“You speak English,” I stammer out. “You speak English?”
“Yes,” he says with the most aggravating grin. “And yes.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?” I feel my cheeks flush with anger.
He tilts his head again, his green eyes sparkling with what looks like genuine curiosity. “Why didn’t you ask?”
We are ten minutes and seven blocks from Andrea’s house, and I’m still so infuriated that I haven’t even asked Zoey where we’re going, just let her ramble on about her latest phone call to her mother, who, if possible, sounds even less supportive of her trip than mine. I nod and “mm-hm” a lot, wanting to demonstrate my empathy, but in my head I’m mostly thinking, He speaks English? HE SPEAKS ENGLISH! Which is probably a good thing, since when I do pay proper attention to my surroundings, I realize that we are far beyond my comfort zone—literally. Nothing looks even vaguely familiar. Which way is Andrea’s yellow house? How many blocks are we from a main street? And most alarmingly, why haven’t I seen Zoey holding a map at any point?
My new best friend is shaking her head and thrusting her empty hands to the sky. “How do you think you’re gonna find a nice Jewish boy in Argentina?” she says, delivered in what I can only hope is an exaggeratedly high-pitched Long Island accent.
“Uh, right. Mothers. What can you do? Sooo . . . where exactly are we headed?”
“I dunno. Around. You know.”
“Right. Cool.” I try to sound nonchalant, remembering the look she gave me on the subway when I told her about The Plan. “Cool.”
“I bet you didn’t know you’re staying in one of the city’s hippest areas.”
“I am?” Does that mean we’re still in my neighborhood? It’s a relief to know we haven’t strayed too far, though I can’t help but wonder how we’ll know when we’ve strayed too far if we aren’t using a map.
“Totally. Palermo Viejo is the Argentine SoHo.”
“So, we’ll be sticking nearby, then . . .”
She laughs. Hopefully with me, not at me. “Don’t worry. I promise I won’t take you anywhere that requires a visa.” She laughs again, and this time so do I.
I watch Zoey’s shoes as we move down the street. Her flip-flopped feet almost skip, turning this way and that, slowing when something interesting catches her eye. It’s almost like dancing, the way children dance, not yet fully aware of the beat, just the feel of their own body swaying whichever way it wants to. I look down at my feet. Tennis-shoed and set firmly in the forward position, they move only to accommodate the occasional mass of dog poop. Left, right, left, right. My rhythm is military. Zoey’s whole body is open to the world. Mine is locked, fortified, braced against—what? What exactly is the enemy in this analogy? I picture Zoey slipping through the subway doors and out of sight, off to another adventure or twelve. I picture myself leaving the house, one hand buried deep inside my bag and latched on to the safety of a map highlighted with yellow marker. I think of Jeff. You’re too perfect. My ex-boss. You don’t take risks. I think of my four-page (and growing) plan, the eleven tasks and three subtasks for the upcoming week alone, the thrill I got last night when looking back over it for the zillionth time that day. I realized that if I consistently tackled two things each day, I wouldn’t have to deal with a single free day for the next six weeks.
“So what do you want to do first?” I say as lightheartedly as I can. I can do this. I am already doing this. Sheesh, spontaneity and self-affirmations don’t really go together, do they?
“Hmmm, I don’t know. Let’s just see where this street takes us. Cool?”
“Cool.” This time I almost sort of mean it.
“What do you think?” I pull the craziest-looking shaggy neon-pink hat down over my head. “Très chic?” Zoey tries on a silver top hat with a bend in the middle. We look at ourselves in a mirror. “It looks like a Muppet has taken up residence on my head,” I say, laughing loudly.
“Hey, now.” Zoey sizes me up. “You aren’t actually having fun, are you?”
“You know, it’s been so long, I’m not sure. What’s fun again?”
“It’s that feeling you get when you finally stop picturing your ex having sex with someone else and start picturing him lying at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Ah, yes. That’s right. Then yes, I believe I am.” I know I’m having fun. In fact, I am acutely aware of this thrilling truth. Zoey and I have found so many delights to occupy our time that I haven’t thought of Jeff since we left Andrea’s. I am less successful in my attempts not to think about annoying but hot Argentine men with stunning green eyes and T-shirt muscles. Mateo’s face pops into my head, and I toss it aside along with the furry hat.
I pull on a pair of funky sunglasses. I had no idea there were such amazing stores mere blocks from Andrea’s house. All this time I’ve been living in a shoppers’ paradise and I didn’t have a clue. And with the exchange rate, I am beginning to feel like a bandit. Sam is going to love the hand-painted tank top I got her. No cheesy souvenir key chains and T-shirts for my friends and family. I didn’t even put souvenir shopping in my plan. The thought of making a list of all the people I need to buy for and then checking them off one by one makes me exceedingly happy. But first, food. “I’m starving,” I say.
“Me, too,” says Zoey. “Let’s get out of here and find some food. There’s supposed to be a little plaza around here somewhere.”
“Sure, whatever.” Facing the mirror when I say it, I barely even recognize myself—and it’s not just the sunglasses.
After we’ve looped around in circles a few times, our shopping bags are getting heavy. I make Zoey ask a woman for directions. She says something that sounds vaguely like “Marisa Tomei is cured of a key,” but luckily, her gestures are simple. We thank her, then go left and right and straight.
We hear the plaza long before we see it. It’s only two-thirty in the afternoon, but the place is vibrating with people, music, and cars. In the middle of all the activity, circled by restaurants and bars, sidewalk tables overflowing with coffee mugs and beer bottles, is a small oval-shaped park. This, I assume, is the plaza proper. The top of a rusty jungle gym is visible at one end, but from this angle, most of the park is hidden behind a tall fence covered almost entirely by paintings, drawings, and wood carvings. In front of the artwork, the artists smoke cigarettes and lounge with other vendors selling candles, crocheted hats, and jewelry along the sidewalk.
Zoey stops abruptly on the corner, her suede bag slapping against her hip. “Oooh,” she says, crossing the street without even looking.
I, too, am distracted by something bright and shiny. Specifically, the bright and shiny smile of a gorgeous man sitting at a sidewalk café a few feet away. Light brown hair, dark brown eyes, skin the color of caramel, sharp jaw, pouty mouth, trim build. If I could sculpt the perfect man out of brown clay, this would be him. He looks up and catches me staring. I look away quickly and pretend to examine the contents of a store window. Why do beautiful men always make me feel like I’m eleven years old?
“I’ll be right back,” Zoey’s voice calls to me from somewhere far away. “Find a table wherever.”
“Mm-hmm.” I turn in her direction and nod. It takes me a second to realize I’m nodding in his direction. He puts down his paper, gets up, and walks toward me. This time I can’t look away. The closer he gets, the more striking he is. His eyes aren’t piercing at all. They’re like a little boy’s, playful. His eyelashes stretch from here to Uruguay.
“Hello,” he says in a buttery Argentine accent. “¿Americana?”
“Yes. Sí,” I stumble. “Yes.” He extends his hand to me. He is the first person here to offer me a handshake. When I take it, he pulls me in and plants a soft kiss on my cheek. The scratch of stubble catches me off guard. There is an undeniable rush of anticipation from regions beneath my denim skirt, and I am instantly aware of how long it’s been since I’ve had sex. “Thirty-two days,” I say out loud before I can stop myself. I look at
my feet, blushing.
“¿Perdón?”
“The kiss,” I say. “I’m not used to it.”
“Is Argentine way,” he says, noting my response with an undeniably mischievous grin.
“So I’ve been told.”
“I am Antonio.”
Of course you are. “I’m—”
“Beautiful.” My American bullshit shield goes up automatically, and I can’t help but laugh. “This is funny? I no mean to make joke.”
“No, I know, I’m sorry. I’m just not used to hearing that.”
“Now this is joke.” And with that, all my defenses are gone. Shield down. Bullshit or not, it feels good. Antonio invites me to his table, says something about my hair and the sun. My hair is like the sun, maybe, or is my hair blocking his sun? Either way, I want to join him, but all I can think is, This is so not in my plan. It’s one thing to wander aimlessly for an afternoon, buying silly gifts and making faces in a mirror at yourself. But this . . . this is way beyond me.
I look up and spot Zoey across the street, moving from one craft table to the next, tracing her fingers along the edge, stopping here and there to bend down and examine something she likes. It’s as if she’s floating, this tiny little thing, carried along by curiosity and desire. I wonder what would it be like to float like that. I took a camping trip the summer before grade seven with my best friend, Jenny Winter, and her family. We camped near a river, and Jenny begged me to go inner-tubing down it, but I wouldn’t. From the campsite you could see only a few hundred yards down before the water, black and rushing, curved out of sight. “But you can swim good,” she whined. “And it’s not even taller than my head.” Her dad assured me that the river was little more than a flat, slow creek that spilled out into a small lake about a mile away, where he’d be waiting to pick us up. But how could I be sure? I imagined it pulling me out to sea, lost forever. So I stayed put, and Jenny found a girl from a neighboring campsite to go with instead. I watched them float away, sitting back like lounging princesses on giant water lilies, their feet hooked together so they could share a bag of rippled potato chips. Two hours later, Mr. Winter drove up, and they jumped out of the truck, wet and laughing. When they saw me, they whispered unsubtly the way prepubescent girls do, having become instant best friends. From that point on, I was left out of everything. I knew they thought I was a baby for being scared of the water. How could I explain that I wasn’t scared of the water but where the water might take me?
Antonio, gorgeous Antonio, looks at me sweetly, chair held out in expectation. What is there to fear, really? There is no cliff to avoid, no rapids to negotiate. The water isn’t even over my head. All I have to do is sit back and float.
Apparently, I’m really good at this floating thing. My and Zoey’s spontaneous lunch at a sidewalk café with a complete and utterly gorgeous stranger blends into a romantic dinner for two at an Italian restaurant, lingers into cocktails at a jazz bar, turns into slinking up the stairs to my apartment well after three in the morning, the two of us giggling at every floorboard creak and pawing each other through our clothes like teenagers. Inside my apartment, we fumble onto the giant, pristine bed (thank God I made it this morning), stripping each other down to nothing but skin. I have never had this kind of sex before, sex without consequence, sex without purpose, sex without the promise of anything but the twining of bodies. We are a drunken blur of kisses and strokes, fingers exploring, mouths wetting. This is so not in the plan, and I’m loving every minute of it. Even when he stops to put on a condom and I have that twenty-second grace period when I can think about what I’m doing, I choose not to, shut my brain down, focus on the caramel lines of his back instead, the salty taste of him still in my mouth. I can be impulsive. Antonio’s tongue runs from nipple to nipple. I can go with the flow. His hand slips between my legs. I am a free spirit. He pushes inside me. All I have to do is float.
Only when we are lying still and spent, limbs curled through sheets and around each other, do I allow myself the pleasure of contemplation. I have had sex with an incredibly hot man who barely speaks English, who is (as far as I can tell in my drunken state) good in bed, who dresses impeccably, who looks like a movie star, who lives in Argentina, who thinks I’m beautiful . . . The pluses and minuses run through my head at lightning speed. None of this is in my plan, but maybe it should be. Have delicious affair with sexy Argentine. There’s something so irresistibly romantic in that potential checkmark. Shouldn’t every woman have one wild fling with a sexy foreigner? It could be one of those life-altering experiences, a time in my youth to savor when I’m surrounded by great-grandchildren. It could be meaningful, if temporary. It could be . . . delicious. I feel a warm hand slide across my stomach. My mind quiets, my body answers. Stop thinking so much, it tells me. I let the gentle current take me where it will.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Why didn’t anybody tell me about Buenos Aires? It’s fabulous! It’s fantastic! It’s fabutastic! It’s so amazing it needs a new word. I don’t know if it’s all the shopping yesterday, the sex last night with A, or Sam and Trish’s squeals of delight when I recounted every juicy detail over the phone this morning—or maybe I’ve just finally opened my eyes. But, my dear cyber friends, I now see that without a doubt Buenos Aires is the world’s best-kept secret! Valium Lady wasn’t kidding: The city is magic. And I plan on sucking out every last bit of that magic while I’ve got the chance. Even those disapproving looks from M, who seems to be lurking around every corner of the house at all hours these days, can’t spoil the fun. Let him look down his perfectly shaped nose at me, for all I care. I am having a blast.
For the first time in my life, I am tall, exotic, and rich. Everywhere I go, I tower inches if not feet above most of the women and many of the men. In the midst of all these Penelope Cruz look-alikes, my blond hair is capable of producing whiplash in both sexes. Back home I would have balked at dating someone as empirically good-looking as A, would have plunged, inevitably, into immediate and debilitating insecurity. I’m attractive, sure, but hardly one of the beautiful people. Yet here in Buenos Aires, I am in a whole new beauty league. I constantly catch A staring at me with those wolf eyes of his, and he’s not the only one. I can’t seem to walk down the street without turning a few dark-haired heads. And since I haven’t got a clue what they’re saying, even the catcalls are charming here.
The contents of my wallet have gotten a makeover, too. Not only is the exchange rate far in my favor, but I can buy absolutely everything I could possibly want absolutely everywhere at just about any time. Shopping seems to be a national pastime, right behind plastic surgery and psychotherapy. What’s not to love about this city? Plus, it turns out M was right about at least one thing. Practically everyone I encounter does speak some amount of English. Those who don’t are admirably resourceful. Some point to my translation dictionary with me until we’ve managed to get through to each other. None talk slowly or loudly—is it only Americans who use this misguided tack? Zoey and I especially enjoyed the saleslady in the lingerie shop who mimed “B-cup” with surprising success. Zoey also wanted a new thong, but we thought we’d spare the poor woman that particular charade.
Of course, it’s not all shopping. When I’m not roaming the streets with Zoey, I’m roaming the sheets with A. For those of you who haven’t had a mindless fling in a while, I strongly recommend it. Let’s just say the permanent flush on my face isn’t from all the sun I’m getting.
It’s shameless, I know, but I can’t help gushing about the city on my blog, in e-mails, to anyone from back home who will listen. My mother refuses to hear anything positive—I almost suspect she’d be happier if I called her from an Argentine hospital or prison in desperate need of rescue—but even her frosty disapproval can’t spoil this first blush of love. I’ve fallen head over heels for the city, and I want to enjoy every second I've got here.
So it’s with relative ease that I whittle away the warm Sunday afternoon in search of an irresistible outfit
for my first official date with Antonio. Not that it would matter if everyone else were to suddenly begin speaking German. I am in my own little world, focused on the dialogues in my head. When I left him at the front gate early this morning, Antonio said he wanted to take me somewhere really special this Thursday night. It’s time to experience the glamorous side of the city. I can see the whole evening flowing out before me, shining and twinkling in the moonlight. A perfect meal. Heady red wine. Antonio’s conspiratorial smile as he asks the waiter for the check. We can’t keep our hands off each other. Our feet play under the table. We forgo pastries and espresso for dessert of a different kind. I will commit every word, glance, touch to vivid memory. There will be more scintillating tales for Sam and Trish. More fodder for my blog. More distance between me and the tangled naked mess of Jeff and Lauren. Strange how, in the matter of one day, that mess seems finally to be a world away, and receding farther and farther with each passing moment. Antonio is the ideal distraction. I am giddy just thinking about it, my Argentine love affair.
But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Or, more to the point, I don’t want to get ahead of this moment. No second-guessing, no hedging. I’ve been blaming my quarter-life catastrophe on having the wrong plan. But sometime in the last twenty-four hours, a niggling question has burrowed its way into my brain.
What if it’s having a plan that’s wrong?
So an experiment: I left my apartment this morning without even a cursory glance at the plan, and I am determined for once to see where life takes me when left to its own devices. For now the only goal I allow myself is to find a drop-dead-gorgeous outfit for Thursday. Too dreamily distracted to worry about insignificant things like personal safety, I venture boldly into an unfamiliar neighborhood on Andrea’s advice, in search of the perfect little black dress. (Yes, she has assured me, those are a date staple here, too.) Nothing can pop the shiny bubble that encircles me as I glide from store to store. Every shoe I try on tickles me pink. Every dress brings a blush to my cheeks. But it’s a bright red dress that gets me at last. I shimmy into the slinky number with a flared skirt clearly made for dancing. It is completely unlike anything I would normally buy, and that clinches it. I take a twirl in front of the mirror, and the soft fabric swooshes against my bare thighs. It takes every ounce of my concentration not to imagine the way it will feel sliding off my hips and falling to the floor.
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club Page 11
