by Lewis Shiner
«Beto…»
It was Elena.
«Hold on,» I said.
In a frenzy I put on a pair of pajama bottoms and a clean T-shirt, started out the door, ran back for my keys, and sprinted down the stairs.
I could see her in the rain, a taxi waiting at the curb behind her. My throat had closed tight and my heart was hammering so loudly I was afraid of a stroke. I got the double lock open and still she hesitated.
«Beto, is it okay—»
«Of course, get inside, get out of the rain.»
She waved to the taxi driver and he drove away, squealing his tires on the wet pavement. I reached for her and she held out her hand to stop me. «Beto, we have to talk.»
«Sí, claro, but come inside.»
I let her past me and locked the doors again. She looked like a wet kitten, her eyes sunken deeper than ever. We climbed the stairs side by side and I motioned her into my apartment.
«Beto, you have to stop leaving your apartment door open.»
I was in no shape for a clever comeback. I took her blue vinyl raincoat and hung it on the tiny balcony outside the kitchen. «Let me get you a towel.» I brought her a clean bath towel to dry her hair and sat her at the dining room table so she could take off her wet shoes as well. I got her a pair of dry socks, knowing I was fussing over her too much and not caring.
«Do you want some coffee or juice or something?» The coffee was a bluff, being that I was the only person in Argentina who didn’t drink it.
She shook her head. «Talk first. I haven’t been able to sleep. I have to tell you the rest of it, to get this over with.»
I didn’t like the sound of the words “over with.” I gestured at the couch and said, «Do you want to—»
She shook her head again. «Can we just sit here?»
I sat down across from her. She was in the same sweat pants and T-shirt she’d had on that morning. The necklace was still around her neck.
«I’m just going to talk, okay? Is that all right? I’m not going to ask how you are because I can look at you and see that you’re not sleeping either, and when I’m done you will be able to say to yourself, okay, she was right, I don’t want anything to do with her, and then you’ll be able to sleep again.»
«Elena…»
«Shhhh. It’s…it’s all under pressure, you know?» She pantomimed shaking a bottle with her thumb over the neck. «It’s got to come out, just get out of the way and let it happen.»
*
She’d been watching TV in the den on a Sunday night. She was on her way to her bedroom when the phone rang in her father’s study. She’d never heard it ring before, never realized it was on a separate line. She was ten feet from the door when her father picked it up. There was a silence and then he said the name Cesarino. There was something about the way he said it, a kind of terrible resignation, as if it were some long-lost girlfriend that he didn’t want to remember, only worse, vastly worse.
She glimpsed his back as he closed the study door. He hadn’t seen her. The tone of his voice made her do something she had never done in her life, which was put her ear to the door and listen in.
She was in time to hear her father say, «Suarez? You’re sure?» The name meant nothing to Elena at the time. After a long silence, he said, «Information? What kind of information?»
Another pause, then he said, «Yes, the ‘transactions.’ I know.» Then, «Files? You mean computer files?» and a second later, «What do you want me to do?»
Cesarino talked for a long time. Her father said, «What do you mean, ‘example’?» and then, «Like the old days, you mean.»
It was like her father had become a completely different person, a cold, scary person. That was when she knew, without knowing how she knew, what was going on.
Her father said, «Dios mío. I’m too old for this.»
Cesarino must have threatened him then, because her father said, «No. No, I understand. I can’t talk here. I’ll call you later.» The last sentence came out with a bitterness she had heard before, but never in a context like this.
She heard her father hang up and she ran to her room. She was a child of privilege, with a laptop and a fast Internet connection, and she stayed up late that night. The information was sparse and it took her a couple of hours to fit the pieces together. Once she linked the name Cesarino with the name del Salvador, she knew it was the thing that she’d feared, that her father had been a soldier in the Dirty War.
There were no pictures online of del Salvador. She lay awake until dawn, failing to convince herself that it was another del Salvador and not her father. After that she imagined going to him with what she’d found. The thought terrified her. She wanted to get away, as far and as fast as possible.
He’d turned into a stranger. If he even suspected she’d overheard Cesarino’s phone call, she didn’t know what he’d do. So she waited and pretended nothing had changed, and kissed his cheek as she always did for three long weeks. In the end she didn’t have the courage to confront him. She went to her mother instead and said that she needed to move out, letting her believe it was because she’d met someone.
Once she was out of the house she broke all contact with her parents, quitting her job at Citibank and changing her cell phone. And that had been the end of it, until Suarez disappeared and she happened to see the story in the paper.
She knew her father was guilty of murder and that he would get away with it unless she did something. The paper said that Suarez worked for Universal Systems, and she figured that was where she would find the computer files her father had been talking about. She didn’t know much about computers, but people at Universal did and she was sure someone there would take pity on her.
That was what she was trying to do, with no luck, when she saw a man on the other side of a glass wall smile at her and ask if he could help.
*
I felt cold. I couldn’t speak. I stood up and walked into the bedroom and got a flannel shirt and put it on and then I went back to the table.
Elena was crying. She didn’t seem to be aware of it. I pushed a packet of tissues toward her and she didn’t notice them either.
«Then I saw you at El Beso,» she said, «and I decided to seduce you. Not seduce you, not really, just to see if I could get you to like me, maybe even love me a little, enough that you would help me.»
I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. My own eyes stung and the inside of my stomach was colder than ever. I had to make a conscious effort to make my shoulders drop. «You did a good job,» I said. «You succeeded beyond what you could have dreamed.»
«I deserve your hatred. I did what all those other people did that I hate. Using other people. Deception. No lies, at least. I never lied to you.»
«So what happened? You lost the courage to go through with it?»
She was quiet for a long time, the tears continuing to run down her face. Then she said, «Do you remember the first time we danced? Do you remember how that felt?»
«How do you know how it felt to me?»
«How do you think?»
«What, are you saying…» I shook my head. «You were using me.»
«It started that way. Though I have to say, it was very, very easy. I didn’t have to pretend. All I had to do was let myself be impulsive, let myself say the things that came into my head and not worry about whether I was leading you on. I wish…I wish I’d never seen you at Universal. That we could have just danced together and felt what we felt and it could have happened on its own.
«Last Sunday, Beto, when we went to Plaza Dorrego and you bought me this beautiful necklace, and I saw the way your friends looked at you, the way Don Güicho looked at you, and the way you listened to me, and then we danced en los adoquines, and then you kissed me and I didn’t ever want you to stop, and then I remembered what I had done and I felt so ashamed. And this business that I’m involved in, you heard it today from Mateo, it’s not a joke. It’s dangerous. And I couldn’t bear the thought of you bein
g hurt, or the thought of what I had done and how I had ruined everything, and so I ran.»
She folded her own arms across her chest, as if it were the only way to keep them from reaching out, and we sat there, two closed off people, and she said, «I’m not saying this because I think there’s a chance that you would forgive me, I don’t say this for my sake at all. Please believe me, I say this because I don’t want you to think that there is any way in which this is your fault, or that you are anything but what I said earlier today, a good, sweet, wonderful man.»
She was crying hard now, her nose running, sobbing to get her breath. She reached down to take off the socks I’d given her and was fumbling for her shoes. «I should go. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—»
By then I had come around the table and pulled her to her feet and taken her in my arms. She clung to me and I held her while she shook and cried herself out. Eventually her arms relaxed and she put her head on my chest, as if we were about to dance a tango.
«Beto. I haven’t slept for days. But I could go to sleep right now if you held me. Beto, I can’t make love to you, I’m all inside out. Can I stay here and just go to sleep in your arms? Just for tonight?»
*
She drank some water and I gave her a brand new toothbrush to use, and we each took a turn in the bathroom like an old married couple. Then I turned off all the lights and brought her into the bedroom and we lay down together on our sides, her facing away from me, my left arm under her neck, my right arm between her breasts, her holding it there where I could feel her heartbeat, her entire body pressed against the length of me. I could smell the spice and citrus of her skin and hair and I was as hard as a rolling pin. She didn’t seem put off by it. She sighed and said, «Beto,» and she was asleep.
I thought I would lie awake for just another hour or so and drink in the smell and touch of her. Instead I fell asleep too.
I woke up a couple of hours later with her pushing and prodding me. «Turn over,» she said sleepily, and I extricated my numb left arm and rolled over. She curled herself against my back and I was asleep again immediately.
*
The next time I woke up it was light out and I was alone in the bed. The rain had stopped. The clock said 8:33. I sat up sharply. «Elena?»
I heard the toilet flush and I relaxed. A minute later I saw her silhouette in the doorway. I lay on my back, that hollow, early-morning not-enough-sleep feeling giving way to warmth at the sight of her. She curled inside my left arm, her own left arm across my chest. We lay that way for a while and then, in the half light, I saw the whites of her eyes as she looked up. I smiled and her hand came up to touch my face.
Then, so slowly that she hardly seemed to move at all, she slid on top of me. I watched her face come toward me, her eyes locked on mine, her lips apart in a knowing smile. She paused with her mouth an inch from mine, and I smelled toothpaste and felt the warmth of her breath on my lips. We were on the threshold. I could feel her relish the moment. Then we couldn’t wait any longer and we fell into a kiss like falling into deep water, down and down, endlessly.
She tugged at my T-shirt, pulling it over my head, and then we were undressing each other. Elena was laughing, I was in awe, and then we were naked.
«I have…condoms, in the drawer…»
«Do we need to?» Elena said. The laughter was still on her face.
«No, I’m healthy…»
«Me too. And I’m on the pill, so you don’t have to worry about that.» Another of her instant mood changes, and she held my face with both hands, her eyes focused first on my right eye, then my left, searching. «With me it is all or nothing, my Betito. You can back out if you want.»
«Nunca,» I said. «Never.»
*
We dozed afterward until hunger got us out of bed. I made goat cheese omelets, three eggs each, and sliced an avocado. Elena wore my flannel shirt and drawstring sweatpants with the legs rolled up. As we ate I would catch her smiling down at her eggs, or her leg would find mine under the table, or our hands would entangle in the open space between our plates.
As I washed the dishes she wrapped her arms around me from behind. «Beto,» she whispered, and kissed my ear. «Betito…» I turned and picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
She was the most passionate lover I had ever known. My chest and back and neck were covered with tiny marks where she had nipped or scratched or sucked on the skin. She was playful and unselfconscious and knew her own body, as eager to show me how to please her as she was to know what I liked, where and how I wanted to be touched.
It was only later, my mind floating free from my body, relaxed and totally satisfied, that one dark thought crept in. It was small and easily dismissed, asking softly what it would be like if she had not stopped using me after all, asking if I would be able to tell the difference.
*
When we woke again, we talked, some parts of our bodies always in contact. I told her about growing up on Greyhound buses criss-crossing the country, my nose always in a book. Getting a degree in English at NC State in Raleigh, drifting into programming when I couldn’t find any other work. She told me about Catholic girls’ school and her parents’ dream that she would become a nun. «I guess that didn’t turn out too well,» she said.
The gulf between our ages and cultures was easy to forget when we were dancing or making love. It seemed strange to her that I didn’t eat meat. I had a grown son and she had a vague desire to have kids someday. I was not religious, and she was torn between hatred of the Catholic Church and the pull of her upbringing. I didn’t care about sports, and she loved the Boca Juniors. «I’ll take you to a game,» she said. «You’ll change your mind.»
«Maybe I will.» Anything seemed possible.
There were books she wanted me to read, films she wanted to see with me. I mentioned a couple of my favorite writers and said that I didn’t know if they were available in Spanish.
“Is a chance,” she said, in heavily accented English, “for me to get better my English, no?”
I was startled and embarrassed by the way her broken English made her sound. All her grace and sophistication seemed to evaporate.
She misread my reaction. “I surprise you, no? We all study a little English in school.”
«It’s just funny,» I said, «how strange English sounds to me now.»
She switched back to Spanish. «Maybe it’s my English. Your Spanish is much better.»
I wondered how much better it was, wondered how my imperfect language skills made me seem to her. I saw then the terrible power we had to hurt each other, how careful we both would have to be. «Not at all,» I said. «I just think Spanish is more beautiful. I always have. It has more poetry and passion. Like you.»
She answered the compliment with a kiss, and I saw we had steered ourselves away from the edge of something. I took the opportunity to change the subject. «We should go to Don Güicho’s milonga tonight.»
«Oh, Beto, can we? But I don’t have any clothes, no shoes…»
«Let’s get a cab and go to Adriana’s apartment. You can pack all your things and bring them over here.»
The idea was plainly crazy. She hesitated, as she should have.
«You said all or nothing, Elena. You’re safe here. It’s small, it’ll be crowded. If it doesn’t work out, you can leave any time. But I want you here with me.»
«Oh, Beto…» Tears came up in her eyes.
I held her and then we were kissing again and then we were making love again, tears and laughter and physical pleasure so intense it crossed into pain, smells of sex and citrus and vanilla, my heart full and overflowing, reckless, ecstatic, and, somewhere deep at the bottom of it, afraid.
*
We spent the afternoon getting her moved out of Adriana’s place, and we went by her other apartment for a few more things. The risk of what we were doing hovered over us, full of potential awkwardness, and we kept it at bay through talk and physical cont
act, as if letting go would allow one or the other of us to fall back into common sense.
Her own apartment was cluttered, full of half-read books among discarded clothes. She apologized repeatedly for the dirty dishes in the sink. While she packed a bag, I looked at her furniture, beautiful oak pieces in bad repair. My hands itched to work on them. I promised her that as soon as I could get some tools and space to work, I would fix them.
There was enough daylight left for a walk in Parque Lezama, and there I let go of the last of my doubts. It was enough to be with her in the spring air, to listen to the birds and feel the sun on my face, to be completely in the moment, the pain in my head nearly gone, a milonga to look forward to, and then Elena in my bed.
*
Don Güicho laughed when he saw us together. «Bravo, Beto, I must have taught you something after all.»
Brisa slapped his arm. «You should be ashamed. Beto, after you have a tanda with your friend, come dance with me.»
I danced two tandas with Elena because I didn’t want to let go. Then I danced with Brisa and between tangos she said, «I see the way she looks at you, Beto. I think she is in love.»
«So am I.»
«I’m so happy for you. And a little jealous.»
«Brisa, I didn’t know you cared.»
Now it was my arm that got slapped. «I wouldn’t want you, boludo, you’re much too old. I’m jealous of being in love.»
After the tanda, Elena ran up to me and threw her arms around me and spun me around. «I danced with Don Güicho! Oh, Beto, what a dancer!»
«Ah, well,» I said, «at least we had our one day together before he stole you from me.»
«I made so many mistakes, he’ll never dance with me again. Besides—» She put her lips close to my ear. «—I think I’m too old for him.» Then she bit me on the earlobe and laughed. «Dance with me, Betito, I’m so happy. I haven’t been happy in such a long, long time.»
*
It was almost more than I could do to get up in the morning and go to work. Elena walked me downstairs. We’d agreed that she would take the keys and get copies made while I was gone. I didn’t want to let go of her. «Don’t worry, Betito,» she laughed. «I’ll be here when you get home.» I wanted to tell her that this was Buenos Aires and nothing was certain. Instead I kissed her one last time and stepped out onto the sidewalk.