She got up and went over to his table
“Are you deaf?”
“Well, yes, a bit.” The old guy caught on quickly and followed her lead. Although he was already beginning to like her just a little.
Well he could suck her, anyway, that’s all.
He didn’t have the urge for anything else.
“The truth is I have had otitis for a long time and my right ear is plugged up.
“Plugged up? Well I was asking how you like what you are drinking.”
“It’s a little strange, to tell the truth.” And he said it in a low voice so the waiter would not hear.
“You can taste it if you want.”
“What about the germs?”
”Look, here is a war I haven’t tasted yet. That is what it’s called: ‘war’. You can drink it all if you like. A whole war for the lady. ”
“Thank you.”
“Mrs...”
“Anybody. Mrs. Anybody. Surely you don’t think I walk through La Catedral telling complete strangers my name.”
“Of course not, but you don’t mind walking the street with no panties on.”
That was a phrase the old guy used to say all the time twenty years before and for some reason it came into his head. Yes, isn’t that a coincidence? Just a few minutes before the old lady had thought about that. Yes of course, pure coincidence. Now the old lady, instead of slapping him like he deserved, burst out laughing.
The two young folks, Sandoval and Sandra continued nearby, as she tried on many, many pairs of shoes, muttering invectives against the whole time about all the shoe stores in the world and the whole shoe industry.
The old man didn’t like that at all.
“So what are you laughing about? Do you think I don’t know?”
“No, not at all! I am laughing at the taste of this war. It tastes like a joke.”
“What?”
“A joke. Look, it is sweet and sour. It is salty, and bitter, and tastes like lemon when it looks like tomato, or it tastes like wine and looks like beer. A war.”
“Well it’s not funny to me.””
“Don’t think I LIKE wars.”
“Well I do, said the old guy. I like wars. And I also really like genocide.”
“What?”
“What I said. See, I’m anti-social, a sociopath. I love genocide.”
“I never...”
Sandoval hadn’t heard anything that atrocious either.
“And what would you know about genocide?”
“Well, hardly anything. All my uncles, cousins, and friends died in the war. Hardly anything. But after a genocide the air smells clean. A lot of good folks are killed, it is true, but a lot of filth is disposed of as well. Sometimes the worst filth is a family member. Of course I say it must be more fun to kill than to be killed although it’s not so bad for half the family to disappear, or the whole family.”
“You’re disgusting.” The old lady started taking her war back to her table. “May I take it with me?”
“Don’t mention it! I can see that you really like that war.”
Her face livid, she returned to her table. The old guy was pleased now that no one would bother him and he opened his notebook.
Wrong.
Sandoval, who had never in his life said a word to a stranger, not even to ask the time, or for directions, surprised himself when he asked the old man:
“So, you say you like wars?”
”Have a seat” said the old man, at last coming to the conclusion that today he would not write any more. He liked this young Sandoval more than the old lady. He was the same age as the farmer who fucked him when he was a child. In those days he seemed very old. Now he was young.
“What do you want to drink?”
“Well I really didn’t mean to bother you.”
He signaled for the waiter
“A war for our friend.”
“That’s too much. No. Please. No.”
“It’s just a drink. And that’s what it’s called. And it really pleases hormonal folks of a certain age.”
He said this for the old lady who was still so appalled she didn’t hear a thing.
In the wink of an eye the waiter returned. The old man thought he must have had a lot of wars prepared when he ordered the first. He paid him at once and then Sandra asked Sandoval through the door of the establishment what he was doing sitting in the cafe the alarm began sounding as she had on the shoes she was trying.
“What do you think?”
Police arrived immediately; a man and a woman.
“Ma’am, don’t leave the store with the shoes. Come back in so we don’t have to arrest you.”
Sandra entered.
The old man was beginning to like Sandoval as much as he disliked the old lady. He imagined him in his butt like the farmer and imagined again using his ass to save the lives of his family. The young man didn’t look like he was foreign to this kind of relationship. But he didn’t know where to start.
“I hope you like the war?”
“Well, it’s not bad. It’s a little strange though. I hope no genociders drink here.”
“Who knows? Up ‘till today I didn’t even know one could drink war.”
“Me either.”
“And I’ve been here drinking for months, ever since my wife died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not such a big deal. She isn’t really dead. She’s in a coma. I can’t even see her. They keep her in a coma so they can keep collecting a fat monthly bill from my son who has a lot of money. They won’t even let us die in peace because that helps the economy.”
Buy ladies and gentlemen! During the next two hours we have a special offer in the document tube bookstore. Buy two books from the Anafe collection and get three free books from the Tetuán collection. Everyone currently in La Catedral mall must take advantage of this offer in order to leave.
“This is getting to be a prison.” Said the young man.
“What do you know about prisons? I wasn’t able to leave a basement for four years.”
“Well, it wasn’t such a big deal.”
“And I got along fine, just to set the record straight,” said the old man. I got along just fine with a young man of your age but I was a lot younger back then.”
“I can imagine.”
Sandra left the shoe store with another pair of espadrilles. She would always try on about twenty pairs of shoes but would end up with espadrilles. “So why don’t you just start with the espadrilles in the first place?” asked Sandoval. But that was one of those profound questions nobody has ever been able to answer.
“I’m going for the books,” said Sandra, “And then we’ll leave because today my parents are coming to eat at the house.
“So?”
“I told you about it yesterday.”
“Yesterday? I never heard about it.”
“I told you while you were watching the game.”
“And that was the time to tell me?”
“Look, I’ll leave the shoes here while you stay here to talk to your new friend and I’ll be right back.
The old lady
Buy daytime! Buy night time! Buy Monday, Buy Tuesday, Buy when you’re in a good mood, buy when you’re in a bad mood. Buying is living!
The old lady was ready to pee herself after drinking the war and she left, nearly running, for the bathroom. As she entered, the voice changed and a woman’s voice began addressing women: You there, ma’am what you need is a livelier skirt. You look like you’re going to a funeral. Buy some skirts and blouses, tunics, and boas. Buy ma’am!
She entered the stall while the voice continued addressing other ladies she realized she had left the house without panties, something she had not done for ages. This time is was pure forgetfulness but she couldn’t forget the time she had gone to a restaurant with her husband without panties and when she went to the restroom she had fucked a Frenchman who had winked at her from the far end of the
room and had gotten up as soon as he saw that she had winked back. She went just like the good schoolgirl who is told by the teacher to get up and write on the board. He entered her from the rear and quickly left again. Later, when she returned to the table her husband started laughing, and she rubbed his balls with her bare foot.
“Say, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she smiled.
He studied her for a while and then asked her if she didn’t have a lover. That she seemed very different lately, something that he repeated word-for –word ever since they had married, I’m always strange, you always say that, was what she always responded, but this time she said something different.
“Not one. Two.” She smiled.
But he had not. He had continued eating his squid as though such a thing, as though she hadn’t said anything.
But woman, what cream do you use? You look forty eight.
Said the voice that would not stop talking since the old lady had entered and she thought she wished she was forty eight, even fifty eight, whichever.
Woman you get over there and buy a rejuvenating cream.
But I AM forty eight that is why I look it.
“I can’t believe it!” Now the voice, against all the rules, began to argue with the forty eight year old woman.
“That is what rejuvenating creams are for, so you can look thirty eight when you are forty eight.
“Well, the truth is I am forty nine.”
“No matter, go buy yourself a good cream.”
“OK fifty, let’s leave it at that.”
“Ladies, buy creams, more and more creams, and better creams.”
The old lady was completely peed out and didn’t know whether to exit or to wait until the conversation was over.
“OK so what cream do you recommend for me?”
“The most expensive. Spend more ma’am.”
“Right. If I do that my husband with really be upset.”
“My forty-eight-year-old lady, husbands never, ever find out how much the cream costs. If they did, they would go to the football game every Sunday without feeling guilty. When husbands see the price of a cream they think nobody would pay that much for anything, certainly not their wife. So they don’t find out. They never find out. They’d sooner believe the money is being spent on a lover than on a cream.
“Well, I’m leaving”
The forty-eight-year-old lady left, and after her the old lady, a little frightened and hurriedly while the voice said to her “And you need to buy a cane. It would help your back.”
Sandoval and the old man
Meanwhile, the old man had begun to like the idea of fucking the old lady lacking anything better. He told the youth that he had been a writer but he had stopped.
“I would like to be a writer too,” said Sandoval. “But I’m too young.”
“Young?”
“I’m only thirty three.”
“You call that young? At your age I had already saved my family with my ass and had survived five years of war, I had had three jobs and six kids and decided to be a writer.”
“So, what did you write?”
“About the war. All my books started out with “Once upon a time there was a war.” I published two novels and even won a prize.
“It was the Gallo Del Cielo Award for best novel. But I stopped.”
“Why?”
“The usual reason. The books didn’t sell. And what do you do to survive?”
“I’m a trash man. You can learn a lot about people from their trash. And it gives me ideas about what to write about. Except I have only twenty-five beginning paragraphs for the same novel. But it will come in time.”
“Once upon a time there was a war. Just begin with that statement and it will all come together. Editors like wars. They sell well. Better than the wars we have been drinking here. War literature sells well. Readers always want to read about wars, bad and terrible as they are. But wars are exquisite and the best thing there is for the economy.
After a war it is not necessary for all these loud speakers to shout all the time. People procreate like crazy and buy everything in sight. Besides a lot of shit is disposed of. A lot of trash in your language.
“It’s just that you can’t imagine what people throw away. Whole bottles of whiskey. Fisheyes, eyes that spy on us, swine heads, crates, books, more books, oh how many books! And the worst thing is the dolls without hands. I don’t understand how all the dolls get to the trash without hands. Can’t they throw away any doll that is intact? I don’t understand it.”
”Probably they pull them off before they throw them away.”
“Yes that could be. Probably there are people that like that sort of thing.”
“OK let’s see...what do you like?”
“Me? Well like everybody, a stiff drink, fuck a girl, go to football.”
“While your little blossom cheats on you.”
“Not that.”
“Look, I never did like soccer and Sunday afternoons were marvelous. That was the time married women were anxiously waiting to get out of their routine, of their tired old men.”
“Now there will be less. But what kind of taste is that? That’s just too weird.”
The old lady had time to buy some panties and put them on in the store, and then go sit down with her book in front of the old man. I knew that old crone would be back, he thought.
She was reading Hygiene de l´asassin by Amélie Nothomb in French. Hoity toity.
“Well a bit less but it is the right time, get off that soccer and come to the neighborhood bar and you’ll see what goes on and how the newlyweds have discovered that life is a dream. To look at you from all angles, you aren’t bad looking at all, you have great manly glutes and a nice bottom. You’re slender which is very much in style these days.”
“Well then, next Sunday I’ll try it.”
“So then you like it? Really? That is, stuff you don’t tell anybody.”
“Like what?”
“Little eight – year - old girls?”
“Not that.”
“Old ladies like the one who keeps looking at me, eighty years old?”
“No way.”
“Men?”
“No.”
“Pee on women?”
“Oh man!”
“For them to pee on you?”
The old man knew that the old lady was listening and perceived that when he said ‘men’ the young man’s “no” was not very resounding. It was like when you share a high five and the hand in front of you is really limp. The old man was right, he had thought about it, and perhaps he had done it a time or two. He wasn’t homosexual but the idea had passed through his mind and he was aware of it.
Women, buy more, and more! Men, buy! The world was created so you could buy.
That is when Sandra arrived.
“Sandy,” said Sandoval who now felt relieved by her unexpected appearance.
“What else did you buy? More espadrilles? But didn’t you go to buy books? OK let’s go.”
“Thank you for your company young man.”
Sandra and Sandoval began to leave the old man when Sandoval remembered he had not asked his name.
“Just a second,” he said and turned around.
“What is your name? So I can find the books.”
But the old man didn’t even hear him. He was already talking to the old lady and Sandoval thought it better not to insist.
The old man and the old lady
“What you would like is to come to have a cup of coffee at my place. I live here and we can get there through gate A-16.”
The city had been constructed around La Catedral and was connected by circular passageways. The zero was the seventeen skyscrapers of 120 floors which were connected to the mall. Next was the first passageway which one could reach by walking for ten minutes from La Catedral and the buildings each had 110 floors. Each passageway had lower buildings so those who lived on top could see everythin
g.
The prices of the homes depended on the passageway and the floor. The city constituted 49 passageways the last of which accessed La Catedral by way of a hydraulic train which traveled 700 kilometers per hour and arrived in less than half an hour.
“Well we could drink another war. I liked it,” said the pantied one.
They ordered their drinks and ceased talking.
The flight
The two young people approached the door. Sandoval, irked by the espadrilles, had forgotten it was obligatory to purchase books in order to exit. When they arrived at the exit the comptroller asked them where the books were.
Meanwhile through the speaker they heard: Special offer, buy two books from the Anafe collection at Lanzallamas book store and receive three books free from the Tetuán collection.
“Folks you haven’t purchased the books. That is a violation of Article 18 of the contract you signed.”
“But what if we don’t read books?”
“At any rate it is obligatory to buy them.”
“We bought espadrilles and this, look, a widget,” said Sandra. She realized they were not at exit A 7 which the seller had told them to use when she saw two police arriving; one male and one female with a beard, or a transvestite, since “she” had a short skirt and a long beard. Her legs were muscular and attractive.
“Run,” said Sandoval and both retraced their steps in haste. On their arrival at the café, the old man signaled them with his hand to go left and the two went into the café interior. There, the owner opened a trapdoor in the floor and told them to get in. They wasted no time in entering and inside they found a saffron- pink toboggan and they descended as though they were in an amusement park. They descended three floors and found themselves in a basement where everything was wood paneled.
When they had finished their drinks the old man said to the old lady:
“Let’s go eat fried water and air turnovers.”
The Cathedral Mall Page 2
