Caraqueñas I: Colette is the woman in power

The Caraqueñan breeze heralds Colette’s presence before she appears at the door of El Carso. Anabella scans the dining room, locating a suitable table for the client that inspires such discomfort among the regular clientele. Colette Varela represents everything they hate: an intelligent fifty-something feminist in a position of power. Anabella is comforted and even encouraged by women of such strength and determination; they are an example of female success in a male dominated society, and Anabella likes Colette, personally, because she remembers her name.

“Buenas tardes, Señora Valera,”

“Hola Anabella,”

“Follow me,” says Anabella, leading the way to a square table big enough for four people located in the center of the dining room. Colette maneuvers through El Carso like a German tank crossing a golf course. She looks even larger against the beautifully delicate figure of the hostess.

“Gracias, I am waiting for one other person,” she says loudly.

“Si Señora,’ responds Anabella, heading back to the podium, smiling privately at the power and force behind an indomitable woman.

Colette looks around condescendingly, chucking her Coach bag on the empty seat. A substantial flab of skin jiggles when she raises her prodigious arm to snap snap at the supervising waiter and order a bottle of 18 year old Chivas Regal and two glasses with ice; a treat that comes out of the taxpayer’s money. Originally of low middleclass background, Colette acquired an undergraduate degree in engineering from Universidad Central de Venezuela and worked for the national telecommunications monster CANTV. Her trajectory through the corporate ladder was met with resistance from upper-class men, accustomed to seeing women in secretarial and marketing assistant positions, but not as leaders. Her bad experiences ignited a twofold resentment of the Venezuelan men, specifically, and Venezuelan oligarchy, in general. In her spare time, she volunteered for the presidential campaign of a new candidate called Hugo Chavez Frias. The socialist ideals spread through the popular imagination and resulted in overwhelming victory for Chavez in 1998, placing Colette in the inner circle of important contributors who made the victory happen. Colette left CANTV and was assigned an important position working with the government, making it possible for her to punish the group that had tried to extinguish her professional career. Years of corporate expertise, an incorruptible devotion to the socialist agenda and female wrath makes her a formidable enemy. She is now the top engineer of Caracas, the capital, and the final word in everything pertaining to building and remodeling permits. Venezuelan men hate her because she has them by the balls.

The waiter places a steel ice bucket with tongs, two short glasses and the bottle of scotch in the center of the table. He prepares the first drink, filling the glass with ice to the rim and pouring the scotch expertly from the bottle.

“Aqui Patricia!” yells Colette at another woman just entering the establishment.

The second lady approaches the table and parks her broad behind on a seat facing the door.

After the usual pleasantries of kisses and exuberant laughs, they work on the bottle of Chivas Regal in conjunction; first sipping and refreshing the glasses and then gulping and pouring, having no patience to wait for the waiter after the second round. Unhinged businessmen orbit the table, eventually gathering the courage to approach and enquire after a certain construction permit, the processing time of a document or the fate of a wayward file.

Colette looks up from her conversation, to the valiant visitor and answers: “I’ve been looking for a place on the beach” or “I’ve never been to Thailand,” and smiles. Colette’s naiveté about honest work dissipated when she grasped the potential behind power bullying. She is just the current beneficiary of a longstanding history in the trafficking of influences, a skill that has become an art form for the powerful people in countries with tropical climate. What these upper-class idiots hate is that she is honest about stealing, she is not hiding it. Both women get pleasure from seeing astonishment on the faces of these confident men and laugh boisterously when they retreat, crest-fallen, muttering under their voices something or other about the unfortunate state of the nation.

“Hipocritas,” Colette declares to her friend.

Slowly, wealthy white men decide to brave the rush-hour traffic rather than stay another minute watching the two women drink “their” money away. They’re overcome by the force of a single lady that breaks too many standards and is fueled by too much resent. Her presence disrupts their space because she is not poor or pregnant, she is not economically dependent, she is not lonely or confined to a prison, she has not been excluded from their social circle and she is not beautiful or sexually desirable. She is everything but the typical Caraqueña.

Not long before last call at 8pm, Colette and Patricia pay their bill. Patricia leaves abruptly, without goodbyes, crashing against the unruly chairs that block her path on the way out the door. Patiently, Colette shuffles through her purse until she finds a wad of bills which she distributes between the waiter, the bus boy, the barman and the hostess. Colette is the best tipper, better than the men who have been frequenting El Carso for decades. At the door an old decrepit lady waits to hand her a rose.

“How many flowers do you have left Socorro?”

“Five, no six” says the old lady, as she fingers through individually wrapped roses already dry and turning dark brown.

“For all my boyfriends,” says Colette handing Socorro a pack of bills while taking all six roses.

“Tonight you go home early mi viejita.”

“Gracias, mi hija.”