It’s barely been a day, and I miss it so much already. If you get up early enough, you can buy fresh fish, fruit, flowers, pretty much anything, down at the docks. Not that I ever did, but I always knew I could, and now—now I can’t. Now those docks are a world away. People who aren’t from Seattle don’t understand the city. They think we are all Pike-Place-fish-throwing, Kurt-Cobain-mourning, plaid-shirt-wearing coffee addicts. You can’t know Seattle’s heart and soul unless you walk the streets first thing in the morning, eat hot dogs from a street vendor downtown at noon, hang out in a jazz bar on a Tuesday night, cure your hangover with a 5 Spot Café breakfast. Why did I want to leave, even for a second? I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else. Besides long weekends in Vegas and that trip after graduation to New York with Trish, I’ve never given traveling much thought. I don’t have wanderlust. Don’t even have any real curiosity about other cultures, to be honest. I’m glad they’re out there—I just don’t feel any need to be out there in them. Seattle in all its wet, sleepy, grungy glory has always suited me just fine. Yet here I am, thousands of miles from where I was and from who I want to be. Instead of salt-worn wood planks solid under my feet, I have a crumbling cobblestone sidewalk mined with dog crap.
If I’ve set my watch correctly, it’s very late, but I have no choice but to knock. While the driver gets my bags, I negotiate sidewalk cracks and crap and locate the door buzzer on the massive yellow wall. If not for the building’s cheerful color, I’d swear I was about to check in to a convent. Maybe this is all part of some twisted Argentine plot to indoctrinate young foreign women into the sisterhood—a theory immediately dispelled when I notice a couple of transvestite hookers parked on the corner behind us. One of them smiles at me and says something in Spanish to her/his friend. I smile back and they laugh. Nothing I haven’t seen in Seattle, but this one similarity doesn’t exactly fill me with comfort. I sigh deeply and shake my head at the few moments when I let myself believe this might not be so bad after all. My finger slowly moves toward the buzzer as my brain calculates whether I have enough room left on my credit card for a room at the Buenos Aires Howard Johnson.
Before I reach a tally, the door swings wide, pouring three squirming dogs and a giggling redheaded child onto the sidewalk. Behind them comes a tiny redheaded woman in a floral-print jumpsuit who throws her arms open at the sight of me and shouts, “¡Hola!” She smiles almost as loudly as she speaks. I clearly haven’t woken anyone up. “You must be Cassandra!” she exclaims, her accent strong, though different from the cabdriver’s.
“Cassie,” I say, smiling sheepishly, too tired and discombobulated to feign her level of enthusiasm. At my voice, one of the dogs jumps at me. I stumble back but manage to stay relatively upright. The tiny woman scolds the animal sternly in Spanish—no translation needed—and it runs into the house, followed by the others. None of this bodes well, and I am more apprehensive than before about venturing inside. Is this the Argentine equivalent of white trash? I wonder. The woman looks nice, her small curvy figure and soft curly hair giving her a motherly quality that is highly appealing at the moment, but will her husband be a wife-beater-wearing gaucho? Already paid, the cabdriver slips off with a friendly nod during the commotion. I watch the cab longingly as it sputters away.
“Cassandra, I am Andrea,” my host says, pronouncing it An-dray-ah, then throws her arms up in the air as though she has just finished her routine on the uneven bars. “And this—this beautiful chico is Jorge.” Hor-hay. The child, no longer giggling, runs behind his mother’s legs, peeking out from behind a floral thigh just enough so he can keep one eye on me. I extend my hand, but Andrea ignores it and moves in to give me a bear hug (or a cub hug, in her case) and a kiss on my right cheek. The little boy is dragged forward and back again with her movements, that eye looking up at me all the time, wide with disbelief. I want to tell him I know exactly how he feels. “No handshakes in Buenos Aires, Cassandra. Only hugs and kisses. Isn’t it marvelous? Well, let’s get you inside. Come, come.”
Andrea’s English is quite good, which is lucky for me, because her accent is thick and she talks as fast as she walks, even with Jorge hoisted on one hip. I do my best to keep up with her as she shuttles me down a long indoor driveway that houses no car save a tot-sized plastic convertible piled with stuffed animals ready to go for a spin. She slips left through a narrow door in the wall and begins to climb a dark, narrow staircase that seems to unwind endlessly. I catch something about my apartment being the servants’ quarters at some point. The rest is a confusing tattoo of rolled R’s. Still, it’s reassuring to hear so much English in her indulgently maternal singsong tone as she goes through a list of things I need to know, like how to use the key (giant and antiquated, it looks like a prop from a Merchant Ivory film), how to flush the toilet (there’s a string dangling from the ceiling; apparently, plumbing is not a national strong point), how not to use the bidet (didn’t need to know that), and so on. With her free hand, she makes gestures I can’t see about things I only partially understand. When we finally reach the top step, me huffing and puffing and grateful my spinning instructor can’t see me now, Andrea unlocks the door, swings it open, and reaches inside to switch on the light, all with Jorge still attached to her hip.
A warm amber wall sconce illuminates a small foyer with floral wallpaper not dissimilar to the pattern of Andrea’s jumpsuit, a small rustic wood table, and a narrow mirror with stained-glass trim. “I think you will like it very much. I decorate it myself.” Andrea beams proudly. The hallway to our right bends out of reach of the light. I envision a horror of floral wallpaper, floral sofa cushions, floral carpeting . . . I should be so lucky, I remind myself. More likely, I’m about to spend the next six months staring at cracked stucco walls and stained gray Formica. But it smells freshly cleaned—the best thing I’ve smelled in hours, in fact, between the faint stench of airsickness and the taxi’s mix of cigarettes and stale sweat—and at this point that puts Andrea’s servants’ quarters on par with the W Hotel back home.
“I show you everything now?” Andrea smiles at me expectantly, hitching up Jorge, who buries his face against her neck.
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” I say a bit too quickly. “Soy . . . Soy . . .” I grope for remnants of grade-eight Spanish. Didn’t Trish promise it would all come back to me? No such luck. Still, Andrea leans forward and nods, visibly excited by my attempt. “I’m very tired,” I say. Translation: I’m about to burst into tears and no one needs to see that.
Andrea is clearly disappointed—and determined. Her frown slides easily back into a grin, and she throws up her free arm like a mad conductor. “Then you come for some tea.” It’s more statement than question.
Tea? It’s almost midnight—I think. “Thank you. Thank you very much. Gracias. Mucho. I’ll probably just go right to sleep.” Translation: I’m going to crawl into bed, fully clothed, lights off, curl into a fetal position, and stay that way until the Jaws of Life pry me apart. I fake a yawn.
Andrea nods understandingly and hands me the key. “We see you in the morning, then. You have breakfast with us.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll try,” I reply, knowing full well that I won’t. “But I don’t think I’ll be getting up early.” Not before two or three days, at least. I search my brain for the Spanish words for “depression-induced coma,” but my hostess is already letting herself out of the apartment.
“Any hour is good,” she sings cheerfully over her shoulder as she shifts Jorge to the other hip before starting back down the staircase. Jorge tucks his face into his mother’s mass of red curls, blending their two heads into one impossibly huge Ronald McDonald wig. “We wait.”
Then she’s gone and I’m standing in the doorway all by myself. I am in an apartment in some strange woman’s house in Buenos Aires all by myself. I step back and swing the heavy door shut and fumble awhile with the antique key in the antique lock until I figure out that it’s clockwise twice until you hear the click. I leave the key in the lock, grab the
handle on my suitcase, and make my way down the short hall with baby steps. It’s dark around the corner, but I can make out a bed toward the back of the room. I bang into a stuffed chair of some kind, smash my shin against a coffee table, and tumble, swearing quietly, toward the edge of the bed. It’s soft, and as it gives to my weight, the aroma of lilacs wafts up. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation talking, but right now this means more to me than all the luxuries combined in that fancy Seattle hotel that cost more for one night than Andrea is charging me for a month. Could it really be okay here? Could there be some small grace granted to this perfectly stupid American woman who flew halfway around the world to live in a city that she barely knew existed a few weeks ago? I almost don’t want to know the answer and feel a small but unmistakable sense of relief when I grope for the small lamp near the bed and can’t find a switch. I vaguely remember Andrea saying something about it being on the wall. I’m too tired to get up and look, already sinking, fully clothed, into the supple mattress, into the fluffy down duvet, into the pure, unmedicated kind of sleep I’ve needed for days. Even if this is as good as it gets, I am grateful for this blessing, however brief it may be.
When I wake up, my head buried under the duvet, it takes a few seconds to register that I am not in Jeff’s postmodern-minimalist apartment. Jeff’s duvet was thin and dark gray; this one is fluffy and white. I sense light in the room, something Jeff could never tolerate in the morning. I am in Buenos Aires.
I shut my eyes tight and will myself back to sleep, but it doesn’t work. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do next. I only know there is no way in hell I am coming out from under this duvet. It’s kind of nice under here anyway. I kick my feet out. Pretty roomy, too. I could have my meals delivered, maybe ask Andrea to move a TV under here, and spend the next few months getting fat and watching all those crazy Latin American soap operas I’ve heard about. If I need to go to the bathroom, I’ll have to get off the bed, but I can take the duvet with me. Oh, God. Bathroom. I’m almost scared to think of what that looks like in this part of the world. Wasn’t there something about a string? Speaking of which, I really, really have to go. I let go of my duvet fantasy, hold my breath, close my eyes, and poke my head up into the room. I try to prepare myself by imagining the worst. With such a nice duvet, I’m not expecting total squalor, but the memory of the massive crumbling yellow wall and pack of wild canines doesn’t bode well. “Here goes nothing,” I whisper. I open my eyes—and drop my jaw.
The studio apartment is not just beautiful, it’s nicer than any place I’ve ever lived on my own. It’s only one room, but it’s huge, with enough space for a living area, dining area, small kitchenette, and this gigantic life raft of a bed I’ve grown so attached to. Room enough to hide away in for, say, six months. Every piece of furniture looks like something from Antiques Roadshow. But not in an old-fashioned way, maybe because the walls are a cheerful cherry red, or maybe because of the black-and-white macro photographs of exotic flowers that hang around the room. Screw the bed. I hop up and run from toile love seat to gleaming oak table to—I slide my hand over wall tiles till I find a light switch—white marble bathroom vanity! Everything is old in the most lovely way, as though this roomful of furniture has aged gracefully in this exact spot for decades waiting for me to arrive. And all of it bathed in morning light flooding in through sheers over wide French doors. I remember—garden view! I pull back the sheers to reveal a large courtyard carpeted in deep green grass and draped with thick, flowering vines. Stepping onto the small terrace, my arms spreading the doors as far as they will go, I inhale deeply from the sweet, fresh air. I feel like Juliet, minus Romeo, of course. But who needs Romeo when you’ve got a toile love seat and a garden view?
I do, that’s who. Even the image of the Eden before me can’t compete with that of Jeff and Lauren entwined. I shake my head hard, like a dog shaking off the rain, as if this will set them loose. My Jeff. Gorgeous, successful, great-on-paper, good-in-bed Jeff. Bed. Jeff and Lauren in bed, our bed. How is it possible that weeks later and thousands of miles away, the image of their writhing bodies has grown more vivid? And the sound. I swear I can still hear the knocking of the platform bed frame against the wall. It’s so real it seems to be coming from this apartment. Maybe I’ve finally cracked up. Okay, wait, that is someone knocking on my door. It must be Andrea coming to drag me down to breakfast at this ungodly hour of . . . I scan for a clock. Two-thirty. Sheesh. I haven’t slept till two-thirty since, well, never.
“Just a second,” I call out, looking around the room for my suitcases and wondering which one has my robe in it, until I realize I never undressed last night. I briefly consider whether this might be more embarrassing than greeting Andrea naked, and grudgingly make my way to the door. I attempt to smooth my sweater with one hand and my hair with the other. I’d be perfectly content to hide in this lovely room of hers for the next six months. I could probably even get myself a fairly convincing tan if I hung out on the terrace at the right time every day.
The knocking starts again, louder, impatient. I know she’s trying to be friendly, but this is a bit much. “Coming.” I round the hall, catching sight of my extreme bedhead and raccoon eyes (courtesy of seventeen-dollar no-smudge designer mascara) in the small mirror. There’s the one good thing about being single again, I tell myself as I turn the key and swing open the door: I can look like total crap, and there’s no man around to see it.
Except the man at my door, that is. Broad-shouldered, skin the color of a nonfat latte, curly dark hair falling across his forehead. Looking out at me from under his hair are two utterly mesmerizing eyes, deep green like the proverbial grass on the other side. Not exactly Antonio Banderas—handsome, yes, though in an unpredictable, unfamiliar way—and a bit on the short side, but definitely . . . something.
Is this Andrea’s husband? But didn’t she say he worked in Chile? A brother maybe? Or, judging from his paint-splattered (and snug in all the right places) overalls, a handyman, perhaps. While I rack my morning-fogged brain for the Spanish word for “hello,” those impossibly green eyes skim from my wrinkled sweater and khakis to my lunatic fringe and quarterback makeup. I can feel a zit sprouting on my forehead as I stand here. A smile breaks on his face, and it is the most amazing smile I have ever seen this side of a movie screen . . . and then he starts laughing. Really loud. He stops only long enough to say something in Spanish that contains the word Americana and prompts him to shake his head at me as though he’s remembered some old joke, and then starts laughing again.
I might not speak the language, but I know when I’m being insulted. I cross my arms protectively, feeling more naked than I did when I thought I actually was, and force myself to look him in the eye. “Can I help you?” He might not know my words either, but my tone is unmistakable. His grin disappears. He spurts out more Spanish, maybe more insults or maybe an apology, and looks at me expectantly. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing yet another American has come to Argentina without knowing Spanish, so I stare at him and try to look unimpressed, hoping the expression translates. Cute or not, all I want him to think is that, whatever he’s saying or thinking, I couldn’t care less. Because at this point I couldn’t.
But he laughs again and shakes his head, the way you laugh at a small child who’s feigning a fit. Even his dark curls giggle at me. Before I can say something—something that surely would have been quick and witty and biting, which, even if it had been lost on him, would have given me no small amount of satisfaction—he turns and disappears down the spiral stairs. Even back inside, the heavy wood door slammed tight behind me, I’m pretty sure that’s him I can hear laughing down below.
Some welcome wagon. I don’t want to make a fuss, but I am paying to be here. Whatever the cultural differences, there’s no reason one can’t be polite. A little common courtesy—is that too much to ask? I’m beginning to realize why I’ve never traveled before. In a huff, I peel off my clothes, shower off a full day of travel, and shave
my legs. In a huff I towel-dry, moisturize, and get dressed in a gauzy summer dress and flip-flops. In a huff, I put on mascara, lip gloss, and a light mist of perfume. In a huff, I repeatedly ram my hair dryer’s plug into the unaccommodatingly foreign electrical socket, giving myself a small shock and killing my hair dryer in the process. In a huff, I twist my damp hair into a loose bun. In a huff, I stomp out of the apartment, down the stairs, and up to the enormous double door with an intimidating bronze knocker that leads into the main part of the house. In a huff, I knock. And then, hearing footsteps, I pinch my cheeks and shake my hair free from the bun. Andrea opens the door, child slung on her hip, free hand magically proffering a plate of tiny croissants. Why do I feel so disappointed?
“Cassandra! Fantastic! You come! And you look so beau-ti-ful!” She steps back and tilts her head, sizing me up with approval. I shake my head in protest and attempt to change the subject by saying hello to Jorge, but the second I look his way, he buries his face in his mother’s armpit. It looks like she’s instantly sprouted a giant tuft of red underarm hair. Andrea doesn’t seem to notice as she gestures me inside with the plate of pastries and then through the foyer.
The main house makes my servants’ quarters look like, well, servants’ quarters. The floor is a dark, gleaming hardwood, the walls a soft, buttery yellow. An enormous oil painting of a man in military uniform stands guard at the foot of a staircase that curves majestically up one wall and out of sight, its wrought-iron railing inscribing the bright airy entrance with delicate black flowers and vines. Directly across on the far wall is an abstract painting on an unframed canvas. It’s a flurry of thick strokes, cool blues and electric yellows. I don’t know much about art beyond my one long-forgotten art history elective, but I like the painting. To the right are French doors that lead into a small office with a window to the street (“That was the footmen’s station,” Andrea notes, “when it was the time of horses”); to the left another set of French doors, softened with creamy sheers, opens into a grand salon complete with fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out to the courtyard. An intricately patterned area rug cushions my flip-flopped feet. A crystal chandelier dangles overhead. Despite Andrea’s jeans and bare feet, I feel ridiculously underdressed.
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club Page 5
