The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club

by Jessica Morrison

  “So, what, you’re doing this to prove something to me?”

  “This might come as a shock to you, Jeff, but not everything in the entire world is about you.”

  “Look, I don’t want to argue.” His voice softened. “I’m just worried about you.” It killed me to hear those words from him. They cut into me like a knife—a knife I didn’t want to extract. “Do you even know what you’re getting into? The poverty? The crime? People get kidnapped there, you know.”

  “Of course I know what I’m getting into.” Poverty? Crime? Kidnapping? Oh, God, I thought, my heart starting to race, I can’t do this.

  “You wouldn’t last two days in a foreign country, let alone six months in South America.” That did it. Whether or not I could do this wasn’t any of his business anymore, was it?

  “Who are you to tell me what I can or can’t do?”

  “I’m just saying it’s not Disneyland, Cass. Hell, it isn’t even Mexico.” Jeff had talked about taking me to Puerto Vallarta once. He’d said we could stay at one of those all-inclusive hotels with a private beach and do nothing but eat quesadillas, drink margaritas, and make love for days. The knife sunk in deeper. I wrenched it out with both hands.

  “Well, thank you so very much for your concern, but it’s none of your business how long I last. You have no say in my life now.” I slammed the cell phone down, but it bounced off the bed and onto the floor with a dull thud. God, I miss real phones sometimes. I looked around the room, but everything had the sheen of major money and the hotel had my credit card number. I picked up a feather pillow and flung it at the wall. It would have to do.

  Once my anger subsided, the panic set in.

  I couldn’t back out now, not after that conversation. I couldn’t let Jeff think he was right. I couldn’t let Jeff be right. Which meant I had to go through with it. “What have I done?” I whispered to myself.

  I was going to Buenos Aires, Argentina, South America. Cassie Moore was going to South America. I waited for it all to sink in, but mostly, it hovered at the surface of me. I didn’t know how to make it real. I sat dazed at the edge of the bed until the hotel phone rang. Apparently, I’d asked the hotel for a wake-up call, but Jeff had beaten them to it. I dragged myself into the shower, back into yesterday’s clothes, and straight to the girls’ office.

  “For how long?” asked Trish. We huddled in their shared office with the door closed. Sam had run downstairs for lattes, and I’d drawn the visitor’s chair up to the corner where Sam’s and Trish’s desks met. Between sips of coffee, we spoke in whispers like high school girls giggling over rumors and cigarettes in the girls’ bathroom. Only there were no giggles, and I was the one about to become rumor fodder.

  “The ticket’s for six months.”

  “Oh my God,” said Sam.

  “And where will you stay?” asked Trish.

  “Apparently, I reserved an apartment.”

  “Oh my God,” said Sam.

  “And you definitely have to go?” asked Trish.

  “I can’t back out now. I told everybody. Jeff knows. My boss—ex-boss—knows. I’ll look like a total loser if I don’t go. This city, my industry, is so small. No one would ever take me seriously again.” As I spoke, my leg began to jiggle the way it always does when I’m stressed, punctuating my words with nervous energy. “And Jeff will have the satisfaction of thinking he turned me into a basket case.” My other leg got in on the action.

  “Oh my God,” said Sam.

  “You know,” said Trish, leaning forward as if she had a juicy secret to share. “This might be the best thing that ever happened to you.” I looked her square in the eye and gave her our we’ve-known-each-other-too-long-to-bullshit-each-other look. “No, really. I mean it. You hear about these people all the time who experience something really, really brutal—you know, they find out they have cancer or they get a really bad nose job—but they survive it and, voilà, whole new amazing person.”

  “Yeah, with a bad nose.” I wasn’t trying to be snarky, only figure out where the hell she was going with this one.

  “No—well, maybe. But that’s not the point. The point is you learn from adversity.” Trish’s words sounded ripped from some motivational speaker’s script, but her tone wasn’t that confident, her sentences rising slightly at the ends with the insecurity of a teenage uptalker. But she was trying, God bless her. I felt compelled to play along, at least a little.

  “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” offered Sam.

  “There you go.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said, wanting to believe it, wanting to not just sound but feel confident that there might be something to grasp on to in all these clichés. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Then again, wasn’t this the same sort of Oprah thinking that got me into the mess in the first place?

  “Remember Cathy Fischer?” It wasn’t really a question. Of course I remembered Cathy Fischer. She was Trish’s first post-college roommate and our mid-twenties idol. She seemed to have everything together—cool job as a makeup artist, model boyfriend, and a bottomless closet of designer clothes that we assumed she’d gotten through all her fabulous fashion industry connections. Then the creditors started calling. One night Cathy broke down and confessed. She was twenty-seven thousand dollars in debt. The next morning she was gone, leaving unopened bills and empty shopping bags in her wake. We later heard she’d borrowed some money from her boyfriend and run off to London.

  “If you’re saying I’m like Cathy Fischer—”

  “Well . . .” I knew where she was headed. The summer before, Trish had run into Cathy’s sister, who told her Cathy was doing great in London, had launched her own makeup line or something. “It is sort of a positive story. In the end.” Smiling, Trish leaned back in her chair as if to say, I rest my case.

  “Yeah. She also declared bankruptcy at twenty-three.”

  “I’m just saying, maybe things happen for a reason. You can look at this like it’s the end of the world, or you can see it as an opportunity.”

  “To do what?”

  “Things you’ve maybe wanted to try but never got around to. Write, paint, take up the tango . . . whatever you want.”

  The gauzy memory of my Oprah delusions flitted through my mind. Wasn’t there something about discovering my inner brilliance? Or was it peace and harmony? Try as I might, I couldn’t latch on. The vodka dreams were gone, and there was only one thing I wanted. “I want to not go to Buenos Aires.”

  There was a long pause while the undeniable truth of this statement filled the room. Extra-long sips of latte were taken. All the clichés in the world couldn’t help me out of this one. Trish shook her head, her forced grin gone. “Never, ever drink and surf.”

  “Is there any chance that you might want to go? Even just a little bit?” Sam asked hopefully. “You’ve never really been anywhere, and it might not be completely horrible. You know what they say about Latin men.”

  “Wouldn’t that drive Jeff crazy,” I said, smiling for the first time that day. More surprising, I realized there was a teeny-tiny part of me that maybe could almost want to go. Unfortunately, that part was generally accessible only after six or seven ounces of vodka. When I was sober, the idea of traveling across the world by myself scared the crap out of me. With all that had happened, my life being turned upside down as it was, just the idea of being alone in my own hometown was terrifying enough—but, it dawned on me, not quite as terrifying as the idea of running into Jeff and Lauren. If I couldn’t wipe Jeff off the face of the earth, maybe this was the next best thing.

  “He’ll go insane,” Trish said with a sly smile. “Imagine all the tortured nights he’ll spend imagining you with an Antonio Banderas look-alike. We erupted into a fit of conspiratorial giggles. It felt good thinking of something other than my boyfriendless, apartmentless, jobless state. Oh, God, it hit me, I don’t have a job.

  “I don’t have a job.”

  “Who needs a job when you’ve g
ot Antonio?”

  “No job, no money. Even if I did want to go—and I’m not saying I do—I can’t afford a trip like this. My severance check isn’t going to cover me for longer than a couple of months. Oh, jeez.” I paused as the weight of it sank in. “I am Cathy Fischer.” Just when I thought I was all cried out, my eyes filled again and spilled unceremoniously onto the faux wood finish of Sam’s desk.

  “Okay, let’s not panic.” Trish, resident problem solver, scrunched her face up the way she always did when she was deciding something important. She leaned forward, touched my left hand, and smiled knowingly. Sam put her hand on top of Trish’s, Three Musketeers–style. I did the same with my right hand, not wanting to ruin this sweet Sex and the City moment. “No, you goofballs.” Trish laughed, lifting my left hand up to my face.

  Sam and I ooohed in unison. “Trish,” I said, my long-lost smile creeping back onto my lips, “have I ever told you that you’re absolutely brilliant?”

  In that moment, my hand thrust triumphantly in the air, my best friends by my side, I believed that maybe, just maybe, things really do happen for a reason. Ten minutes later, the symbol of Jeff’s undying love was on eBay.

  Two weeks later, I am strapped into an American Airlines jet, sharing my story with a kind Argentine woman. I have no fiancé, no job, no permanent mailing address, and, for reasons that are becoming less and less clear as the lights of Seattle become farther and farther away through the oval window on my left, I am headed to South America.

  South America. As in not North. As in don’t drink the tap water. As in you can’t trust the police. As in me rotting in a prison cell, denied food and tainted tap water because I tried to buy fake Fendi from some guy on the street. As in me lying dead in a ditch somewhere, for God knows what reason, my poor parents made to fly down to identify the body and missing a number of favorite televised programs to do so. As in one step away from falling off the edge of the earth.

  How did my so-called friends and loving family let me go through with this? Okay, my mother didn’t so much let me as choose to believe that I wouldn’t go right up until I passed the security point. I could still hear her yelling at my poor stepdad for letting me go when the red-faced customs agent with a chunk of broccoli protruding between two front teeth looked at my ticket and snorted, “Have fun getting kidnapped.” As if anything anyone could say would terrify me more than I already was.

  “I don’t speak a word of Spanish,” I tell my sedated seatmate. She nods and smiles sympathetically. “I freckle easily.” She tsks compassionately. “I think I might be coming down with something.”

  She puts her hand on mine, and I ease up on the armrest. She digs in her purse and retrieves the bottle of small purple pills. “Take one,” she whispers. “It will make the flying more easy.” I’ve never before taken so much as an M&M from a stranger, but then I’ve never been en route to Buenos Aires before either. And easy anything sounds really good right about now. I shrug, pop one in my mouth, and take a swig of bottled water.

  “You will love Buenos Aires,” she says with a dreamy purr. “The city is magic. You will see. This trip will be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  I can’t help but cringe a little when I hear these words. “Right,” I say. “I’m thinking of having that put on a T-shirt.”

  She gives me the look of confusion and mild amusement again, well deserved this time. “This is a joke?”

  “Yeah. A joke.” And it’s on me.

  But before I can wade any deeper into my self-pity, a velvety Valiumness takes over and ushers me tenderly toward the edge of sleep. I am so tired. The plane takes off, and I feel my body sinking into the scratchy blue fabric of my upright seat. I don’t look out the window, can’t stand to see home getting smaller and smaller. I close my eyes.

  I wake sometime later as the meal cart creaks by, reminding me where I am. I shake a fuzzy head at the stewardess. I’m not hungry, though I probably should be. Food won’t fill this hole. I am already homesick. For a blurry moment, I am Judy Garland, and when I lift the thin airline blanket covering my legs, I see red sequined shoes. I try to tap my heels together, but my feet are so heavy, like concrete blocks attached to steel rebar. When I wake again, groggy and dry-mouthed, I am startled to find myself on a dark, sleeping airplane. The buzz of air-conditioning mixes with snores. I check my watch. About ten more hours to go—ten hours and six months. I stare out the window and see nothing but black.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We touch down on the tarmac with a light bump, and my stomach lurches. I open my eyes and turn as slowly as possible to the window on my left. American Airlines jets. Luggage trucks. Small men in reflective vests. It could easily be Sea-Tac or LAX or JFK. Then, in the distance, I spot what looks suspiciously like a donkey pulling a cart. Yep, that’s a donkey, all right. No doubt about it, I am in Argentina. Cassie Moore is in Argentina. There are so many things wrong with this picture I can’t even wrap my head around it. My eyes latch on to every detail of the airplane, my safe cocoon for the past twenty hours. The mysterious stain on the headrest in front of me, the dog-eared in-flight magazine, the small TV screen hanging from the ceiling two rows up, even the lit sign for the washroom—it’s all comfortingly familiar, and I soak it up as long as I can, desperate to ignore the flurry of excited activity around me as passengers prepare to disembark. One by one, they file out, orderly but impatient to get off.

  I am studying the intricacies of the complimentary headset when my friendly drug dealer returns from a final trip to the bathroom freshly brushed, powdered, and lipsticked. “Chica, you are excited now, yes?” We are the last two people on the plane, and I want to tell her not to go yet, because once she does, I will have no choice but to get up, grab my bag from the overhead compartment, and step out that exit. But her smile is so kindly hopeful, I have no choice but to nod and smile back. She reaches down and squeezes my forearm, leaving little moons in my skin from her flawless red nails. “I knew! Good. Have a wonderful trip.” She collects a small case from under the seat, and I watch her glide down the aisle. My turn.

  Exiting the plane, I brace myself for the worst. The flight attendants smile and nod, oblivious to anything beyond upright trays and seatbacks. But I know. According to the six guidebooks I’ve read in the past two weeks, Buenos Aires is miles and miles of concrete teeming with over thirteen million people, many of them jobless, most of them penniless, all of whom will surely see me as pure U.S.A.-grade evil. I’m not quite sure what the worst would be, though the image of being splashed with red paint comes to mind. At the very least, I’m sure to be harassed at customs. I would shrug my shoulders, but I don’t have the energy to lift them. Let the worst begin.

  To my surprise, the airport is fairly modern, clean, and free of chickens. In fact, it looks a lot like the airport where this journey began. There is no strip search, no drug dogs. No one even looks inside my luggage. The fact that I don’t speak Spanish doesn’t matter, since Argentine customs officers communicate in that universal language of dismissive grunts and hand gestures. My passport is swiped and stamped. I am waved here, then there. As I pass each checkpoint without issue, a fresh wave of relief rushes over me. Nothing is ever as awful as you imagine it, I remind myself. Bit by bit, I might just be able to get through this.

  And then I leave the airport.

  I find a cab outside. The night is clear, the sky tar-black. I roll down the window for air but am immediately chastised. “Por favor, chica. No safe,” the driver says, shaking his head. “Late, entiende?” I roll it back up and stare through the smudged glass. The driver, well intentioned, I’m sure, takes it upon himself to give me a security rundown in broken English. In half an hour, I learn which neighborhoods I should not live in (most), which neighborhoods I can safely walk around in after dark (none), and which cabs are fake and, thus, dangerous (these instructions are vague and only serve to make me scared to be in any cab, present company included). I try to absorb both his warnings and t
he city whirring past me in the night, a blur of neon and headlights. Hundreds of cars, my cab included, weave around each other with no regard to lanes, and the whole extraordinary scene seems a choreographed dance to the familiar Beach Boys tune coming from the car radio. Together, everything is strange and different and awful and too much. I am not home. I am not a cell phone away from meeting Sam and Trish at Jimmy’s. I am not a fifteen-minute cab ride from everyone and everything I know and love. I am on a whole other continent. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. Worst of all, I don’t know who I am supposed to be. There is no plan, and without a plan, there is no Cassie. It’s all so overwhelmingly wrong that I have to concentrate on my breathing to keep from hyperventilating. There is no way I am going to make it six months.

  So I break it down like any good project manager. I focus on the next few minutes, on arriving at the address on the piece of paper I’ve been clutching so hard it’s already softening. I suspect that the apartment I rented in my drunken state, though nice enough in the online photos, might not be so spectacular in reality, but sleep on the flight was sporadic at best (Valium, shmalium), and the idea of putting my head down somewhere, anywhere, helps get me through the long cab ride. I rest my forehead against the cool window as the cabdriver prattles on, now completely in Spanish. The clogged streets give way to cobblestone roads lined with malnourished trees, and eventually, we thump to a stop.

  “You here,” the driver says happily.

  “Don’t remind me,” I mumble to myself.

  He peeks through his passenger window. “Good house.”

  The “house” he refers to is a massive yellow wall relieved only by a forbidding wood door, two windows all but obscured by thick iron bars, and several disturbing fissures that run from sidewalk to roof. The website said the suite was bright and had a nice garden view, but the chances of that being true look pretty slim. The only things growing on this sadly sloped, graffiti-stained street are persistent weeds that stretch up hopefully through cracks in the concrete, and stunted trees standing limply every twenty feet or so. Seattle’s docks, heavy with rusting ship skeletons and rustier merchant marines, have more greenery.