99 Days

by Jessica Galera Andreu

  He took his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes, exasperated, I supposed, at my insistence. It was evident that he did not know me well enough if he thought I had just given up. I walked up to his motorcycle and sat on the saddle. He gave me a long look and, while he shook his head, he entered the house, closing the door. For a moment I doubted whether he had gone to get dressed or whether he had decided to ignore me and go to sleep, although I assumed that if he did this he would deign to invite me to leave his property instead of leaving me there all night as if I were a garden gnome. Fortunately, it didn't take him more than five minutes to get out, with jeans and a black leather jacket, two black leather jackets, one in the hand and the other in the hand. He put the second one over me when he arrived at my side, a gesture I thanked him for, because I had become optimistic that night about the temperature.

  "You're not going to give up, are you?" He said to me, while he was preparing his helmet.

  “No. Never. You may not know Claudia Delgado, thin but you will, believe me. And you won't regret it.”

  He looked at me and even though he wanted to smile at me, he must have thought that he wouldn't be able to scare me away. We put on our helmets and after putting on the backpack he had brought with me, I grabbed his waist as soon as we got on that animal of cylinders and horses.

  "Where are we going?" he asked me.

  "Follow my instructions," I answered, praying inside to remember the road I had traveled that afternoon a couple of times.

  And so it was, the sky took pity on me and we came to a small grove on a hill from which the distant rumour of the sea could be heard. The lights of the village could be seen like small droplets from afar in a tapestry of darkness, but there was nothing there, so I got off the motorcycle and knelt down, looking for something in the backpack. I lit the flashlight and focused on Marcos, who also got off his motorbike and watched, perplexed, the shed that I had mounted there: A rectangular bed sheet that had tied to the branches of some trees,

  creating a canvas parallel to the ground; a battery projector and a duvet on the grass.

  “What's all this?”

  "Lie down," I said in too imperative a tone.

  “Claudia...”

  “Have you ever been to Norway?” I interrupted him.

  "No," he replied, looking at me.

  I sat on the duvet, under the sheet I had hung, and gestured to him to stand beside me. With some reluctance, Marcos obeyed me and sat down with me. I placed my hand on his chest and he lay down without resistance. I did the same by his side.

  "I was there a couple of years ago," I explained as I turned off the flashlight. “And I experienced one of the most marvelous shows in the world in the sky. But none comparable to the one I lived exactly 18 years ago - two months and 21 days.”

  I turned on the projector and the darkness that enveloped us allowed us the perfect vision of the Marcos of the announced time, exposing his work on auroras borealis. There was no sound but it didn't matter.

  "God!" he exclaimed, "Where did you get that?"

  "Marga and Victoria have pulled a few strings at the institute," I explained to him, as I watched the images, dazzled. “They keep all our exhibitions; can you imagine what they will do with them?”

  “I'm sure they'll put them on for generations to come so they'll break their asses. How would my mother get me to wear that sweater?”

  We laughed out loud, transporting us back to a time when everything was simpler.

  “Don't worry, Saavedra, I'm sure half the class didn't even notice that; they imagined you without the sweater and everything else.”

  He looked at me, still laughing.

  "Oops!" I exclaimed, “Did I say that out loud?”

  “Yes, but I'm more concerned about what the other media thought.”

  “The other stocking had the decency to hold its laughter. They even pretended to listen to you," I added, as the image passed among the classmates.

  “What do you mean by that? Didn't you listen to me?”

  “I could only look at you and drool. What did the auroras borealis matter?”

  “Hey, what about you? It's not fair that only... Oh, much better!” he interrupted himself, when the image passed from him to me, five days later according to the date flashing in the lower left corner of the screen. My horrific exhibition of tyrannosaurs.

  Marcos smiled as he looked at me in the projector.

  "Go ahead," I urged. He starts spitting.

  "I have nothing to say. You were and are," he pointed out, "a beautiful girl."

  “Are you kidding? Look how many freckles. And that hairstyle... God, how could you notice me?”

  Marcos laughed again when the stupid teenager on the screen placed her hands as if they were the little arms of a tyrannosaurus rex.

  “God!” I exclaimed, "Victoria and Marga didn't tell me anything about it! Bitches!

  “Why the tyrannosaurs?” Marcos asked, laughing, with his hand placed on his forehead and the other on his abdomen.

  “What do I know? Why auroras borealis?”

  “Because I like them and because...”

  “I know.”

  Luckily, my image lasted a little longer on the screen and a fascinating aurora borealis supplied it. Marcos dimmed the smile and was stunned, looking at it.

  "Third of CSE, you did the exposition work on the aurora borealis," I said. “I loved that you had to go out in front of the whole class to expose something because it was the perfect excuse to look at you without looking like an obsessed person. That day I imagined us together under one of the wonderful shows you showed in photographs, even if I didn't hear a word you said, I'm sorry. The teacher, Mrs. Carmina Segovia Salazar, asked you why you had chosen that theme and you answered that you liked the northern lights, that you loved them, because they were magic in the sky.”

  Marcos turned his head and looked at me.

  “How can you remember that?” he asked me.

  “Because for a long time I imagined us every day under a Northern Lights. There are many legends about them,” I added. “One speaks of the love between the Roman goddess Aurora and the Greek god Boreas. According to the story, they were so in love that they embodied in the sky the love they professed to each other.”

  At that moment, I intertwined my fingers with those of Marcos, who watched our hands, visibly moved.

  “Do you know that according to an Asian tradition, the person who sees an aurora borealis will be lucky all his life?” I continued to tell him, with my eyes watered but with the firm intention of not crying. He wanted to make of his days something fantastic and not a continuous memory of something he already knew perfectly: that they were ending.

  Marcos smiled and looked back at the aurora borealis as he squeezed my fingers tightly and brought my hand to his lips, kissing it.

  “It's unbelievable... If there was an envelope...”

  I shook my head, making him keep silent.

  “I saw a real one and I swear I wouldn't trade this for that. The spectacle in the sky are only lights if the person next to you does not manage to endow them with magic.”

  He looked at me again, almost with veneration.

  “Thanks for everything, Claudia.”

  I held her face, while the projector drew on her the soft tones of the aurora borealis.

  “This is only the beginning, Marcos.”

  He turned his body, stood in front of me, and stroked my cheek.

  “Why are you so stubborn?”

  "Because I demand of you what you didn't give me in your day” I joked.

  I got closer to him and our lips met in a different way than on the first day; there was no challenge or disguise of covert courage; there was absolutely nothing to get in the way. Only his breath, mine, his skin, mine. Marcos and I under the sky of a northern aurora, with the sea whipping in the distance. We embraced and submerged ourselves again in the magic of an artificial sky. Our sky.

  ***

&nbs
p; Dawn was already beginning to dawn on the horizon but instead of returning home, we stopped the motorbike in front of the sea. That was magic: not everyone could step on the fine sand of a beach after seeing an aurora borealis. The orange tones of dawn tinged the sky on the horizon, reflected in the rough waters carried by the wind.

  Marcos got off the motorcycle and looked at me fleetingly, smiling, as he advanced towards the shore and introduced his bare feet into the sparkling tide that was dying there. I approached him and hugged his waist, placing my forehead on his back. He held my hands and sighed.

  "Are you tired?" I asked him.

  We hadn't slept all night and I was worried about the possibility of abusing his stamina, but Marcos shook his head as he turned it slightly to look at me. I kissed him on the cheek and let go, sitting on the sand and looking in my backpack, from which I extracted a bottle of orange juice and a couple of sandwiches that I had prepared the previous evening. I just hoped they weren't too hard. Marcos sat down next to me and took the one I offered him, while smiling. And that morning, practically in silence most of the time, we had breakfast in front of the sea, a small gesture that at that moment filled me inside, even more so seeing the expression in his eyes. In the last few hours I had only taken him to a nearby grove to observe a projection on an old sheet and now I was bringing him to a beach that he must have stepped on a thousand times to witness the banal act of sunrise but Marcos looked at me as if he had placed an empire at his feet and then I had lowered the sun with my hands. And I couldn't help but be fascinated by the way things looked when they were given the importance they really had, without worrying about time, haste, absurd reports or closing deals. For a moment I felt chills at the thought of the icy carcass that we had put into a world that ran outside of it, wonderful and too foreign for us.

  When we arrived at her house we were soaked, after a couple of crazy races in the water and a morning of balsamic laughter. Marcos's laughter and the expression in his blue eyes when he laughed had become for me the best armor against a thousand insane thoughts. Surprising as it was to me, I didn't feel like crying every moment, but rather enjoying every second with him, no matter what. We took a hot shower and collapsed on his bed after half past ten. Embracing him, with our faces sunk between his neck, we abandoned ourselves to a necessary sleep. Sleeping on his chest, perceiving each of his heartbeats, was fascinating.

  ***

  When he woke up, it was five o'clock in the afternoon and I had been on my feet for a long time, preparing something like a snack-dinner. I would have loved to have dragged him to any other unexpected and surprising place but we needed to normalize the rhythm a little or we would end up so exhausted that we would spend the days lying on the sofa.

  Besides, the cold had worsened slightly that day, so I prepared a homemade evening. I didn't need to take it to a thousand different places every day; just having it by my side made each day unique and magical.

  Marcos approached behind me and placed his hands on my waist as I finished setting the table, on which I had placed a pair of scented candles and beautiful flowers.

  "Good morning," he muttered. “Or good afternoon, what should I say?”

  I turned and walked my hands over his naked chest, looking for his lips with mine.

  “Don't say anything. And don't provoke, Saavedra. Get dressed.”

  He smiled, his hands at his back of his head and sighed, looking at the table.

  “Claudia...”

  “We will know little for practical purposes, Marcos, but I hate it when you use that tone.”

  He continued smiling faintly.

  “Yesterday was... I don't know, I'm running out of words with you and I've always had a lot of gab.”

  I laughed.

  “I know, and I'm delighted to have achieved such an effect.”

  “But I can't let you do this, get up every day thinking about what to do for me, where to take me, what to surprise me with. It's going to be exhausting and not even...”

  “Wouldn't it be wonderful if each and every person in this world would wake up every day for that purpose to the one they love?” I interrupted him.

  He looked at me for a few seconds, without being able to erase the smile, with his lips ajar and transmitting to me the only childish thought that there could be no one more handsome than him in the world.

  “The one they love... It's been so long since...”

  “I know what you're going to say. We've only known each other so recently... because what we experienced 14 years ago doesn't count, because we were very different people then, just children starting to live. But let's stop worrying about that, Marcos, let's stop naming things. How do I feel about you? What does it matter what it is if it makes me experience wonderful things? If I am at all capable of transmitting them to you. I don't wake up every morning with the headache of making you laugh; I wake up with the longing, the desire and the imperious need to get a smile out of you. Perhaps you believe that I am doing this for you, but I assure you that I am much more selfish than you think. I do it for myself, because I want it, because I need it, because I want to be by your side and nowhere else, with anyone else. Let me be with you without question at all times.”

  He held me tightly, with such a need that at that moment I breathed calmly, knowing that I would never again try to leave his side.

  While we were eating, I couldn't help but given free rein to that curiosity he had satiated the first day, that of our crazy and passionate reunion but which was reactivated with as many things as he wanted from him. “You said... that things hadn't ended badly with your ex.

  Have you talked again?”

  As he smeared butter on his toast he looked at me, surprised, I suppose at the unexpected question.

  "Just as we were separating I was diagnosed with the disease and Nerea was there for the whole treatment," he explained.

  That surprised me. I had imagined a more traumatic and radical rupture, slamming the door or something.

  “When I relapsed and told her I wasn't going to continue the treatment, she left. I know she didn't understand; she was furious and... well... I also know that she calls my mother regularly to ask about me. Her behavior only heightened my sense of guilt toward her.”

  “Has she rebuilt her life?”

  “No, as far as I know. But I hope she does.”

  “Do you think she's still in love with you?”

  Marcos looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “No, I don't think so.”

  “Why not? In other words, she didn't leave because she no longer loved you or anything like that, but simply because you were both looking for different things at that time in your lives. But she was always there; she hasn't rebuilt her life and if she's still interested it's because she loves you and not...”

  “Are you jealous, Delgado?” he interrupted me.

  I had asked it in a jocular tone, but the truth was that the worry was hanging over my head.

  “Would you go back to her if she asked you?” I asked him.

  Marcos kept looking at me with the same expression. "No," he replied after a brief silence. “Our time passed, Claudia.”

  I suppose he sensed the restlessness in me, so he moved his chair closer and held my face in his hands.

  “You said that sometimes things don't come when they should. I think they always come at the right time to be as they should be. It is not with her that she should be with.”

  “Maybe it's with me...”

  “I would love to.”

  The sentence in Marcos's words managed to make me feel like garbage. It reassured me, in part, to know that he was sure that he no longer felt anything for his wife and that he would leave the doors open to what was ours, whatever he wanted it to be and whatever it was called, but Marcos had been extremely honest with me from the first moment and I continued to hide a part of my life that he had the right to know. As my feelings for him grew, it became clear to me that my relationship with James
was meaningless and that prolonging it was increasingly unfair to everyone. I would find the time to break up with him and weigh the need to tell Marcos. The last thing I wanted was to make him suffer and it was clear to me that I would avoid anything that would make him suffer. If James stopped being my fiancé, there would no longer be any reason to tell Marcos about him. He would do it under normal circumstances, of course, but not in ours; with a limited time and destined to live.

  "What do you think of?" he asked me, taking me out of my thoughts. He kissed me on the lips and kept looking at me, waiting for an answer that didn't come from me. “Seriously, Claudia, you don't have to worry.”

  I hugged him tightly in a silent request for forgiveness and he limited himself to answering me in the same way, albeit for other reasons, trying to convey tranquility and a need for me to make it clear to me that I was what he wanted in his life at the time.

  CHAPTER 6

  I had never been a girl who cared for herself with excessive creams or gunks, little worried - too little, in my mother's opinion - about my skin. But the pace had been so fast since I landed in Spain that even I had had to succumb to the complex world of cosmetics if I wanted to see my minimally decent face, and I wanted it, since I spent practically all my time with Marcos, in whose house I had installed myself without hardly realizing it.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I heard the roar of his motorbike and frowned, confused. When had he left? And at what time at 11 o'clock at night?

  He opened the door and advanced through the corridor with that serene expression that would calm a typhoon in the middle of the ocean. He approached me and kissed me on the lips.

  “Will you come with me to a place?” he asked me, with a thread of voice.

  “Now? Where to?”

  “I'm afraid this time it's you who'll have to trust me.”

  He kissed me again and walked back to the exit.

  "But Marcos... it's very cold today and...”

  “Then warm up, darling.”

  God, darling? Had he called me darling? Was it normal that I could melt only with words? Maybe it was in a 15-year-old girl, but for God's sake, I was 32.