La Mora

Would I find La Mora?

For days I’d been stalking Sunset Blvd, circling Echo Park Lake, poking around the Peking ducks hanging in Chinatown markets. And yet, no sign of her buttery suede boots, the waterfall of black hair, the parachute linen shirt she belted into a dress.

A week earlier I’d been in Stories' back patio, hiding behind a surgical mask and black shades, fighting my way through Yuri Herrera’s Transmigración de los Cuerpos when La Mora paused at my table.

“I adore Yuri,” she said. I looked up and there she stood: unmasked, unwashed, a Benson and Hedges burning between her berry-stained lips. She dropped into the chair beside me, ashed, leaned in. “Are you Mexican?”

“I wish,” I said, removing my mask. “Just a neurotic gringo.”

“Oh, I love the Jews,” she said and without a word drained the beer sweating beside Herrera. Depending on where the light fell La Mora was either hideous or gorgeous, I couldn’t tell, maybe she was both. Either way she possessed a charming tic of pausing mid-sentence to pull out a small black notebook and jot down whatever had popped into her mind. It was a Moleskine, which only added to her cosmopolitan flair, I concluded as she bandied the notebook shut. Anyway, mi gringuito judio, La Mora continued, blowing smoke towards the sorbet sky. She cracked a crook’s smile. "I’ve just arrived from Mexico City, it’s Friday evening, the weather’s delicious. What’s our plan?"

And like that I was hooked. What can I say? I’ve always had a thing for women who expressed a crumb of interest in me.

From Stories we strolled the lake, watching couples splash around in the swan-shaped paddle boats. She craved duck and I picked one up from Hop Louie and then went back to my craftsman in Highland Park and for the following 48 hours did little beyond drink and eat and read. La Mora soaked in my clawfoot tub, books stacked on the floor. From the living room, I’d watch her fish one up in her long nails, gut a few pages and toss it back to the wet tiles. La Mora tore through them until she bit into Herrera, scratching notes in the margins on the couch, highlighting passages at the table, breaking its spine in my bed.

La Mora was in town with some collector or artist or maybe some writer. In the afternoons while I fixed her a salad, she’d tap away on my laptop or make calls from my phone and by sunset on Sunday she knew all my secrets, passwords, even in which dresser I stashed a $20,000 fortune for emergencies. I never could open my mouth without telling all. I couldn’t keep track of her story, just that I liked the way she spun it, making me feel like I was its main character.

Monday I woke early, scrubbed away the weekend and pecked La Mora goodbye.

On the counter I left a key and tore out a page from her Moleskine. Back around 6pm, I wrote.

At work I opened my phone to text La Mora and realized that in the affair’s swoon, I hadn’t asked her Instagram, number, name. When was the last time I’d let myself melt like this into a woman?

The day ground on. I hit the gym and waited for La Mora to follow me or call me or I don’t know, but I’m sure I’d mentioned my details. On the way home, I picked up natural wine and keyed open the front door.

"I’m back," I called.

Of course, my house was empty. Laptop gone. The bricks of money taped to the ribcage of my dresser missing. At least she’d had the decency to slide the drawers back into place.

On the counter I found the abused copy of Transmigración de los Cuerpos and the note I’d left La Mora that morning. Beneath my writing was her’s.

Hola mi Gringuito Judio, 

Thanks for the weekend. Eat something, the duck’s not bad. Don’t hate me.

Besos, 

La Mora