by Val
Every time he plays the role of heavy-handed boss, he narrows his eyes as though he can’t bear to face the person in front of him. He shouts, but he doesn’t want to have to take responsibility for the astounded looks he generates.
Today he was sitting at his desk, drawing all kinds of shapes on the corners of the pieces of paper lying there: spirals, three-dimensional cubes, daisies. He goes over and over the lines so that in the end the whole sheet of paper turns into a black, meaningless mass. They’d make a good psychiatric test, I thought.
‘But they haven’t even replied about the most important interview,’ I told him.
‘I couldn’t care less. I’m not bothered if you haven’t packed your bags, or completed your planning, and even less by the fact that you’ve got your period. We’ve postponed this trip several times already. When you took on your job, you knew you’d have to be prepared to react immediately. Why on earth did I hire a woman? Why?’ he asked Marta, who had appeared in the office doorway with some papers for him to sign.
Marta was trembling so hard she didn’t even dare approach his desk. There’s no doubt the boss was furious: there was a bright purple spot on either side of his nostrils, and he looked like a dragon about to spit fire and reduce us to ashes on the spot. I was as keen as Marta to get out of there, so I kept edging towards the door, but Andres was obviously determined to take it all out on me.
‘I haven’t finished with you yet,’ he said. ‘When you get to Peru, keep on at Prinsa. They’re slowcoaches, and if you don’t call them every day, they’ll forget you exist. It doesn’t matter how pushy you seem, get it, my girl?’
‘Yes, Andres,’ I muttered, watching him tracing yet more wavy lines on his sheet of paper.
He was pressing so hard that a few holes had started to appear.
‘OK, now get a move on! Pack your bags, and get to the airport. Your flight’s at five this afternoon. Marta has your tickets. Send me a fax as soon as you arrive. And good luck, my girl!’
I grabbed a taxi right outside the office, and it dropped me at home. There was a huge crowd in front of the door to the building, and I had to excuse myself several times as I pushed through the dozens of people waiting at the foot of the stairs.
‘What’s going on here?’ I asked a dyed blonde who had a ring through her nose and was wearing bright fuchsia lipstick.
‘We’re waiting for Felipe from Office A, but he hasn’t arrived yet, so we have to stand out here.’
Felipe is one of my neighbours. I don’t know exactly what he does, but he has his business in the office downstairs. I’ve seen him several times, but only to say hello. I rushed up the stairs, quickly opened my front door, and started packing my suitcase. I hate doing that! Even though I had known about this trip for a month, I still didn’t know what to take with me. I went through all my suits and in the chest of drawers counted how many bras and panties I would need. At the same time, I called Mercedes Taxi for them to send someone to pick me up. My apartment looked like a badly organized high-class boutique. I hate having to prepare a trip at the last minute. On top of everything else, I had to sit on my case several times to close it. What was the secret combination? What on earth was the number of the lock? I couldn’t remember it! I was beside myself; the taxi was at the front door, and I had to take everything out of the first suitcase and put it all in another one. All because I couldn’t remember the blasted combination. I hate myself for things like that. I’m completely hopeless, and they always seem to happen just when I’m most in a hurry.
My nerves were in such a state that I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and with a face like a Buddha on an off day I started to practise some abdominal breathing exercises designed to help me relax. They usually work. While I was looking for some condoms to put in my case, I came across a fax from my friend Sonia I hadn’t yet had the time to look at. I told myself I’d read it on the plane. I took the lift down: walking upstairs is good for the gluteus muscles, but there’s no point walking down. I ran into the same crowd of people waiting in front of the door to Office A.
While the taxi-driver was putting my things in his boot, I couldn’t help asking the blonde I had seen earlier, ‘Are you here for a job interview? Has he called you all at the same time?’ I was hoping to find out more about Felipe.
‘No, it’s not that. We’re here to rehearse. But he’s the only one who has any keys,’ she replied, as if it were obvious.
All at once I became very interested in what Felipe was up to. As I was getting into my taxi, I asked her again, ‘What is it that you all do?’
The blonde girl beamed at me. A lanky young guy left the others to join in our conversation as I was getting in the taxi, shutting the door, and opening the window.
‘We’re all professional actors,’ the blonde explained, lifting her chin proudly.
Then she added, as if to satisfy my obvious curiosity, or perhaps to whet my appetite for more, ‘Felipe sells slices of life.’
The taxi-driver scowled at me in his rear-view mirror, giving me to understand he was parked in an awkward spot, and accelerated away.
Just before I got on the plane, and was about to switch off my mobile for good, I got a message. It was Cristian. ‘Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?’ My God, here I was leaving Spain with two huge unanswered questions: what sort of slices of life did Felipe sell? And what was I to do about Cristian? I’m so curious and impatient, I’m not sure I am going to be able to wait for an answer to them until I get back.
Several hours into the flight, as I was sifting through all my duty-free purchases in a plastic bag, I found I had to put up with the snores from a half-bald pachyderm sitting next to me. Disgusted, I turned to look at him, and saw with horror that his head was drooping ever closer to my shoulder. He’d better not lean on me! I thought.
I tried to keep my mind busy, because each time I fly I feel more afraid. I remembered Sonia’s fax, and started to read it.
Dear Val,
I know it’s ghastly and vulgar, but at least it will cheer you up today . . . Sonia
She’ll never change. I’ve been friends with Sonia for three years now, and she has always given me the right message at the right moment. She works as product manager in a pharmaceutical laboratory, and is obsessed with getting promotion. When I first met her, she reminded me of Candy, the heroine in a Japanese animation film they used to show on French TV when I was small. Candy always wore miniskirts and knee-length boots. Sonia is just like her. Her skin is like bone china, she has enormous eyes set off by infinitely long eyelashes and a tiny snub nose covered in freckles. Her face is completely smooth, without a single wrinkle. She always wears sensible skirts and flat-heeled shoes, which make her shapeless body look like a stick. But inside, Sonia has always been pure fire. She has spent forever in a desperate search for the love of her life. And because she can never find him, she suffers from lengthy periods of depression. When she gets tired of seeing herself in such a state, she dedicates herself to making people laugh. Until she feels depressed again.
I began by counting the pages she had sent me. There were almost five of them: I don’t know how she found the time to send such a long message from her office. The whole fax was a list of jokes about men, a kind of catalogue of their main mistakes in bed. A lot of it was nonsense, so I used the rapid-reading technique I had learnt at university to pick out the best bits.
After a while, I had read enough. Sonia was trying too hard to be funny. But at least her fax helped me forget the presence of the fat man next to me, who had woken up all of a sudden and was trying to read the pages over my shoulder. Our eyes met and a slight conspiratorial smile formed on his purple lips. I did not feel like responding.
Instead, I stared closely at the screen in front of me, which showed a map of the world and the position of our plane on it. We had already reached the American continent, and somehow that image helped me forget how anxious I had been in the days before I left Spain, struggling w
ith Andres’ bad temper and my obsession with Cristian. There is another adventure awaiting me.
Lima airport looked like a fruit and vegetable market. It was complete chaos, and as soon as I set foot on Peruvian soil I felt completely disorientated. It wasn’t until I had been through passport control, changed some money to Peruvian soles and dragged my suitcase to the exit that I felt any better. As the doors opened onto the world outside, I was hit by an unpleasant wave of damp heat, which foretold sleepless nights drenched in sweat, and the inevitable gastric problems. I could hardly breathe, and there was a dreadful smell of rotten fruit. I looked around desperately for a taxi with air-conditioning, and finally saw one driven by a tiny little man wearing a natural linen shirt and a pair of combat trousers. He was constantly wiping off the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, then examining it as though he were panning gold. He waved his hand in my direction to show he was free. I didn’t think twice, but went straight up to him.
‘I’m going to the Pardo Hotel in Miraflores. Have you got air-conditioning in the car?’
‘Of course I have. Get in, we’ll be there in no time,’ he told me, literally snatching the bag from my hands.
His air-conditioning consisted of several tiny fans placed above the driver’s seat and pointed at the passenger. They revolved slowly and painfully with the sound of an enraged hornet. I made no comment. It was better than nothing.
The city of Lima is a giant slum where a lot of the houses seem on the point of collapse. Many of them have plastic sheets for roofs. It was nothing like I had imagined. I started searching desperately for any nice houses, an elegant villa, children in navy blue uniforms and long stockings coming out of a school somewhere, but I could not see any. Instead all I saw were tiny filthy faces, smeared with dried snot. The taxi-driver pointed out the sea and the city beaches. When we stopped at a light, he turned and warned me, ‘But you’re never to swim there, miss. All Lima’s beaches are polluted. You have to get out of the city if you want to swim safely.’
I saw some huge rubbish dumps lining the beach, and was horrified to see people with their trousers rolled up to the knee searching for scraps others had thrown away. I felt so sick I had to turn my head away quickly so as not to throw up inside the taxi. I searched instinctively in my bag for my international vaccination card, and read all the dates on it. My taxi ride started to seem endless, especially as I didn’t dare look out of the window again for fear of seeing more terrible sights right in front of my nose. At last we pulled up outside a hotel advertising luxury rooms, and as I was paying the driver, a hotel bellboy dressed in a red and black uniform and shiny shoes appeared.
‘Welcome to the Pardo Hotel, miss,’ he said in a very friendly way.
The hotel reception was expecting me, and they gave me the key to my suite, which looked onto the courtyard of the hotel as I had asked. At last I could get some peace and quiet. The room was beige, with a brown leather sofa in one corner. There was a huge, freshly made bed, and I collapsed onto it to try to regain some of the energy drained from me by the hours on the plane and the interminable taxi ride. Then I suddenly remembered the first urgent mission I had to accomplish: to get in touch with Prinsa.
I wasn’t able to speak to the person I needed, so I left a message. Then I went down again to reception and talked to the girl who had greeted me when I arrived at the hotel. Her name was Eva, and she never seemed to stop smiling. She told me about the possibility of hiring a guide to visit the city.
‘We have lots on our books, and they’re all reasonably priced.’
Before I could say no, she pulled out a list and showed it me. I didn’t have the slightest intention of hiring anyone, but my eye was drawn to one with the same surname as the Spanish novelist:
Rafael Mendoza
Tourist Guide
Press and Film Photographer
‘Do you know Rafael Mendoza?’ I asked Eva.
‘Yes, Rafael is a good professional and an excellent photographer. Perhaps you’d like him to take some photos of Peru for you?’
As she said his name, she smiled broadly once more, and again before I could reply she was dialling his number.
I heard her leaving a message on his answerphone.
‘Rafa, it’s Eva from the Pardo Hotel. It’s urgent, we’ve got some work for you.’
Promising Eva I would meet Rafa the next day, I took the lift back upstairs, feeling a need for sex I couldn’t explain. Perhaps it was because of all the tension I felt during the long hours of the flight. When I reached my floor, I was just fumbling for the key in my bag when I heard a voice behind me.
‘Good evening. What a coincidence we’re in the same hotel!’
As I turned, I could see no higher than his lips, but I recognized him immediately just from them. It was the small, cynical mouth I’d seen dribbling in the seat next to me on the plane. The half-bald pachyderm had already pushed the key into the lock to his room. As I straightened up to get a proper look at him, he went on, ‘Would you like to come in and have a drink?’
I surprised myself by saying yes, that was very kind of him, and yes how odd we were both in the same hotel, and by then the door was shut behind me. He asked me to take a seat on the sofa, which was exactly the same as the one in my room. The only difference was the colour of the walls, which were a garish yellow, matched by the curtains.
‘What would you like? Champagne, red wine . . .?’
‘A whisky,’ I replied automatically.
‘On its own or on the rocks?’
‘On the rocks, please.’
The pachyderm rang room service for the ice. He poured himself a glass of champagne, and started to question me on why I was visiting Peru.
‘I work for an advertising agency,’ I explained, trying to be friendly.
In fact, he seemed a decent enough person; it was just because he was so fat that I had taken against him. For a few seconds, I felt guilty.
‘What about you?’ I asked.
‘I work for a phone company.’ He told me its name. ‘I’m a computer specialist, and I’m here to sort out some programs for our Peruvian office. Did you know our company has invested two billion pesetas in Peru?’ he asked me, like a teacher trying to find out whether his pupil has studied properly for an exam.
‘Yes, I had heard that. I know that since the end of the Shining Path guerrillas more and more foreign firms are investing in Peru. That’s bound to be good for the country. I’ve read that your company’s investment itself represents almost half of the total money invested here, doesn’t it?’
I could tell by his look I had scored top marks. There was a knock at the door. The pachyderm took the ice bucket from the waiter, and shut the door with his left leg. Quite agile for someone his size, I thought.
He handed me my glass of whisky, still staring me in the eye.
‘How long are you going to be here?’ He wanted to know everything.
‘About a fortnight. It’ll depend on how long it takes me to see all our clients. Sometimes they cancel a meeting or postpone it, so all my planning gets in a mess.’
I asked him for another glass of whisky. The pachyderm, whose name was Roberto (that’s what it said on his business card, which he gave me as if it was his most precious treasure) served me another large one. I began to drink it in rapid sips.
The drink started to have an effect, and I could feel a warm glow spreading up my legs until it reached my groin. A hot sensation spread up my spine and back. As Roberto went on talking, I slipped off my top and bra. Astounded, the pachyderm suddenly halted his monologue. Then he flung himself at my nipples, and chewed at them as if he was trying to let the air out of a balloon. I felt like a rubber bone being played with by a puppy. He lifted his head – the dribbling had started again – and began to twiddle my left nipple as though he was trying to find the Top Twenty radio station. I hate that kind of thing, but I let him get on with it. I knew what I was letting myself in for when I agreed to go into h
is room.
Then he started fumbling at the lower part of my body, getting his podgy fingers stuck in the elastic of my panties. In the end I had to take them off myself, but the pachyderm saw this as an invitation to penetrate me immediately, and slid his hand between my legs and shoved all five fingers up me, like a bank robber hiding his loot in a chimney. He really was clumsy, and his face was bathed in a clammy sweat. I was thinking this was not going to be a great deal of fun. He finally started taking his own clothes off, but just to show what a beginner he was in this kind of thing, he left his socks on.
Seeing him standing there like that I could hardly stop myself laughing. I searched unenthusiastically for his prick, but the rolls of fat seemed to be covering it entirely. He would have to find some way of lifting all those tons of flesh, or fucking was going to be impossible. Without more ado he roughly released his tiny thing from a grubby pair of briefs, thrust it in me roughly, pushed me down onto the bed, and started humping away. I felt I had to let him have a go. His face was smothered in the pillow, and his hands were clutching my buttocks. He was pulling me so tightly to him I was frightened I might suffocate under all that weight.
I decided to take the initiative. I shrugged my way out from under him. He looked at me in an extraordinary way, like a paid assassin. He did not even ask if anything was wrong.
‘What are you doing? I was just about to come,’ he growled.
‘Lie on your back,’ I told him.
Although he didn’t appear to like my tone of voice, he obeyed. He turned onto his back and lay there, with his feet slightly raised, like a dog wagging its tail in the hope of being stroked.
‘I can see you like to be told what to do, my little fatso,’ I thought, smiling down at him. ‘You were pretending to be so macho, but what you really like are dominatrixes. You only had to ask.’
I stood up on the bed, turned round so my backside was in his face, then sat on his tiny exclamation mark. He began to shout encouragement, like a football trainer on the touchline.
