“I don’t have much either. But I do have a great dress you can wear. I bought it for myself, for the wedding of a cousin in Segovia, and have only worn it once. I think it will work on you. I even bought a handbag to match. It’s too nice to wear out to bars or class every day, so I’ve only worn that once too.”
“It happens. I have a lot of things just like that. I have an idea! Let’s swap!”
“Like trading cards?” asks Ana.
“Trading cards, clothes, who cares! The idea is that I’ve already worn what’s in my closet, and vice versa. It will be like going shopping without money. Primitive trade. You give me one thing and I give you something of similar value. I don’t think barter is prohibited. I seem to be getting interested in illegal things, anyway.”
* * *
Javier rummages through Ángel’s closet trying to find a shirt he likes. He does this too often. The clothes don’t look as good on him as they do on Ángel by a long shot, but they’re better than the clothing he usually wears. Not even in a secondhand store could one find clothing as worn out as his. He hasn’t set foot in a shop for years to replace what’s in his closet. There’s not a lot of extra money in his household, and he doesn’t do much that’s worthy of merit to make his parents happy to share what they have.
“Calm down, man! You’re throwing everything on the ground!” Ángel picks up what Javier tosses aside as he combs through the shirts.
“This is the one I like.” He pulls out a white shirt that’s been in Ángel’s closet for years and gets ready to try it on.
“But won’t the agency give you clothing?”
“Yes, but this is for going to class. I have to start changing my style. It doesn’t matter to you if I wear it, right?” asks Javier as he takes off his T-shirt. “The truth is I’m a bit nervous. In the agency they told me that the girl who hired me is 20 years old. See, it’s not an old lady like you said it would be. Well, the situation is that she wants to have dinner with me, but I still don’t know where we’re going. And if she wants me to stay after midnight... she’ll have to pay an extra fee!”
“If she’s a normal girl, at ten you’ll be back at your house with your Mom, wishing you’d paid attention to me from the start. Anyway, what kind of girl do you expect she’ll be? Most likely she’ll be fat and hideous. When have you ever seen a beautiful 20 year old girl who has to rent a boy?”
“Ángel, I’m going to award you the optimism prize of the year.”
While Javier finishes buttoning his shirt the doorbell rings. Ángel leaves the room to see who it is. He talks with someone for a few minutes, and returns happy. He’s talked with her. The girl he’s in love with. Shame she couldn’t have stayed. Her friends are waiting for her.
“Now that’s a girl!”
“Who?” asks Javier, curious to know what’s happened to his friend. He seems to be floating in a cloud, which is really unlike him.
“Her!”
“You spend your whole life hanging off that chick. Is she really so gorgeous and wonderful?”
“She’s a girl who doesn’t need an idiot like you, that’s for sure!”
“We’ll see when you introduce me to her!”
“Because you’ll win her over with your charms, obviously!”
* * *
Paula goes out into the street and looks around for her friend’s Fiat. She’s wearing a three-quarter sleeve shirt, jeans, and her pink Converse sneakers. The cold makes her feel good, and today she’s looking especially beautiful, even though she hasn’t put on anything special. This is how Ángel always sees her. Paula gets into Ana’s car, which is waiting in the street, double parked.
“They aren’t there. Well, I’ll introduce you to them another day. They’ve gone with their mother to buy clothes for the wedding. Their brother told me that my father’s sister is going to pick them up the day of the wedding. It’s better that way. Now I won’t have to explain who the boy is. You can’t imagine the interrogation they’re capable of! And the blackmail. Only if you let yourself in for it, of course.”
“It must be nice to have so many siblings,” says Ana, who has always wanted an older brother.
“If all of them were like these, yes. But as I’ve already told you, Raúl, who lives with me, is the strangest kid I know. He thinks he’s so deep! Apparently I don’t measure up to his ‘vital existentiality’. He’s disgustingly realistic, pessimistic, morbid... and a total idiot. He’s always pestering me. And Cayetana and Loreto are exactly the opposite. They’re two unbearable little princesses from a fairytale. Almost the cheesiest girls on the planet, taking second and third place after their sister the ‘mannequin’.”
Ana has to laugh at her friend’s description. It strikes her as odd that Paula has such different opinions of her brothers and her sisters’ sister.
“You don’t like her very much, do you?”
“It’s not just me. You have to see Ángel’s imitations of her! You’d die of laughter!”
“Ángel is one of the twins?” asks Ana, who’s starting to get confused by so many names.
“No, he’s their older brother, about our age. I already introduced you to him the other day. The twins are named César and Eduardo. Interchangeably, because I never get it right and just say the first name that occurs to me. Sometimes I’m right, and the other times, well, they’re used to it.”
“We’re here.” Ana stops the car near her house. “When my mother sees us show up with so many bags, she’s going to ask where we went.”
“Let’s tell her the truth. I’ve realized that it’s the best way for them not to believe you. We’ll say that I’m going shopping in your closet and that you just went to shop in mine. My mom thought we were crazy, so I expect a similar reaction from yours.”
Ana and Paula spend the entire afternoon trying on clothes, and preparing the outfit Paula will wear to her father’s fourth wedding. Ana looks lovely with a skirt and an old Tintoretto bodice of Paula’s. And Paula is completely taken by Ana’s super high-heeled Adela Gil shoes, though they don’t wear the same size. They try to exchange complementary items and laugh at some of the combinations. They search the internet for matching make-up and end up as heavily painted as doors, taking photos with a cell phone to post on Facebook so they can keep laughing another day. Finally they find a pink Adolfo Domínguez dress. The neckline is strapless and perhaps it’s a bit too much for December, but Paula will look spectacular. At home there’s a cream-colored coat that will go well with it. The only thing missing is a choker for it to be perfect.
“You look great!” says Ana. “That boy is going to fall in love with you.”
“I don’t want a boy in love. I want someone who will save me from the mess I’ve gotten myself into without asking too many questions! No doubt my dad’s already told everyone that his ‘little girl’ has a boyfriend, and you don’t know how annoying my aunts can be! They’re going to torture me to no end if I appear alone. If I bring someone... at least he’ll be the one they torture.”
“Where are you going to say you met him?” asks Ana. They have to take care of the details down to the last millimeter. The story they invent can’t have any loose ends if Paula hopes to keep her lie a secret.
“I hadn’t thought of that. What do I say to them?” Paula realizes that before meeting the others at the wedding, she’ll have to give instructions to the boy too.
“Tell them you met each other at a club,” her friend suggests.
“Good one! I never go to clubs, since I can’t stand them. I never go out without my lifelong friends. And we’re so predictable! The farthest we get is the neighborhood bar. That story won’t work. They’ll be at the wedding too and will realize that something fishy is going on.”
“You’ve haven’t told your friends?” asks Ana, surprised.
“No! They’re gossips incapable of keeping a secret. If they were in on it, before the wedding started half of Spain and most of the European Union would know.”
“I know what you can do! You can say that you met him in class. I think you should start dropping his name in discussions. That way meeting him at the wedding won’t take them completely by surprise.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ll do.” Paula continues thinking. “And what should I tell them his name is?”
“The first name that comes into your head. The boy’s name you like most, or more importantly, one you know you’re not easily going to forget.”
“And if the boy is named something else?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! You’ve rented him, haven’t you?” says Ana. “You can call him whatever you like!”
* * *
Friday. Javier spends the entire morning pacing his house, nervous about the upcoming evening. He doesn’t even know what event he’ll be attending. All he has are an address and clear instructions: be at the agency to get ready at 2pm, and at her house for pick up at 4pm. He’s been told he should introduce himself as David, to remain anonymous.
Since getting up Javier’s been avoiding the mirror. This is not the time for encounters that make him examine his conscience. He needs to stay calm. He picks up his cell phone to text Ángel, asking him to call because he doesn’t have much credit left. He’ll recharge his cell phone when they pay him. He wants to set aside the little money he’s found going through his pockets for tonight.
“Ángel, man, I’m wobbly as a flan. Do you think I should bring flowers?”
“Did they tell you to bring flowers?”
“No,” responds Javier.
“So don’t bring them! And leave me in peace! Since you started all this, you’ve been more annoying than usual. I have to go help my mom.”
Ángel hangs up. He has to lend a hand at home. His younger brothers, the twins, are going to their father’s wedding. They’re complete disasters, and have made an absolute mess of the bathroom while getting ready, so he’ll have to clean it. He thinks about how much he dislikes weddings, and yet how much he would like to go to this one. He inevitably feels a little sidelined every time his brothers start a project with their father, because it’s not his father. Ángel’s always left out, even though no one else has played the role of Dad in his life.
But the most powerful reason for his sadness doesn’t have to do with that. One eventually gets used to neglect, just like anything else. What makes him feel bad is that she will be there. Paula. He’s been fascinated by her since the first time he laid eyes on her. He was only six years old, and fell in love. Her eyes were the biggest he had ever seen, and her long black hair, just like that of the older girls, enchanted him. She grabbed him by the hand as soon as she saw him so they could go play together. Right then Ángel decided that his mother had to marry that girl’s father. At six years old there aren’t many options to run after the love of your life, so he tried to get them to bring her home. When Silvia, his mother, told him she was getting married, he came close to strangling her with a hug. And for that same reason, what hurt most about his mother’s divorce wasn’t the fact of it itself, or the tragedy of losing the only father he’d ever had, but the end of those afternoons playing with Paula.
“Ángel, does my tie look right?” asks César, pulling him from his thoughts.
“Yes. Well, I think. I don’t wear ties much. Edu! Settle down or you’re going to get dirty and Mom is going to get angry!”
“When are we going?” yells Eduardo. Edu always yells. It’s the best way to tell the two apart.
“When your aunt comes to pick you up. Soon I suppose, because the wedding is at five. You’ll have to hurry.”
* * *
Paula calls up Ana. That Friday’s classes have gone just the same as every Friday’s. Today it was essential that she get her hair cut, so she didn’t go to the university. Ana has taken notes for her and now wishes her luck on her date. Paula can’t help but be a bit nervous. She almost decides to pull out of it.
“And if I call and tell him not to come?”
“You’re crazy! Now the best part is about to begin.”
“You think?” Paula is nervous. More than she has any reason to be.
“Call me tomorrow and tell me everything!”
“Don’t worry, I will. He should be here any minute,” says Paula, who hasn’t taken her eyes off the clock.
“You make me jealous,” says Ana. “You’re going to live an adventure!”
“You can live it too whenever you want!”
“When I want? You mean when I save enough!”
“Ana, I have to go. He’s ringing the doorbell and I have to open it.”
Paula goes to answer, arriving just a few seconds before her brother Raúl. It takes some effort to get him out of there, but finally she manages it. When she finally opens the door and finds Javier waiting for her with a red rose in hand, she can’t keep back a look of horror. It’s the boy she accidentally punched in class! Luckily he doesn’t seem to recognize her as the aggressor, which perhaps is logical. Paula doesn’t call attention in any way. Together with Ana she’s perfected the technique of camouflaging with the classroom furniture, and at their first meeting, the only time they’ve ever spoken, she’d disabled his vision for a few moments.
“Hi!” he says. “I’m... David?”
“Hi!” she responds. “I’m Paula. Wait a minute.”
She closes the door suddenly and looks in the mirror to check that everything is in order. She’s wearing the pink dress and trembling. Maybe it’s the cold, which she feels more because of her low neckline. She’s kept her make-up light, because any excess today will make her even more insecure. On her neck she wears a choker with a fake pink stone. After breathing deeply, she gets up the courage, grabs her coat and purse, and opens the door again.
“Let’s go?” she says, hoping with all her might that he doesn’t realize anything, and trying to avoid him looking at her as much as possible.
“Alright,” he answers, still asking himself where he’s going to take the girl. From her appearance it seems she shouldn’t have many problems with boys, but then he thinks of his own situation, in which he has all the problems in the world going out with a girl. It seems impossible for him to carry on a simple conversation that isn’t full of stupidities. He always gets nervous and makes more idiotic jokes than usual, and they end up fleeing. And falling into the arms of Ángel, who always just happens to be there to catch them.
Paula and Javier head down the stairs to the street, where Paula’s car, an A3 with a new license plate, is parked. They get in and she explains what he has to do. She speaks quickly, nervously. She avoids looking at him at any time. He does just the opposite, not able to take his eyes off her. She’s very beautiful. He’s gotten really lucky.
“You’ll pass yourself off as the boy I’m going out with. Try to be friendly with people, but don’t go overboard. It’s not convenient for me that they memorize your face. If there’s a video, try to avoid it! I don’t want you to drink anything, and neither do I want you to be too affectionate with me. Supposedly we’ve only been going out a little while. I think holding my hand will be enough. Nobody would believe it if I had a passionate love story with a boy.”
“Why not?” he asks. But he quickly regrets it upon seeing Paula’s expression when she finally dares to meet his eyes. The look on her face reproaches him.
“My friends think we’ve been going out for a month.” She goes on without acknowledging his comment with its hidden intention. “I’ll introduce you to my friends,” she continues.
“Where are we going?” Javier bites his tongue. It’s the second time he’s asked a question in under two minutes, and at the agency they’d told him he shouldn’t ask anything.
“We’re going to my father’s wedding. It’s his fault I had to rent you. For some reason I told him I had a boyfriend, and... Well, I’m in a jam. It was this or get saddled with my little sisters. And now I have to bring someone to the wedding, because he’s told everyone in the family!”
Jav
ier thinks that someone he knows is also going to a wedding that day, but he can’t remember who. Maybe he’s only imagined it.
They arrive at the court only a little before her father. He’s a really elegant guy, to judge by his appearance, and has the ability to dazzle whatever woman he approaches. He’s still fairly attractive, despite approaching fifty, and this has been the great cross he’s had to bear. Women pursue him, and he, perhaps more conscious than he will admit, lets himself be carried along. His constant infidelities have put an end to three previous marriages, but he hasn’t lost the hope of finding the woman who can change him. His tenacity might seem like pure masochism, but at bottom it’s the desire to achieve an emotional stability he hasn’t felt since childhood. He always tells himself, “Mario, this is your soul mate, the one who’s going to sort your life out”, and a couple of kids later he’s already started the process for another divorce, had several adventures, and, moved by who knows what strange mechanisms, gone to look over the conclusions of his doctoral thesis, completed almost twenty years ago. When Mario arrives, he greets several of his acquaintances before finally turning to his eldest daughter.
“How are you? I see that you’ve come with your boy.”
“Yes, Dad. He’s named David.”
“David. Nice to meet you!” He gives him his hand in a sign of affection that he doesn’t feel by a long shot. What he really feels is something like a prick of dislike or irritation. It’s the first time in his life that he’s been truly jealous! The first time he’s been in the place of all his exes. “And what do you do?”
Boy For Rent Page 3
