My self-consciousness is quickly chased away by Andrea’s warmth. Within seconds I am ushered into her home, seated ceremoniously at a round table dressed with what must be her finest china and linens, and shown an assortment of pastries, fruit, and other morning delicacies fit for a queen. Andrea waits expectantly. “¿Medialuna?” She lifts the plate of tiny croissants. Back home, my typical breakfast was a latte on the way to work, but it has been a long time since I’ve eaten. I put three and a pat of butter onto the small plate in front of me.
“Gracias,” I say, the word sounding fake in my mouth. “Thanks.”
Andrea lifts an ornate porcelain carafe. “¿Café?”
“Please,” I say. “Por favor.”
As she fills a small cup, the aroma wafts up, and I miss Starbucks so bad it hurts. The particular way of ordering: tall, nonfat, no foam, extra hot. The sound of my quarter hitting the tip box. The tear of the Equal packet. Stir stick and lid at the ready. And then, finally, the heat against the back of my throat, the delicious signal to the rest of my body that it’s morning. Except only now it’s not hot, milky espresso I taste but the salt of sadness in my mouth. Beautiful furniture and a kind landlady aside, I know with the whole of my being that I won’t be truly at ease again until I am home, and the fake smile I’m wearing for my host’s sake is starting to get too heavy to hold. Andrea gets up to find Jorge, who has run off after a small gray dog to whom I am eternally grateful.
While she’s gone, I take a tentative sip of the coffee, which is surprisingly good, and a bite of scrumptious tiny croissant. I enjoy the moment of calm, take another full sip of hot coffee, and survey the dozens of photographs clustered on a long side table. Many are of Jorge in various stages of growth. Here awed by a clown. There balancing, with the aid of a gentle hand, on a rock by the ocean. Enjoying the attention of a group of old women at a street fair. Sucking his thumb, asleep in a man’s arms—Andrea’s husband, I assume. He’s definitely not the man who came to my door this morning. He looks nice. Tall.
Scattered throughout are photos of Andrea. Some alone—on a beach smiling, in a kitchen laughing—some surrounded by what are clearly travelers, too tan and blond and happy to be anything but on vacation. What must it be like to have so many strangers float in and out of your life, I wonder. To never know what the next airplane will bring your way. For someone like Andrea, this must be an exciting adventure that comes right to her door. Years from now, will there be a side table in my dining room lined with photographs of people I’ve met here? That might be nice. Of course, if I never leave this house, that will mean a lot of pictures of Andrea and Jorge and the three dogs.
I can’t help but laugh at myself. I can’t really sit around in that apartment all day and night, however lovely it is—especially not if that incredibly cute, fantastically rude man is regularly wandering about. And there’s no way I am going home early. I wouldn’t dream of giving Jeff the satisfaction of hearing about that from one of our mutual friends. That leaves me and Buenos Aires and six months to fill. If Andrea’s house is any indication, maybe this place isn’t completely bad. Just a little rough around the edges, the way even Seattle might look to an outsider. Maybe I can handle another 180 days here. Maybe by the end of it I’ll be like Andrea, all smiles and laughter. I take anther bite of croissant. Maybe I don’t even need a plan.
Except that I do. Yes, definitely. I really, really do. I can feel my planlessness creeping under my skin like an itch. Denying it won’t help. It will only spread out and get stronger, maddeningly so, until I scratch it. As soon as Andrea comes back, I’ll excuse myself and set to work. I’ve got my travel guide, and Sam and Trish gave me a bunch of books on the area as a parting gift. I can start with those to figure out a list of must-see places. There is also that website with a forum that’s supposed to have a lot of great info direct from travelers. Andrea confirmed that my suite is wired for Internet, though I’ll need to buy a power converter for my laptop.
Ah, there. I’m feeling better already. Thinking about going outside is frightening, but thinking about thinking about going outside I can handle. So long as there’s a plan.
Then I notice a picture of him. My welcome wagon. Anger starts to rise again until it dawns on me how different he looks in the photographs. Here he’s sitting at a café with Andrea and a group of people. They look younger, in their early twenties maybe. They are all leaning in together, shoulders touching, and smiling warmly at the camera. There he’s in a crowd with Jorge on his shoulders, looking up and laughing. In another, he stands beside Andrea and the tall man I assume is her husband. He’s smiling here, too, but it’s not a happy smile. In fact, it looks a lot like the smile I’ve been putting on for the last three weeks, a smile you wear for the sake of others. It makes me want to like him.
Not everyone makes a good first impression, I suppose. Speaking of which, maybe my own wasn’t so great, either. Suddenly, I feel guilty about getting so mad. I might be paying rent, but I am still the foreigner here. But how to make a better second impression? To start, I’ve got to learn some Spanish, break open that language CD that’s buried in my suitcase. Fluency isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but surely I can manage to avoid this person until I’ve learned a few basics.
Learn Spanish. Yes. The decision makes me feel instantly better, calmer. It’s another item to add to my plan, I think happily, popping another mini-croissant into my mouth. Pleased with myself, I decide to celebrate with a bit more of Andrea’s superb coffee. As I reach for the carafe, I hear someone jiggling the handle on a door behind me. Jorge must have led Andrea on a chase through the entire house. I stand up to help, assuming she’ll have her hands full with child, dogs, and probably more food, but before I can reach the handle, the door flies open. Startled, I step back, stumble over something, and land flat on my butt at exactly the moment he walks through the door.
I swallow my mouthful of croissant down hard. I might look ridiculous right now, but I’m determined to keep my dignity. A situation is embarrassing only if you let yourself be embarrassed, right? His eyes meet mine and I try to push out a self-deprecating laugh, but I haven’t managed to swallow completely, and bits of croissant fly out of my mouth and onto the front of my dress. Now he’s the one who’s laughing. You’re a guest in his country, I remind myself. This is Andrea’s friend or brother, perhaps, and she is a kind woman who has gone out of her way to make you feel welcome. And to be fair, this must look pretty funny.
I can’t help it. Anger, residual and freshly brewed, bubbles up. This man has done anything but make me feel welcome. I’m about to give him a piece of my mind when he reaches out his hand. He’s not completely devoid of common decency, I see. Part of me wants to ignore his offer, but we’re mending intercultural relations here. Very important stuff. I can be gracious. Yes, even an American can be gracious!
I offer him my hand. He takes it and smiles, not at all amused this time—genuinely warm and open. Did Jeff ever smile at me like this? Where did that question come from? I can feel it in my stomach, a tingling warmth spreading out to my fingertips. He lifts me slowly, and I allow myself the fleeting romantic-comedy movie fantasy of our faces drawing closer and closer together until—
There’s a loud crash somewhere in the house, followed by a fury of tapping and scratching. We look at each other, eyes wide. He releases my hand and, not quite on my feet yet, I go crashing down once more. My butt is really going to kill later. He blushes and mumbles something in Spanish. An apology? Before I can say anything, he slips back out the door he came in.
The tapping and scratching are getting louder, closer, but I can’t seem to will myself to get up. I lie on the floor and wallow in my latest humiliation. Now I’ve been dropped, figuratively and literally, by two men on two continents. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something. Maybe that whole nunnery thing isn’t such a crazy option. As I imagine myself in a habit, something wet smacks me in the head. I reach up to retrieve a damp, fuzzy toy in the shape of a
bone. Ewww.
“Jorge! ¡Basta!”
Andrea, Jorge, and a canine hurricane tumble into the room together through yet another door that I hadn’t noticed. I’m starting to feel like Alice in Wonderland. Before I can become the next dog toy, I scramble to my feet. The dogs tumble into the wall behind me, sniff about for a few seconds, and, locating the object of their collective desire, tumble out of the room again.
Andrea swoops Jorge up with one arm. “Oh, Cassandra! Are you okay?”
“Oh, yes, fine.” I brush croissant off my front. “All in one piece.”
“I’m sorry. I leave you all alone. The dogs . . . You see yourself all the trouble.”
“Oh, that’s okay. And I wasn’t alone. I met . . . uh . . . ” The infuriatingly rude Argentine man who has instantly turned me into a bumbling mess. “Um, curly hair?” Well done, Cassie.
“Oh, Mateo!” She claps her hands. “You meet Mateo! My dear friend Mateo!”
“Mateo,” I repeat. The name slides over my tongue much too easily. What did I expect? Bob or Joe? He is Argentine, I remind myself. But did his name have to be so damn sexy? I want to say it out loud again, feel the unknown syllables on my lips, but that would be strange, wouldn’t it?
“He fix everything for me all the time. He’s like second husband.” She giggles at the joke, and Jorge joins in.
“That’s very sweet of him,” I say, imagining Mateo rushing over to screw in lightbulbs, brown muscles rippling under his T-shirt as he twists the bulb . . . What? No, no, no. No rippling muscles. Not sweet. Not sweet at all. I try to change the subject. “Before. Upstairs. He knocked on my door and I opened it.” Okay, now I sound like a total idiot.
Andrea looks at me, amused or confused, I can’t tell. Then her face brightens with recognition, and she smiles widely. “He’s very handsome, sí?”
“What? I guess.” Am I blushing?
“Good thing you wear a dress today, sí?”
“What? Oh.” I look down at my dress and feel my face flush a deep hot red. I’d normally pull on jeans and a T-shirt on a day off, and if this isn’t a day off, I don’t know what is. Was all this for him, a complete stranger who seems to be going out of his way to make me feel utterly unwelcome? “I didn’t . . . I just . . .” I give up.
“He is single, you know.” She winks at me.
“Oh. Well.” I laugh awkwardly, push the idea away with my hands. “Actually, Mateo and I . . . I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“On wrong foot? What does this mean, please?”
“Uh, we, I don’t think he likes me very much.”
“Now, that would be very surprising, I think.” She winks again and pinches my arm lightly. If she only knew how he’d acted. I’m tempted to tell her that her dear friend dropped me on my ass, but she’d probably construe that into some grand courting gesture. Eager to take the focus off of me, I try to catch Jorge’s attention with a big, goofy smile, but he just buries his head in his mother’s red curls. Is every man in this house determined not to like me?
“Come, sit. Finish your breakfast.”
“Oh, I’m fine, thanks. I’m full. Everything was really good. Thank you so much.” I’m still a bit hungry, but mostly I want to go upstairs, peel off this stupid dress, get under the covers, and figure out my next move. Enough of all this Mateo nonsense. No cute Argentine jerk is going to come between me and my new plan. “I should probably unpack.”
“Oh, Cassandra, I’m sorry,” Andrea says, dipping a piece of croissant in honey for Jorge. “Mateo must do work in your apartment today. I buy new air conditioner. You will want it soon, I think, when summer comes. Maybe one hour, maybe two. It’s okay?” Apparently, the cute Argentine jerk is going to come between me and my plan.
“Okay, yes. Thank you. That’s very nice of you.” I’m saying “thank you,” but I can feel my face pulling down. I scrape up a smile for Andrea’s sake.
“You have big plans for your first day, yes?” How can I tell her that my big plans were to stay inside and make plans? That I would spend the next six months making plans if I could?
“Yes, oh yes. Big plans. Huge.” There’s that converter for the electrical socket. And a hair dryer. I could get some groceries. I can go for a walk around the block—about fifty times.
“Marvelous. You will have so much fun, I know.”
Only when I step through the enormous doors that separate the main house from the old carriage port do I realize that not only do I not have a plan, I don’t have my purse. There’s no way around it: Mateo or no Mateo, I will have to go into the apartment. I can handle it. In and out. He won’t even know I’m there.
Except it turns out that he’s the one who’s not there. And there it is—an unmistakable feeling of disappointment. I go inside the apartment, find my purse, two city guides, and a translation dictionary without incident. God, what is wrong with me? I don’t even know this person. He could have an IQ of 37. He could have a really small . . . shoe size. He dropped me on my ass. He is rudeness personified. I repeat this in my head like a mantra to ward off bad, stupid thoughts, and before I know it, I am outside, locking the front door behind me. As the lock clicks into place, a cool breeze tickles my bare shoulders and sends a shiver through my entire body. That's when I realize one very good thing about Mateo. For a short while, he made me forget exactly what I’ve gotten myself into.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two blocks up, two blocks left, two blocks down, two blocks right. Head down to avoid the mines the canine population has left for me every twenty or so feet, I walk a square pattern, not so much to avoid getting lost (I do have a map—okay, three) but to avoid feeling more lost than I already do. I realize that this route will take me back to the front door of Andrea’s yellow house, but that’s about as much excitement as I can take right now.
The population of Buenos Aires is, thankfully, spread out, and the neighborhood—my neighborhood, I suppose—is rather peaceful now that the drag queens have retreated. My occasional sidewalk companions are mostly solitary Argentines moving quickly and with serious intent. It’s the middle of the day in the middle of the week, after all, and unlike me, these people have places to go, people to see. At the first stirrings of jealousy, I remind myself to enjoy this rare opportunity of pure, guilt-free leisure—a delicacy I haven’t tasted in years. But it’s no use. The thought of wandering aimlessly is enough to make me run back to the apartment, Mateo or no Mateo. I need something to propel me forward. I focus on the plug converter and new hair dryer I need. Hardly a checkmark-worthy goal, but better than no goal at all.
I recall Andrea mentioning something last night about a grocery store and other shops on the main street a few blocks over. Assuming I’ll find a hardware or electronics store there, I take a sharp turn and cross the quiet street with what feels vaguely like enthusiasm.
Now that I have a plan, short-term as it may be, I indulge in a slower gait, wanting to draw out this feeling of purpose as long as possible. After I buy a hair dryer, what will I do with myself? I push away the question and try not to think too far ahead. Peppered among the more modern concrete apartment buildings are beautiful gems of architecture that assert happier, more prosperous chapters into the city’s current story. Strolling from block to block, I am faced again and again with the disparity between what this place is and what it must have once been. One neighbor’s house crumbles from neglect as another’s stands proud and cared for, a representative of a surviving elite. Some homes have been given up on completely, for-sale signs propped up against boarded windows. Another seems to have been abandoned in a hurry. The upstairs windows are shuttered tight, the front gate left ajar. Three cats loll about in a deep, thick garden overgrown with weeds. Someone started painting the pale blue walls a pretty ballet pink and then gave up a third of the way. There are no ladders or paint cans visible, so I can only assume that the painting stopped some time ago. I stop and stare for a minute, intrigued by the mystery of it. Even in such
a state of disrepair, this humbled structure has an undeniable charm. But my curiosity shifts quickly into discomfort. What would make someone stop painting in the middle like that? I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it does. I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s not the hopelessness about it or the sense of defeat—so many of the houses have that same sad air about them. It’s the half-painted wall, the fact that whoever lived there looked forward to a bright future that included pink paint. There must have been much life and love there once. No one paints a house pink if they aren’t ridiculously happy. No one stops painting halfway unless that happiness was abruptly taken away. The explanation can’t be only financial; unlike the other homes in similar states of disrepair, this one has no for-sale signs. No, inside those walls, someone’s life went sideways. I can feel it. And that’s when I realize, rather uncomfortably, that if I were a house I would look exactly like this.
I walk on, the neighborhood offering little in the way of a visual salve but much in the way of distraction. A stylish boutique window displays gorgeous leather shoes and handbags—with posh price tags to match, no doubt. I remind myself that a woman with no paycheck has to watch her spending.
Farther down, an old woman sits cross-legged on an old tablecloth, sandwich bags filled with herbs and spices spread out around her. The sun-dried faces of old men on the corner arguing gently over a chessboard contain at once a heartbreaking humility and a fierce pride. When I pass, they tip their heads in acknowledgment but offer no smiles. I return the gesture with as much gravitas as I can muster in a sundress and flip-flops. Stopping at a corner to let a motorcycle pass, I notice the concrete slab is marked with an elaborate emblem and the year 1887. Just ahead on a plain gray wall, artful graffiti calls out against the country’s latest president. From this surface view, the contradictions are wondrous. I’m beginning to wish I paid more attention in that Latin American history class I took sophomore year.
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club Page 6
