recounts how excited his visitor is to discover that a recent conference on the subject has revealed that prickly animals mate by touching only their genitals together.
Celia refuses to lick Agustín's anus despite his argument that neither of them will forget it, but she does it and it is not as bad as she thought, and while she is using the dildo she asks whether he likes it and says that she loves him. He says he is about to come and "if I'm not a bad girl, if I drink it all up, if I swallow it all up, then he, then he too, then he'll love me too" (62).
Nosotros / The Two of Us
characters:
setting:
cruise ship
Guadalupe
approaching Marie Galante
plot:
Fernando brings cinnamon sticks to Julieta that he wants to use during sex, and tells her that a man who does that morning was just forty-six, younger than them. Julieta comments on how people abuse their bodies on cruise ships by just eating and having sex, and mentions the love bites on all the old people, but Fernando points out that this man was a fit young engineer. Fernando, Julieta and Celia had gone onboard at Guadalupe after the death and Julieta had been desperate to get close to Fernando. Celia leaves them at a market filled with cinnamon, saying that she's desperate to get to the water, and Fernando buys Julieta a necklace then has sex with her in a stairway at DOCTEUR CLAUDE, REPARATION DE CHAUSSURES. That night Fernando had been unable to sleep and had gone to Julieta's door, which is why he is in her room now. She calls the cinnamon sticks idea a perversion and suggests an aphrodisiac liquor she has bought at Pointe-á-Pitre instead. Julieta has been lying about her past - she only told Celia about grandchildren because it was what she wanted to hear - and says that she was only married once briefly to a violinist and that her great love had been a trumpeter who played in a bolero orchestra and had come to her for lessons on the harp. The trumpeter died in an accident, and Julieta says that she is here to see the place where he died falling into "the maw of the the Great Abyss" on Marie Galante. She tells Fernando to leave. He pours the liquor on her genitals and kisses them, and she gives him the cinnamon sticks and says, "Now fuck my brains out" (75).
Vereda Tropical
characters:
boat captain
setting:
Gosier beach, Guadeloupe
plot:
Celia takes a bus to Gosier beach, where she buys a pin from a saleswoman who tells her that the island she sees in the distance is Ilet du Gosier and where to catch a boat to it. She is seasick on the crossing, and when she arrives the captain of the boat signals for her to wait and carries her on his shoulders to the shore. As he is putting her down she remembers the face of the cruise member who had died that morning, and becomes aroused. The captain brings her to a secluded beach where he tells her to go into the water. He starts touching her in the water, and then has sex with her on the beach. He is impressively endowed and afterward Celia is "bleeding like a virgin" (86). They return to Gosier and go to a bar called Victor Hughes. "I said good-bye, kissing him on the mouth, the implacable steak of those lips, a tongue he no longer denied me, teeth that remained in my flesh so I would remember his taste that night, remember it the next night, remember it now and at the hour of my death and for all the nights I would live without him" (86).
In a letter addressed to "Soul of vanity" Abel says that the foreigner has told her the fleas on a rabbit wait until the rabbit copulates to do so themselves. Abel wishes to be with her on a desert island away from her husband's tantrums and the foreigner's disgusting stories.
Somos / We Are
characters:
setting:
Club Raissa, Rue de la Marine, Marie Galante
plot:
Celia had come back to the cabin looking tired and smelling bad with scratches on her skin, and Fernando had asked her to take a shower before going to sleep. He has dinner alone with Julieta, and when he gets back Celia has fallen asleep without taking a shower. At dinner Julieta mentions that the name of her trumpeter lover was Agustín Conejo. That night he stays with Julieta and tells her stories about animals' sex. The next day Celia stays on the boat while Julieta and Fernando go ashore. He finds a taxi to drive them to the Great Abyss, and Julieta is sick on the way up and then faints after the hike. On the way back, Fernando begins touching Julieta and then shows her genitals to the driver, who pulls over and has sex with Julieta in the back seat while Fernando watches and masturbates. Julieta and Fernando go to bar where she calls him a pig and he tells her that now that he's seen her with a black man he wants to see her with a black woman as well.
In a letter to Angela, Abel says that the foreigner (they call her Mickey because she looks like a mouse) tells their messenger (the boy who carries Abel's letters to Angela) explicit information about animal sex. Abel has suggested to the boy that should anyone ask him where he learned these things he should say that he read them in National Geographic.
Fernando wakes up with Celia asking how he feels after his heart attack. She thought that he had been having a bad dream about a heart attack, but he says that he has been dreaming about Angela the beautiful. Angela the beautiful is his grandmother, and as a child he had brought messages to her from her lover Marina (these letters were signed "Abel") and listened with her to the boleros that were a part of her romance. Fernando asks Celia how long he has been sleeping, and remembers having been thrown out of the bar he was at with Julieta after having said he suspected it was a front and made a scene. Celia informs him that he had returned to the boat with Julieta and two blacks and that Julieta had gone back to the island to stay forever.
Fernando is at a bar in Fort-de-France with Celia. Celia asks how many times Fernando has slept with Julieta and he tells her, and then she pulls out a letter Julieta has left. He knows that he can either tear it up or give it to Celia to read herself. Celia opens the envelope and tears the letter into pieces, saying that Julieta was not a harpist.
The ship sails despite some warning of a hurricane, and Fernando and Celia talk about Elena and avoid the subject of Julieta. Later Celia tells Fernando that the trumpeter didn't die in the Abyss but lives with Julieta and has been married to her for ten years. Celia mentions that Julieta is not even the woman's real name, and Fernando, asking whether the letter mentioned the name of the trumpeter (Agusín Conejo) is about to tell her.
La última noche que pasé contigo / The Last Night I Spent with You
A letter to Angela describes the inception of Marina's affair with the foreigner, whose name is Julieta, and tells how one day Marina says to Angela's grandson that there is no letter. The letter, which the speaker says she probably will not send, says of the young Fernando, "I'd like to think that he too, at the end of his life, will try to consume his fears in the impossible vertigo of a late passion, that he will know how to treasure those moments, that the memory of a redeeming afternoon, the brilliant memory of an afternoon of love, will become in his mind the memory of a last night of passionate love, the nighthe may not have spent with anyone, the same one I never, ever spent with you . . . " (115).