by Claudia Pi
“Yes… once.”
“Don’t you realize that leads to cocaine and cocaine takes you to heroin and heroin…”
“Stop it, Virginia,” Ronie intervenes.
“Where did we go wrong?” she weeps.
“Oh, Mum…”
“We don’t want you to smoke, Juani,” his father tells him.
“I smoked once, that’s all.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“Everyone smokes, Dad.”
“But not everyone’s on the list – you are!” his mother yells.
“Stop, Virginia.”
Virginia sobs, banging the table with her fist. “Tomorrow he’s starting therapy and if that fails we’ll send him into rehab.”
“What do you mean ‘therapy’, Mum? I smoked a joint, that’s all.”
“That’s all? That’s all, you bastard, and you’re on a list of drug addicts?”
“But what is it you’re worried about – that I smoked a joint or that I’m on that list?” She slaps him hard across the face. Ronie pulls her away.
“Calm down, you won’t solve anything like that, Virginia.”
“And how in God’s name do you plan to solve it?”
“Everyone my age smokes, Mum.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why do you think they call us the ‘potheads’?”
“They call you what?”
“Not just me – all of us.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Who sold it to you?” Ronie asks. Juani says nothing. “Who sold it to you, for Christ’s sake, so that I can go and smash his face in?”
“Nobody, Dad.”
“So where did you get it?”
“I was offered it.”
“By?”
“Anyone, I don’t know – someone goes out, buys it, brings it back and we all smoke it.”
“I don’t care if everyone smokes it, I don’t want you to smoke it.”
“Dad, I smoked two or three times at the most.”
“Don’t smoke it again.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll end up in hospital with an overdose!” screams his mother.
“Because I don’t want you to,” says Ronie. Juani says nothing, stares at his trainers, puts his hands in his pockets. “You’ve tried it. You know what it’s like. Do you need to keep smoking it?”
“No, I haven’t smoked it for a long time.”
“Well, don’t smoke it again.”
“OK.”
“‘Don’t smoke again’ – is that how you sort things out?” says Virginia.
“And how would you like to sort them out – by screaming like a madwoman?”
“I suppose now you’re going to say my shouting’s to blame for him taking drugs!”
“I don’t take drugs, Mum.”
“Smoking marijuana is taking drugs.”
“So is taking Trapax.” Virginia throws another blow, which Juani dodges, then she runs sobbing upstairs. Ronie pours himself a whisky. Juani gets his roller blades and puts them on.
“Where are you going?” his father asks.
“Over to Romina’s.” They look at each other. “Can I?”
Ronie doesn’t answer. Juani leaves. Ronie goes upstairs to talk to Virginia. He finds her searching Juani’s room: checking every drawer, all pockets, backpacks, under the bed, inside magazines, books, CD cases, behind the computer. Ronie watches, but lets her get on with it. She searches everything that day and the next, and the one after that. “When will you stop searching?” he asks her.
“Never,” his wife replies.
30
El Tano was checking his emails. There was a note inviting him to a course on “Business management in the new millennium”; an email from an old university friend, attaching a CV “in case you hear of anything”; a chain letter that must not be broken and which he broke by hitting “delete”; a bulletin from an economic service explaining how Standard & Poor calculated a country’s risk index, and two or three other bits of junk. No responses to any of the searches put out on his behalf by the headhunters. Actually, there was one: “This search has been momentarily suspended. We’ll keep in touch. Thank you.”
He had some time in hand, so he scanned the headlines on the main newspapers, looking for a piece of news, or anything to make him feel – emotionally rather than rationally – that things might be starting to change. And if they did change, if confidence could be restored, the Dutch might return with new faith. And if that happened, they would probably take him on again, because there wasn’t really anything against him, he had not been fired for incompetence. On the contrary, the Dutch were more than satisfied with his performance in the company. He was not to blame. Nobody is to blame for ceasing to be necessary. And if things changed, and if the Dutch were confident again and if he were necessary again and they asked him to take charge once more of Troost in Argentina, and if everything could be as it had been before, he would have no reason to refuse. That was not to say that he had no pride. Quite the opposite: he felt pride in his job, not in just any job, in that one. Or another, better one. Not another one the same, because, as his father had taught him, no one exchanges one job for something at the same level. One changes in order to better oneself, to progress, to keep advancing. That was the way it had always been. And so it should be. For his father and for him, too.
At ten minutes to eight, he turned off the computer and went to have breakfast. Teresa, in her dressing gown, was serving café con leche to the children. She always took charge of breakfast, while the maid hovered nearby, in case she was needed. “Anyone want more toast?” Nobody answered, but Teresa put two more slices in the toaster anyway. El Tano walked over to the kitchen counter and picked up a brochure. It was an offer to travel to Maui, with a five-star hotel, all inclusive, and an optional night in Honolulu. El Tano stared at the brochure. He didn’t read it, just looked. Blue and green. “Ask your secretary to look into that.”
“OK.” He put the brochure into his briefcase.
“It would be nice… don’t you think? The alternative would be to go back to Bal Harbour or Sarasota, but I’d like to see somewhere different. I mean, how many times have we been to Miami already?”
The children climbed into the Land Rover. El Tano dropped them off at school, then continued to the office. The same as every morning. A lorry had overturned in the opposite lane, the one heading away from the city. There was an ambulance, a breakdown van, two cars which had crashed into the lorry, police, someone with his head in his hands. The curiosity of those who were travelling, like him, towards the capital, forced him to slow down and it took him twenty minutes longer than usual to get to the office.
He left his car in the street. He no longer took it into the garage: it was too much of a palaver for the couple of hours he spent at work there. Besides, they had changed his parking place to one on the side, beside the furnace. Getting the car into that space was a tight fit – scrape marks on the wall commemorated many others who had made the attempt. Not El Tano. And then there was the Troost guard, who raised the barrier for cars going in and out and who still looked at him in a funny way, as he had not done before. El Tano preferred not to find a word for that way of looking. He favoured the courtesy parking on the pavement. Even though it was for visitors. He locked the car and went inside. He walked the fifty-eight steps that it took to cover the distance from the front door to his new office. The one that was smaller, but acceptable. The one that had been assigned to him after his redundancy. Fifty-eight steps, give or take an inch. He had started counting them shortly after losing his job as General Manager of Troost. Never before in his adult life had he counted his own steps. When he was a child, yes, he knew exactly how many steps separated his bedroom from any other area in the house. But not as an adult, never. Before, there had been too much to think about as he walked: company finances; due diligence with the headquarters; the royalties that were owed to the Dutch
; the bonuses with which the Dutch would reward the royalties. And then in the corridor he was always waylaid by someone with papers for him to sign, some query demanding an instant response, a waiting telephone call.
After his redundancy, everything changed: not on the first day, or the second – some changes are subtle and very gradual. But there was a particular moment when El Tano opened the door, looked around him and started to take those steps – not yet counting them – and something was different. Desperately he searched his mind, as though it were a card index file, for something – some pending business matter, a grievance, an appointment that must be cancelled, an appointment that must be kept: any concrete concern. The cards were blank. The people around him did their own thing; some greeted him as they passed; there was the odd smile, the odd glance. He looked down and discovered his shoes. Fifty-eight steps and four inches exactly, including the stairs. During the last few months, as he sat in his new office, waiting for the phone to ring or for someone to come in and interrupt his patient vigil, or for an email to say that he was once more necessary to someone, anyone, he often asked himself how many steps he must have taken every day in the last years, from the building’s entrance to the desk of his old office (the one that was no longer his), the General Manager’s office. He estimated them to be more than sixty-five and fewer than seventy-one. A few days ago, he had drawn a scaled-down plan of the office on a piece of paper and calculated the approximate number of steps. But he had not paced them out. Because nowadays his route (the one he was taking this morning) led somewhere else.
The forty-sixth step took him to the desk of Andrea, his ex-secretary, who was talking on the phone to someone who was evidently very insistent. El Tano waved at her and, eager not to interrupt her or himself, returned his gaze to his shoes – forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine – not noticing that Andrea, still talking into the handset, was trying to detain him with gestures that were lost in the air. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight. At the door of his new office, El Tano opened his briefcase and looked for his key. He searched among his papers; it was one of those tiny little keys that are intended to provide privacy rather than security. Andrea had a copy of it. He felt something metal – the key perhaps – but he didn’t have a chance to take it out, because the door was suddenly opened from inside, striking him on the forehead. His briefcase fell to the floor, scattering papers. “Oh sorry!” said someone in an accented English. Through the open door, El Tano saw three men sitting in his office. The desk was covered with spread-out papers. Espresso cups. Calculators. A laptop. The men were working. One of them said something in Dutch and the others laughed. They weren’t talking about him, though: they had not even seen him. Only the one who had struck him had noticed him.
“I’m so sorry.”
El Tano crouched down to collect the papers and bumped into Andrea, who was already picking them up behind him.
“I didn’t get a chance to warn you.” The Dutch man also crouched down to help them. The three of them squatted together. “They’re the new auditors from Troost in Holland. Central Office asked me to allocate them a room.”
“Nice place!” said the man who had banged him with the door, as he picked up the Maui brochure and passed it to El Tano.
“I told them that none of the rooms were free, but they insisted, then the lawyer called and he said that your agreement was for a few months and that was more than a year ago… I’ve got your papers in a box… If you need to make any calls, I can lend you my desk for a while. Seriously, look – it’s really not a problem.”
“Nice place,” said the Dutch man again, with the Maui brochure still in his hand.
31
The first formal invitation from the Llambías to the Uroviches came soon after Beto discovered that Martín was unemployed and with serious money problems. They invited them round to eat chivito, a kid goat that Beto himself had brought from the country for the occasion. And the Uroviches were punctual: at half-past nine they were ringing the bell of one of Cascade Heights’ grandest and showiest houses, with its two great columns at the entrance, the marble staircase which could be glimpsed through the glazed front door and a balustrade at every window. An asador5 had been brought in to roast the kid and two maids were on hand, all evening, serving at table and clearing things away with the insouciance of actors who must repeat the same performance season after season.
“Mario’s a phenomenon,” said Beto that night, gesturing towards the man who was labouring at the grill. “For fifty pesos he’ll make you the best mixed grill you’ve ever tasted and you don’t even have to worry about getting the coals to light. Isn’t that right, Marito?” And Llambías raised his glass towards the grill, proposing a toast. “May each person do what he does best. Isn’t that right?” And this time he raised his glass to Martín.
That first invitation was followed by many others, of all kinds and budgets – anything you could imagine. Seats in the official box at the Davis Cup; a flight in the Llambías’s ultralight; concert tickets for some foreign singer, whoever was coming; a weekend in Punta del Este. Martín did not like accepting so many invitations that they would never be able to reciprocate, but Lala insisted: “There’s nothing wrong with being liked,” she said, and these outings put her in such a good mood that he ended up accepting them with barely a murmur. Thus the Uroviches were able to indulge for a time the fantasy that not only had nothing changed, but that their circumstances were in fact better than ever.
After a few months the two couples seemed more like family than mere friends. The Llambías no longer had small children living with them, but they never minded incorporating the Urovich children in their plans when appropriate. There was always a spare maid available to look after them. They had even fitted out a room in their house with a television and video to keep the children entertained.
For three or four months the two couples had dinner together every Tuesday, went to the cinema every Friday and got together on Saturday nights at the Llambías’s house to watch a film in their home theatre. Only Thursdays were sacrosanct, when Martín always went to El Tano’s house and Lala went out to the cinema with the “Thursday Widows”.
On one of those Saturdays, Lala arrived bringing a video that Beto had asked her to get – Last Tango in Paris. She had heard of it, but never seen it. It had been hard to find: they didn’t have it in Blockbuster or in any other video shops in the area. She had had to go all the way to San Isidro. She didn’t know who the director or actors were – nothing beyond the title. Judging by the box on the shelf, it was quite old-fashioned. But Beto had asked for it. He had called her on the mobile. “You’ll be saving my life, Lala, I need to see that film today.” And the Llambías were always so kind to them that she did not dare let them down.
Dorita came into the room while Beto was setting up the film. She went over to him and kissed him. It was a more effusive kiss than Lala was used to witnessing and that made her uncomfortable. She and Martín didn’t kiss in public, and they were ten years younger and had been married much less time. None of her friends kissed like that in public. They watched the film sitting on the big sofa, Lala at one end and Beto beside her, too close, leaving an empty space on the other side of him. Martín was behind them, dozing in a reclining armchair. Meanwhile, Dorita went back and forth, bringing things from the kitchen. Coffee, cakes, more coffee, liqueurs. It was obvious that she was either uninterested in the film or knew it too well. On the screen, meanwhile, Brando pleasured his companion. And she him. Lala had not been wrong when she guessed that this was an old film: the picture was a bit grainy and difficult to watch. Beto sank into the sofa, lying ever further back. When he wanted to say something to her about the film, he sat up a little, leaning on her leg and looking into her face. And she did not know exactly what he was saying, but she felt his pressure. On one of those occasions, Beto left his hand on Lala’s thigh and did not take it away. Lala kept still, waiting, and the heat of Beto’s hand warmed her leg. When he began to stro
ke her, she tensed up and moved his hand; he stopped then, and looked at her. Lala held his gaze, simply because she didn’t know what to say. She did not want to make a scene in front of her husband and she thought that her expression would make her feelings sufficiently clear. But that must not have been the case, because Beto continued to look at her, smiled and, without taking his eyes off her face, reached once more for her leg and began moving his hand up her thigh. Now Dorita, who had seemed all this while to be somewhere else, drew up a chair in front of them, blocking the screen. She smiled at them, came closer and put her hand over her husband’s.
Lala sprang to her feet and rushed over to the window. She did not dare to look at them, to scream or to run out of the room. It was as much as she could do to look out of the window. When she felt able, she turned very slightly and watched them from the corner of her eye. Dorita and Beto were kissing with a frenzy on the sofa where she had been sitting. Martín, meanwhile, was still asleep in the reclining armchair.
32
Romina doesn’t know what job Ernesto does. At school they asked her to write an essay on her father’s work or profession. But she doesn’t know. She knows what they tell her, but that isn’t the truth. She calls Juani. He doesn’t know either. He laughs: it would be very simple for him to write about his father’s work. Four words would do it: “My father doesn’t work.” But they haven’t asked him to do this essay. They asked Romina, and he tries to find out. However his mother, who knows everything about everyone, dodges the question.
“Go on, Mum, isn’t it written in your red notebook?” She says it isn’t, but Juani doesn’t believe her.
“You’d be amazed by all the things that happen that I don’t write down,” she says. “I haven’t written a single line about drugs, for example.”
Juani’s annoyed. “God, you’re really screwed up.” He goes out, slamming the door, and heads for Romina’s. He’s let her down. He had promised to find out about her father, but he could not. So she asks Antonia.
