Emilio’s an actor. He writes plays and teaches theatre classes.
I have a drink with Adriana while the men handle the cooking. Her nails are coral. Yesterday she brought home a boy I didn’t catch a glimpse of. Always someone new.
Matías arrives with an animal fresh from the oven, surrounded by roasted garlic. The famous pizza will have to wait till another time. I kind of wonder if we’re celebrating something. The dog jumps up and down like it’s possessed and tries to climb up onto the table. It doesn’t realize how ugly it is.
Glasses emptied and filled. The evening stretches on. What do you think of our country? Why exactly did you come here? Don’t you get bored, holed up at home? What do you do in your room?
I sketch doubtful answers and blame my bad Spanish. I want the questions to stop. The conversation drifts to Matías’s chaotic love life. A lot of it goes over my head. Like a switch has been flipped, and I can’t hear anymore. The words become insignificant buzzes.
And then, all of a sudden, we’re in party mode.
Emilio’s banging on a pan. Matías joins in with glasses and forks. Adriana too, with a wooden spoon on the radiator. A beautiful sight. They go on like that for a while. I stare, hypnotized. Their rhythm steadies. Emilio comes up to me with a big pot. ¡Dale Chloé! ¡Tocá! Puts it down in my lap.
There’s a long moment where I do nothing. Emilio’s already gone to get another instrument. I look at the pot. The other two haven’t noticed, they’re banging on whatever makes noise.
I sit there on the chair, with the pot on my knees. The other three playing a concerto in cast-iron major. I start timidly tapping with the tips of my fingers. I can barely hear the sound I’m making. Louder and louder. Boing – tap – tap – mm – tap. I start to gain a little confidence, and eventually I’m playing in time with the others. I start to forget, a little. Emilio sings, Matías and Adriana too. I start tapping my foot. We get louder and louder. The rhythm accelerates, the noise becomes chaotic. Now more of an amateur ambiance. The boys stand up on their chairs. They’re singing themselves hoarse. They start competing to see who can outdo the other. Cocky as roosters.
And, in a flurry of emotion, Emilio falls off. Everyone has a laughing fit. The chair’s broken.
Betty, have you ever noticed that time isn’t linear? On TV, a woman wearing too much makeup replaces another. Then another. Then another. Her piercing, high-pitched voice doesn’t change. Close-up on her tanned face, a look of despair. She hiccups. Sobs that sound half-stuck at the bottom of her throat. Elevator music reminds us of her happier years.
The screen goes black and gives way to a bright, hazy scene. The same face, radiant, on a man’s shoulder, alone in the middle of a field, on a plaid picnic blanket. He puts a flower behind her ear. She’s smiling, brings a piece of chocolate to her lips. The camera lingers on a passing butterfly, follows it. The lovers leave the frame, and in the distance, hills. The butterfly flies out of frame to the right and the camera stops moving. Stays fixed on the green hills.
Another cut, to the blonde lady drinking vodka straight from the bottle. Zoom in on her running mascara.
If I had guts, even just a little, I’d take all the plates, one by one, and throw them as hard as I could onto the floor.
The fuck are you looking at? Don’t look at me like that! Hasn’t anyone ever taught you that it’s rude to stare? Of course not, you stupid dog, no one’s ever taught you anything. Bastard. You just bark, that’s it. If you’re looking for trouble, you’re gonna find it. I lost my earring, okay? That’s what’s happening here.
I’m looking for my earring. Understand? You’re happy to see me on the ground, is that it? Don’t get snarky with me. I’m not the one pissing all over the place. Get lost!
Listen, dog, if you lick me, I’m gonna kill you. Got it?
As a kid, I was terrified of other people’s distress. Screams would ricochet around, making holes everywhere. They would tear at my ears, stab me in the gut. I’d hide under tables and wait. Convinced that the apocalypse was imminent. I dreamed of being bulletproof.
They’d end up calming down, start looking for me like we were playing a game. When they’d find me, they’d say ah, you’re hiding down there again. Are you practicing to become a spy? Come on, come have dinner, that’s enough exploring for one day, it’ll get cold.
I should have gone into the kitchen with my red raincoat on and told them it was so their screams would slide right off me.
Once, just once, I let my guard down completely and I found myself, confident, blind, my mouth full of I love yous.
Love has always been a dangerous word. A word that only serves as collateral. Do you love me? You don’t love me.
So hypocritical. Love doesn’t sound true unless it comes with nothing, never, not anymore. Love is tallied, taken back. Sometimes it’s rented. But it isn’t given.
If you love me, what do you want from me? I’m heartless. I don’t love.
Adriana’s making out with a new boy in the living room. Her nails blood red. Red like the scar that’s still on the inside of my wrist.
That’s not true. It isn’t red like blood or red like her nails. It’s white.
White and smooth. But I still see it as red, as though it hadn’t healed at all since that afternoon. The day I squeezed a tourniquet around my arm and opened it with a box cutter. I had this deep conviction that it wouldn’t bleed. Blood is for the living.
There’s a puddle of water on the floor of the shower. Water filled with everyone’s filth that refuses to drain. It laps around my ankles.
Hair from at least three different heads is caught in the drain, along with hair elastics, a bit of leftover soap that hasn’t melted yet, a bobby pin. Sticky, slimy, sick. The deeper I dig, the more surprises I find. At the bottom, it starts to look like tar.
I smear two lines of the gunk across my cheeks and look at myself in the mirror. I’m incapable of smiling at myself. Some people pay a fortune for mud baths, when you could get it for free from a shower drain.
With the tar on my face, I climb the steps to my room, leaving behind a wet trail that will drip down through the stairs and onto the floor. Maybe the dog’ll slip on it.
Betty the Stain is bored, I’m giving her the same tired lines over and over again without even trying to be coherent. From the wall where she reigns, she tells me she understands. Misery is always universal, in a way, she says. Same same but different.
I recognize the voices of every couple arguing in the building. Five of them, by my count. Some scream at each other in the morning, others at night. Josefina screams louder than all the rest.
He never answers her. I think she’s screaming at the wall. Apparently they have ears. That’s what she’s doing, taunting the walls’ ears. Just once, someone answered her, Josefina, ¡cállate! Loud enough to shut her up, loud enough to shut up all the sounds of the night.
And that’s how I found out her name.
I barely recognize myself. Perched on these glittery heels, wrapped up in a blue dress that’s way too asymmetrical. Adriana has disguised me as a girl.
The club is packed. They’re all drooling over my roommate. I imagine they’re not buying my get-up. One of them is lingering near me anyway. He’s figured out that he’s fifth in line for Adriana and there’s no use trying—he won’t be going home with her. He’s not bad looking.
The game of seduction is universal. Since the music is too loud for us to hear each other, we rely on body language. The gazes. The forwardness. The rapport we strike up, or don’t. The despair, too. The desire not to end up alone at the end of the night. I look the guy up and down. Yes, no, maybe.
Yeses are dangerous. They could rip my heart out without even realizing it. That’s what they’re after, really. One look from me, a desperate girl who’s all over them, so they can feel like they exist. My big gr
een eyes give them life, and help them keep up this game, over and over again, of trying to impress me. The Nos won’t be spending the night with me. No chance. I won’t even look at them, too bad. The Maybes, it depends. Depends on them, depends on me. Depends on the night, and what I’m prepared to sacrifice to let myself be liked a little. Some nights, I need to believe it. I tell myself it’s all good fun, because I never get to have fun anymore. I drink too much. Sometimes I manage to convince myself that I can’t help it. That’s what I keep saying to whoever will listen, anyway. I tell them whatever I need to, to stop myself from getting tripped up by the consequences. They play along with it, they encourage me. Tomorrow, I’ll tell the guy who took me home, I’ll say, Did you believe it? He’ll answer No, of course not. We’ll laugh like children and tell people about that night like it’s a story that happened to someone else.
He buys me a drink. I down it in one gulp. Eventually, I forget I’m his second choice.
He puts his hand around my waist, whispers in my ear. He tugs gently at my hair, draws circles around my earrings with his fingers, lets them dangle. He calls me guapa, kisses my neck, gets me to drink some more. He follows a script he’s rehearsed so many times before he almost feels it.
He’s an actor. They’re all actors in this country.
Another drink. I hope he takes me for a foreign babe he can show off, I hope he finds me exotic. No matter how many times I tell myself that anyone will do, I’m frozen to the spot.
I kiss him, and nothing. I remember a time when lips brushing against my neck would have sent electric shocks flying from head to toe. Anyone’s lips.
I feel the wind on my bare shoulders. I wander aimlessly. Till sunrise. Down to the landfill river.
There’s a pack of eight, maybe ten dogs stalking me. A howl at the moon reminds me that stray dogs are almost wolves. Just the thought of their claws scraping against the pavement, sharpening, chills me to the bone.
They all have rabies, for sure, they’re feral. I’m not sure why, but I grip my girly little dress, all frail between the parked pickup trucks of tattooed sailors who stare as I walk by, the dogs trailing behind me. These stupid heels.
I wonder who’ll jump me first; the dogs, or them.
Matías is still up. I’m feeling shy, all of a sudden, just being in the same room as him. He offers me a puff of his cigarette without a word. I think of my life expectancy shrinking before my eyes and accept it. What’s a potential number on an abstract scale? The smoke rises up to the ceiling.
Matías would have made a good aristocrat. There’s something about his posture and presence that makes you want to admit you’ve been bested before the games even begin. He turns the page of his newspaper, seems to be reading attentively. Adriana must be off with one of her suitors. Maybe mine found some other girl before the night ended. Probably.
I lean my head on Matías’s shoulder and pass my hand through the cloud of escaping smoke. It breaks up the smoke but leaves no trace.
When I was little, in the spring, I’d build dams for little streams. The water would flow along the sidewalk and I’d block its path to the sewer drain. With slush, whatever was left of the snow, bits of wood. When the water pressure got too strong, my dam would break up into tiny pieces. And the water would pick up speed again, and happily work its way back to the hole.
What I liked most of all was imagining that the water, the slush, and the branches had a will of their own. That I was barely doing anything at all. Just helping things along.
I think I might be autistic. Establishing a real, deep, sincere connection is impossible. I watch these people moving around in front of me, living. I try to behave like them. I’m not good at anything but copying, imitating. Repeating until my brain takes note and catches on. When in doubt, I abstain completely. They take me for a quiet girl, timid and reserved.
Emilio emerges. ¿Venís? Gracias, pero no. He shrugs and smiles. Leaves with a spring in his step.
Querida, what is it you want? I’ve got everything you need. Barato, barato. I go well out of my way to shake off the street vendors. Unrolled, the pareo looks like a colourful island on the ground that dissolves into dust when I touch it. It looks like sand. Like in westerns, the sand flying up excitedly under the feet of the new cowboy in town that the director loves to show in a dramatic close-up.
People, everywhere. And their eyes. As long as I don’t make eye contact.
The earth, and my hands in it. A little cloud of dirt. Greyish brown. Dirt or sand, same thing. Dried up and crumbled. I sprinkle it, it flies off in the wind. Not looking at anything else. The pareo, the ground, the dirt. Scratching, ripping, throwing. Focusing on these simple, repetitive movements.
A baby bird slowly moves forward, trips. His little feet are so frail, there are so many obstacles. He gets up, keeps going, falls. Gets back up and tries again. He’s going to die soon, unless someone takes care of him. He’s too little, way too little.
I’m mesmerized by his movements, the way I sometimes get lost staring at flames. Keep going, little abandoned bird. Come on. Did you fall from your nest? Come here, I can take care of you. I’ll make a little spot for you on the windowsill. Comfortable. Not too far from Betty. I could tell you stories, you could sing to me. It would be so nice. I’d help you heal.
Then suddenly, he turns to face me. He’s missing an eye. Ew! What a freak.
Get out of here! Don’t touch me.
Emilio is having a coffee. Matías too.
There are flies, always. Big ones, small ones. I kill some, they multiply. I think of buying frogs and spiders, leaving them in the kitchen and in my bedroom. It would be a nice change.
They must have pet stores here. How do you say frog? Frog-os? Not sure that works. Maybe Emilio knows where I can find some. He’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t notice if all the furniture disappeared. What would he care about a frog or two in the mix? Adriana, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about.
¡AHHHHH! ¡Joder, tío, qué es esta mierda!
It’s my new frog! You don’t like him?
They didn’t get up this morning. Three closed doors, half-lit by the afternoon sun. A lot of shoes by the door. I trip over them on my way out.
At the café, the waiter tells me I have to order something more substantial than water if I want to stay. I roll the slice of lemon around the rim of my glass, ignoring him. A man who bears a strange resemblance to the one from the bar the other night crosses the street. I can’t help but follow him with my gaze. The one who was pulling on my earrings. Hair just like his, something about his attitude.
Was he tall? It was dark.
I’m not even sure I’d be able to recognize him. Maybe my skin would remember his scent.
Adriana has been baking big batches of cookies since she got up. When they’re done she files them away in metal boxes, with wax paper between layers. Puts sprinkles on top. She decided she’s getting into the cookie-selling business. Everyone else does it, so why not? The smell reminds me that I’m hungry.
Her nails are turquoise. She doesn’t pay attention to me. I reheat my coffee. I open the fridge: nothing.
Dare I steal Emilio’s yogurt?
Marry me, guapa. I’ve been in love since the moment I laid eyes on you. Don’t make me suffer like this. Come back, my love! You’re killing me! Say something!
A man is following me down the street, blowing kisses. Hovering around me, trying to take my hand. A moist spot where I pull mine away. Can’t think about it or I’ll crack. I put my head down and bite the insides of my cheeks. I can’t let him know that his little game almost brightened my day. I bite down harder.
I should say yes one day. Let’s get married. The guy would be speechless. A short-lived victory; he’d probably say yes.
How do the other girls manage not to laugh?
Luz is up to her
elbows in our dishes. The others are gone, obviously. ¿Te vas a quedar mucho por acá? And she tells me about the nearby cathedral I should visit. The relics, the heart, or the arm of some martyr saint who suffered more than any other. The Lord intervened, it was a miracle, a real one. Maybe they even saw the Virgin Mary there. The cathedral has been famous ever since. Luz gesticulates a lot with her arms, shows me the medallion she wears around her neck. She squeezes my wrist, ¿Chloé, vas a ir? What I gather, mostly, is that inside you can barely hear the sounds of the street.
At the grocery store, the cashier is flirting with the lady who lives next door. He asks how her family is. Puts a handful of candy in her hand, for the little one. Last time, a watermelon appeared in her bag. A long wink. To me, he gives the worst vegetables. Barely deigns to serve me.
From the alley, I can still see her. A stray strand of her hair falls onto her neck. She halfheartedly puts it back into place, then lets her hand casually slide onto the cashier’s.
I think I’m losing weight.
Emilio’s two bearded friends chain-smoke hand-rolled cigarettes with no filters, filling a seashell-shaped ashtray. They’ve come to watch auteur films and pretend they’re Che. So what? Do you find it funny? Adriana’s brought her nail polish, just in case. I join them on the too-soft couch.
Emilio watches a new film every day. Preferably something old or independent, from a director who doesn’t make it to Cannes or Sundance, but rather festivals like Motovun, or other ones from cities with names I can’t pronounce.
In the End They Told Them All to Get Lost Page 3
