“I’ve never heard of them. Are they new?”
“I think Soriano is still alive.”
“You’re an expert,” she said. “You should visit us more often.”
Isabel pulled me by the arm with a soft, irresistible caress. “How about a glass of real French champagne? It’s nothing like what we had at the bookstore.”
“You two met in a bookstore?”
“At the signing of Mabel Plata’s poetry collection.”
Doña María Augusta furrowed her brow like Jack Palance of yesteryear preparing to send a poor and honest cowboy to the other world. “I haven’t heard good things about the sexual preferences of that woman,” she said.
“Mom! Everyone has the right to be himself.”
“I read in Time magazine that the problem is the hypothalamus, which regulates our sexual impulses. A little brain surgery and zap! You’re cured,” said Doña María Augusta, addressing me.
“Seeing is believing,” I said.
“What do you think of my children, Señor Alvarez?”
“They’re different.”
“My husband, who lies buried in New York, was very handsome when he was young; he was blond, tall, and sexy.”
“I didn’t know that he had died.”
“He’s not dead,” Isabel said. “He’s alive and kicking. He works for a travel agency. To my mother, working in tourism in New York is like being dead.”
“Of course,” María Augusta stressed. “He used to be the CEO of an insurance company here in Bolivia. He made good money and enjoyed all the privileges of a man in charge. Then he got bored and ran off with fifty thousand dollars to New York, chasing after some girl. As was to be expected, he got robbed blind and ended up on the street. I’m glad; he didn’t deserve any better than to have to start all over again from the bottom.”
“I expect to travel to the United States in a few days,” I said.
Doña María Augusta raised an eyebrow like a nineteenth-century aristocrat. “If you go with half-a-million dollars, maybe you’ll fit in. Anything less, forget it.”
“I didn’t know about this,” Isabel said.
“It came up at the last minute,” I lied.
Isabel took off her raincoat. She was wearing a simple, beige, casually elegant dress. “I’m going to go look for Claudio,” she said.
“Claudio is . . .”
“My official boyfriend; he was handpicked by my family.”
She left and Charles reappeared. He had brought me a glass of Scotch, which I substituted for the champagne.
“I’m going to introduce you to some of my friends,” he said. “They keep asking me who you are. I told them I have no idea. Who are you?”
“A guy who was born in Uyuni, an English teacher, and a lover of detective novels and films. I was raised on crime fiction.”
“Did it do you any good?”
“Maybe. I’ll know soon enough.”
The room was so large that a tennis match could have been comfortably staged there. In back, a long rectangular table with white tablecloths was getting covered, little by little, with platters of food and bottles of imported wine. A number of waiters were serving the guests, who, as was typical at these functions, ate like a gang of shipwrecked sailors. To reach those delicacies, we first had to walk past some knuckleheaded acquaintances of Charles. They were high-society boys straight out of some Luis Buñuel dream: a prematurely balding ex–tennis player with sunken cheeks and a silly smile, and a chubby guy with an Argentine accent who was a former Minister of Economy. I recognized the ex-minister; his crooked ways had cost him his government post. Last name Sánchez de Bustillos, he looked like a Sephardic North African with his enormous backside, French beard, empty stare, and Mickey Mouse ears.
Enough is enough, I thought.
Charles took me aside. “The tennis player says he’s friends with Guillermo Vilas, but he actually just sucked him off one night in Monte-Carlo and hasn’t seen him since. He also brags about banging all these Monacan chicks, but in reality he hasn’t done a single one . . .”
“The guy couldn’t score with a tied-up sow,” I said.
“Exactly,” Charles agreed. “This Sánchez de Bustillos is so stingy, he padlocks his freezer and his servants live all week on leftover noodles. He’s a loan shark and charges seven percent a month. He’s had all his best friends put in jail.”
“Do you remember the name of that horrible woman from Les Liaisons Dangereuses?
“The Marquise de Merteuil.”
“You better watch what you say,” I cautioned.
“I just don’t like them. They’re the nouveau riche of our society, mediocre guys who have no class. With those assholes at the top of the pyramid, the poor people at the bottom are screwed.”
Isabel returned with her boyfriend. Charles greeted him and then left to go hang out with his friends. Claudio, the boyfriend, was a sharply dressed, two-hundred-pound fire hydrant with a face like an orchestra conductor. He was devouring a whole trout meunière.
“Something to eat?” Isabel asked me.
“I’ll have trout with a glass of white wine.”
When Isabel headed toward the table with the food, the boyfriend asked, “So what do you do besides teach school?”
“I used to trade in merchandise from Chile. I was what you’d call a middleman.”
He adjusted his glasses and burst out laughing.
“It’s not a joke.”
“How did you meet Isabel?”
“At a poetry reading about our lost sea.”
“We got it back with the treaty that gives us duty-free access to the Pacific. Haven’t you heard of the Ilo Treaty?”
“You’ve got a great girl,” I said. I was getting tired of bullshitting.
“Did she talk about me?”
“Not a word,” I answered.
“She’s too perfect . . . intelligent, beautiful . . .”
“Do smart women scare you?”
“They scare the shit out of me. Are you married?”
“I was. My wife wasn’t too smart or too dumb. She was average, but I liked her. She left me. I’m a free man.”
“Don’t you think there’s too much intimacy in marriage?”
“You can do like the English and keep your distance.”
Claudio praised the trout and then went for seconds. I had no choice but to accompany him. He was sweating profusely and I thought that if he didn’t watch it, his cholesterol would force him on a strict diet for the rest of his life.
“That brother of hers, Charles, is such a screw-up,” he said. “You came in with him; I’d like to know what you think.”
“He can’t help himself.”
“He’s a dope head. Everyone knows that. The kid has no decency. The worst thing of all is that his mother adores him and forgives him for everything.”
Luckily, when Isabel returned she was relaxed and in a good mood. She had picked me out the best trout of the bunch. The wine, a Concha y Toro white, helped me understand why the Chileans had displaced the Germans in the U.S. market. Isabel had an easygoing rapport with her boyfriend, comme il faut. Claudio was a friendly, chic, high-society guy who was surely rolling in dough. Within a few years, Isabel would probably tire of him and turn him into a cuckolded fool. She came into the world to make a lot of men happy; it would be a waste to lock her up in some golden cage, surround her with kids, and wait for her to grow old. Hers was not a common destiny. As for me, I was hopelessly in love, so enraptured that I had forgotten all about the American visa and the robbery. Isabel seemed to realize that I was worked up about something, which is probably why she had me sit Within half an hour, I was mildly drunk and the wives had lost their inhibitions. Her name was Norha and she said the heat was making her feel sick. Her husband, who looked like an Italian mobster, was busy downing a bottle of Chivas and talking to imaginary friends. With each drink, Norha moved a few inches closer. At around 10 o’clock, our hands touched. I grasped
one of her thighs.
me down among four young wives who were animatedly trash-talking everyone who walked by. They showered me with wine. One of them, a dark-skinned lady with a detached gaze and thickly painted lips, shot darts at me with her eyes.
“Mario,” she whispered, “I have a car outside. We could go for a drive in Aranjuez.”
“What’s in Aranjuez?” I asked softly.
“Total darkness.”
“I’m pretty hammered,” I confessed.
That turned Norha on; a social nobody with a rock in his pants, no strings attached, augured only the crudest of adventures. With the guests dancing to a Juan Luis Guerra song, it was easy to sneak out. Sprawled in an armchair, Doña María Augusta was reciting a slurred, nostalgia-filled speech. Isabel absentmindedly stroked Claudio’s arm, while he grinned like a doped-up sheep. You could tell Charles urgently needed a sniff of the white stuff because his nerves were acting up.
Norha left first, and I followed a few minutes later. Her car was an immaculate, brand new, cherry Peugeot. She was listening to an aria by Pavarotti as she waited. Tires screeching, we took off like an American police car. After crossing Calacoto to Plaza Humboldt, we hung a left and followed the edge of the La Paz Tennis Club before turning right onto a dirt road. The river was barely visible under the light of the new moon. Norha drove up to a discreet grove of eucalyptus trees, set back from the road. We still hadn’t exchanged a single word; the great Pavarotti was the one making all the noise. She was hot, distracted, and impatient. Lucky for us, we were the only car there. She pulled over, turned off the motor, and lowered the volume. The moon, enshrouded by complicit clouds, softly illuminated the rugged mountains surrounding us. A gentle breeze blew. Compared to Blanca’s burlesque, coarse, lecherous scent, Norha’s perfume was a poetic invitation.
“What do you think? It’s not so far.”
“Only five minutes from your husband.”
Norha lit a cigarette and placed it between my lips, all the while removing her silk taffeta dress with slow, firm motions. She had a slender girl’s body, with graceful curves. I took off my jacket and tossed it onto the backseat. Then I unbuttoned her bra, breathed in the fine aroma of her naked skin, handed her the cigarette, and hung her panties on the ignition key. She turned on the heater. There was a terse, perverse silence. I heaved my pants containing the lead club and the glass cutter onto the dashboard and surreptitiously hid my poor man’s underwear in the glove compartment. We were ready to go. She extinguished the cigarette in the ashtray and swapped Pavarotti for a Mexican ranchera.
She got on top of me and her smooth hands grabbed hold of my penis as if it belonged to Michelangelo’s Apollo. She started to gyrate, slowly at first, and then smoothly accelerated to the cadence of a thoroughbred. Her moans reminded me of the civilized utterances of Mishima’s Japanese hookers. I caressed her with one hand, while grasping her face with the other. Her eyes observed me distractedly. Before I realized it, she had spun around and her rear end was transformed into a kind of vertical smile, the hairs on her back standing up in a fan shape. I barely moved, leaving everything to her. She continued gently stimulating herself and oscillating her body with truly surprising tact. Suddenly, she entered into ecstasy and quickened her rhythm so violently that it felt like a pair of gigantic scissors was cutting into my phallus. She braked abruptly and let out a wolf’s howl that greatly aroused me. Breathing heavily like a sprinter who just arrived at the finish line, she quieted down. I was only halfway there, so I stretched her out, as best I could, on the velvety seat of the Peugeot. With gusto, but without much style, I tried to finish as well. It just wasn’t my night. I don’t know if it was the damned murmuring of the river or the ranchera music or the dreadful passivity that had swept over her. What was certain was that despite my efforts, it was taking awhile and I was fighting against the clock. That’s the bind I was in when a booming crash shook the roof of the car.
“What the hell!” I blurted.
Norha jumped up and pushed me aside, as if I were a small horse in a rodeo.
“They’re throwing rocks,” she exclaimed. “They’re going to ruin my car!”
I opened the door, stepped outside, and shouted, “Fucking pricks!”
An avalanche of stones came crashing down inches from my steaming body.
“Get lost, assholes!” I yelled.
Norha turned on the engine and shifted into reverse. I didn’t have any choice but to run after the moving car.
“What’s wrong with you? Were you going to leave me there?” I got into the car and shut the door. Without responding, she turned the vehicle around. We sped out of the little grove and then stopped three hundred feet further ahead.
“You can’t just leave me here!”
“My husband will kill me if he notices that they damaged the car. We bought it brand new last week!”
“What do I care?” I exclaimed.
Norha started to get dressed hurriedly. She glanced at me sideways and shouted, “Put on your clothes!”
“We could finish,” I grumbled. “I don’t like stopping halfway.”
“Are you crazy? There’s too much light here. Besides, my cousin Bebi’s house is only half a block away. It’s not my fault those Indian runts were throwing rocks at us.”
“You said this was a safe place, but a bunch of cockblockers screwed it up for us.”
“I’m sorry, darling. Please get dressed. You look ridiculous.”
I put on my clothes, muttering obscenities under my breath.
“Look at the top of the roof and check the damage, please,” she said.
I got out of the car and felt the roof. The stoning had left a scratch, but had not dented the metal. I told her there was nothing to worry about. She stroked my penis in appreciation.
“It’ll have to be some other time. Isabel always invites me to her parties. Don’t give me that face.”
She reapplied her lipstick, fixed her hair, and then we headed back.
After parking the Peugeot in the same place it had been before, Norha lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky. “What a beautiful night!” she remarked. I didn’t say a word. I felt angry and ashamed. The blue-blooded chick was discarding me like a piece of trash. Then she said, “I’ll go in first.”
I waited a few minutes in the garden, watching the bilingual mas- tiffs devouring pieces of leftover pork chops. A car stopped in front of the entryway. The driver, who was dressed like a jockey, hopped out and opened one of the rear doors. A man and two women emerged and entered the garden. The driver followed them.
“Tell them to give you something to eat from the kitchen. Be back here in an hour,” the man ordered.
“Very well, Don Gustavo.”
“I’ll say hi to your sister and then I’m leaving,” said the older of the two women, who appeared to be in her fifties and looked furious.
“There you go again,” the man protested. “I was in Parliament. We were debating the upcoming privatizations. Sometimes the sessions go very late—”
“Please, Mom. There are strangers here,” the younger woman said.
When the man saw me, he peered at me as if I were a bush. They entered the house.
The party was still going full tilt. Many of the guests were still dancing and the rest were chattering in groups, women on one side and men on the other. Don Gustavo’s entrance caused a big stir.
“It’s about time,” one man said. “The future president of the Senate! We were starting to worry about you.”
Don Gustavo exchanged greetings with the guests. The two women eluded the crowd and went to congratulate Charles. Isabel showed up with a pair of wine glasses in hand.
“This is red wine from Mendoza; it’s Caballero de la Cepa,” she said. “By the way, where have you been?”
“Your friend Norha took me for a ride. It was a disturbing and entertaining experience.”
“She’s so inappropriate. I’ll bet she makes a good dessert; a little ditzy,
but men like that.”
Merely laying eyes on her was enough of a consolation for my anger to fade away. I forgot all about Norha the castrator and simply stared at Isabel. A few drinks later, I asked her to dance; her rhythm was sensual and enchanting. We talked about a little of everything. I would remember her for the rest of my life. It didn’t even cross my mind to ask her to sleep with me, but not because her pedigree made me feel inadequate. It simply would have been mission impossible, like asking for the moon.
“We have a great library upstairs. It belongs to my father. One of these days I’ll ship it to him in New York. I’d like you to pick out a few books to take with you. Think of them as souvenirs.”
We walked up a carpeted staircase that might as well have been leading to a throne in some Disney cartoon. We passed through a hallway lined with colonial-era paintings, each one as bad as the next. Isabel led me by the hand. Without her, I would have felt as lost in that house as if I were in the belly of a whale. The library was vast. It had at least two thousand volumes, most of them hardcover.
“Did you find Gramsci’s complete works?”
“It’s out of print. You have a good memory.”
“Your father is a voracious reader. I’ve never seen so many books in one place before. Don’t you miss him?”
“Day and night, but I can’t go to New York. I have my studies and my mother here . . .”
“What does your boyfriend do for a living?”
“He owns a sawmill. He’s a gold magnate and a coffee exporter. And I’m not even sure what else. He’s very rich.”
“And that works for you?”
“I think that money solves most problems.”
“A poor man can become rich; all he needs is a lucky break.”
“Maybe in Hollywood. In a poor country, you’re either born rich or you get rich by stealing from the government.”
“Your boyfriend is an honest businessman.”
“His dad gave him two hundred thousand dollars to start with.”
“My dad gave me two gold nuggets.”
“Better than nothing.”
I picked up a pair of Jack London novels; no better way to keep on dreaming than to read a dreamer!
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