by Aura Xilonen
“Would you like to start a restaurant with me?”
Aireen turns her head and laughs, not a mocking laugh but with half a silhouette between us.
“Oh, dude . . .”—and unexpectedly, with her hand beneath mine, shivering on the stone, with the rain braiding our pores, Aireen moves closer to me and gently, unhurriedly, as the rain falls down, kisses me on the lips.
* * *
[“Why is it there are hardly any women writers on the shelves, Jefe?”
“Good question, you deuteronomic dolt. I don’t know, maybe because shes are better kissers than hes and they don’t need fucking literature to work through their neuroses and all their other bullshit.”]
Time is absorbed, primed on the canvas of the flowers, the wind, the leaves of the park garlanded with leaden raindrops. Aireen smiles, I can feel it in her lips kissing me. I open my eyes a little and see her beautiful cheeks, her damp eyelashes, her closed eyes, her brows dripping water, her skin. I shut them again and again all my molecules concentrate in my mouth. In the rivers flowing through the air, the clouds battering the atmospheres of the heavens, the lightning bristling the earth as luminous showers pour forth.
Aireen pulls back a little.
She opens her eyes.
I open mine too.
I feel her breathing so close and so deep.
We don’t say anything, just sink into each other’s eyes and make them enormous. Effulgent. Caramba. Interminable. I see the water trickling down her wet hair, down her cheeks, down her forehead, and runnelling toward her chest, toward the dactylic hexameters of her being the Helen of my life, the most beautiful woman in the universe.
She smiles.
She smiles fully.
She smiles with the indomitable clarity of another cosmos.
Without speaking, without saying anything. Without a word between us, she pulls her hand out from under mine and hugs me, clinging to my neck.
I feel her body through the fabric that separates us, inside the space that brings us together.
I feel her breasts against my sweater.
I hug her too.
I tighten my muscles around her and she presses herself to me.
I feel her shiver.
She shivers.
When it rains it shivers and the thunderclaps become climbing vines.
“Are you crying?” I murmur into her ear.
“No.”
“What then?”
“It’s the rain—it makes me sad sometimes.”
Suddenly we’re running east toward the restaurant on Park Street. We cross the street. The rain has intensified. A few moments ago the sky began pelting down again. Aireen got up and pulled me by the sleeve.
“Run!”
“Where to?”
“Crickets Family.”
We barely see the puddles; I’ve already stepped in one and splashed everywhere, but then she stepped in another one and splashed me too. There’s not a soul to be seen, just the two of us running, like deer, through the crossfire of the rain.
By the time we reach the restaurant awning, we’re laughing after a car just raced past and lashed us with filthy water from the pavement. Aireen yelled at him, and so did I, but the car disappeared into the downpour and we started laughing right there.
I rub a hand through my hair, shaking water from it—I’m dripping. Aireen shakes her hair too and wrings it out. Then she expertly pulls it back and up in a ponytail, which she ties with an orange band she’s got around her wrist. She takes off her jacket and shakes it out to get rid of all the leaves the car flung at us.
“Ha-ha,” Aireen laughs when she turns and looks at me. “Your sweater shrank, ha-ha-ha.”
It’s true. The sleeves are halfway up my forearm, my absent musculature on display. I struggle free of the sweater and wring it till I can’t get another drop out of it. I hold it out for a look and think it might be a perfect fit for one of the kids at the shelter, where I borrowed it from.
“That wouldn’t even fit a baby!” She laughs again.
I throw it over my shoulder and open the restaurant door so Aireen can step through.
“Gracias, caballero.” She curtsies and then enters.
The place is almost empty; only two tables by the window are occupied. At one is a couple eyeing the rain through the window from time to time; they turn to look at us when we come in. The other table has a woman and an older man along with a teenager. It seems like they must have gotten caught in the rain recently because there’s a dripping umbrella beside their table. On the other end of the room is a bar where a woman in a hairnet is placing a plate on a tray.
“Bar or table?” Aireen asks me.
“You at the bar, me at a table.” I giggle.
“Dumbass.” She laughs as she heads to where there’s another table behind the couple that’ll give us a view of the street.
We sit down across from each other, still dripping.
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
“Starving,” she says. She picks up a menu that’s inside a clear plastic stand. “What about you?”
“Not really.”
“Don’t worry, dude. It’s my treat. It’s the least I can do for the gift you just gave me. It must have cost you a fortune.
“It’s not that. I’m really not all that hungry.”
“You should eat.”
“I know, but something in my belly’s really fluttering around.”
“Are you sick?”
“No,” I say, looking out at the street. “I think it’s the butterflies.”
“You’re silly,” she says, and takes my hand. She strokes it. Her fingers are so soft that it seems like just her spirit is touching me.
“What can I get you, Aireen?”
“Hi, Catherine,” she says. “I’d like a slice of apple pie à la mode and a chocolate malt.”
“How about you?” the waitress asks me.
“Do you have something with protein?”
She stares at me for a moment, holding the notepad where she’s writing down our order.
“We have veal steak for $19, tuna cakes for $9.80, or scrambled eggs for $4.20.”
“I’ll have the eggs and a glass of water.”
“We just have bottled.”
“That’s fine.”
The waitress moves off.
“Is she angry?”
“She’s always like that,” Aireen says. “Though sometimes I suspect she doesn’t like me. She has three kids to feed, and that always puts her in a bad mood.”
“And how do you know her?”
Aireen picks up the salt shaker and tips out a tiny bit of salt onto her palm. She licks it.
“This is one of my boss’s places,” she confesses, leaning forward over the table.
“Candy’s owner?”
Just then the aegis next to us says grumpily to the man, “I told you. This is going to last all night.”
Aireen puts a hand to her mouth, smiles, and says quietly, “Yes. His name is Alexaindre.”
The man moves his neck as if suppressing a reply. I’m looking at him because he’s right in front of me.
“The one who gave me the shoes?”
“It’s always the same with you. We should go out, we should stay in—you’re never satisfied,” the man says, his voice restrained by frustration.
“Are they fighting?” asks Aireen, who can’t see the couple because she’s got her back to them.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Actually, they’re about to kiss.”
Aireen immediately turns her head to look and sees that I’ve lied.
“Dummy.” When she turns her head back, her lips run right into mine. She swiftly pulls away, surprised. “Dummy,” she says again.
I sit back down.
I don’t know what’s happening to me. Something’s making me act this way involuntarily, as if a mad destiny were controlling my movements.
“Do you know what happened to the bookstore?” I change the subject to force myself to stop thinking about her lips—they’re driving me crazy now that I’ve felt them again.
“A lot of noise,” Aireen says, flushing.
“I’m leaving,” the woman says. She gets up and heads for the door.
“You’re going to get soaked,” the man yells after her.
The woman thinks about that, stops, and returns to her seat.
“When did it start?” I ask Aireen.
“Friday. A lot of workers came and started drilling with those machines that make a lot of noise. Yesterday, Saturday, they came with a truck to take away all the broken glass and piles of rubble.” She pauses. “I’m going to miss you.” She blushes deeper.
“What?”
“I used to be able to watch you from my window when you would wash the bookstore’s front windows. You used to spend hours doing that. Are you always that conscientious in your work?”
The waitress arrives with a tray and sets down our order. She places some silverware beside our plates and leaves.
“Do you know what happened to the books and the other things that were there? Did they take them away?”
“I don’t know.”
The rain lets up for a minute.
The couple stands and quickly leaves. We’ve almost finished eating. Aireen gives me a little ice cream and I, in retribution, offer her some egg, which she rejects serically: “Yuck, eggs!”
I laugh.
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask her just like that, discordant, yammering.
She looks at me deeply as she eats one of the last spoonfuls of ice cream.
“Yes, once,” she says.
“What’s it like?”
“What do you mean, what’s it like?”
“You know, what does it feel like?”
“You’ve never been in love?”
* * *
[“We live off the world’s scraps, you balding cypress. Atop the ash heap of history; we’re what’s been left behind, humanity’s rubbish. Just think, you little prick, after all the wars that have been waged, what’s left? Just garbage—billions of people rotting, swarming, starving, in the most awful misery we can imagine. The world’s a piece of shit that we’re condemned to inhabit. After the Leviathan, we’ll never be able to return to the age of innocence, to the shelter of the womb. We’re the worst species in the universe, always devouring everything in our path, like exultant plagues, like decrepitating insects. That’s the way things are.”
“Did you have another fight with your missus, Jefe?”
“Yes, you asshole.”]
I feel my clothes disintegrating with the damp. Aireen asks for the check. I can’t stop looking at her. I don’t know, it’s like I’m discovering new things with every step, new beautiful labyrinths to get lost in.
“What does your tattoo mean?” I ask her when she turns and I spot it again behind her ear.
“It’s a promise,” she says. “A feather. When I was younger, I wanted things to stop falling apart, but they didn’t. So I promised myself, well, that if things got bad again, I’d take flight from the top of a building. But that’s in the past now, the kind of thing you think when you have no idea where you’re going. What about you—have you ever made a promise?”
“I once promised to help a friend’s family.”
“And have you kept that promise?”
“No. But I have a plan.”
“It’s always good to have a plan.”
The waitress puts the check on the table.
“I’ll pay,” I say, and pull out a hundred-dollar bill from the thousand the dappers gave me.
“No, it’s my treat,” she says, and stops my hand. She pulls a little purse out of her jacket that contains her cell phone and the box of medicine, and counts out $16.90 in one-dollar bills and coins.
“Doesn’t your boss give you a discount?”
Aireen looks up and seriously, very seriously, says, “What!”
“Sorry,” I say, embarrassed, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot. I try to take her hand, but she pulls away. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” I say.
Aireen gets up and goes over to the bar to leave the bills and coins for the waitress.
I’m starting to get cold. Outside, the rain has picked back up. I realize in that moment that I don’t feel like getting soaked again. Aireen comes back to the table.
“Shall we go?”
I walk beside her in silence. All I hear is the splashing of the storm drains. The looming sky makes it seem later than it really is. A large raindrop splats on top of my head and trickles behind my ears. I’m carrying the crumpled-up sweater in my hand. Aireen stops at the light. A car passes and honks, then accelerates and vanishes from view. We cross the street and head toward her apartment. She’s walking with her arms crossed. She takes longer and longer steps, like she’s itching to take off running. We turn at the corner and go up to the stone steps of her building. She climbs them quickly and opens the door.
“Thanks for the medicine,” she says. She steps one foot over the threshold. “You know, dude, I’m not that kind of girl.”
* * *
[“What love doesn’t kill, heartbreak destroys. That’s God’s honest truth.”]
I wake up with a fever. Yesterday I got back to the shelter leaving a trail of puddles behind me. My whole body aches. I don’t want to get up. I didn’t go running. I don’t want to do anything. Just stay in bed. I’ve lost Aireen over a stupid mistake—or maybe I never had her. But I’m sure I had her within arm’s reach, and I let her get away. I feel anguished, wrung out by despair, which shatters every artery of my soul, enrages every cranny of my body. I sat there for hours last night, outside her door, silently calling to her. Waiting for her to look out and see me there, doing my penance, but no, there was nothing. Just rain and cars. And evening and night pooling around my bones. Once upon a time I asked for so little, just to look at her and nothing more, and then just for her to see me and nothing more, and just then for her to be my friend and nothing more—why now, when I know the touch of her lips, why do I feel like I have nothing? Why do I feel emptier than ever, when in fact I never had anything at all?
It was late when Mrs. Merche opened the door for me.
“Oh, monkey, you’re either pigheaded or birdbrained. Why do you always show up soaking wet? Come on, I’ll get you something to eat while you dry off.”
She sat me down in front of a plate of chicken soup. I grimaced, but in the end I ate it to silence her scolding. I know there’s no soup that can pull me from this ravine I’m drowning in.
Then, before sending me off to bed, she told me, “Your aunt came by, swinelet, and left a big box for you in your room.”
Dragging the blanket, banging into the furniture, stumbling like a fucking drunk, I came up to my room to fill up with snot. And that’s what I did. I spent hours snotting because of that goddamn seasonal flu like the kind pigs get. Lying in bed and sniffling snot mixed with ground glass.
“What did they bring you in the box?!” Naomi suddenly shouts, making my hairs stand on end.
“I don’t want to talk to anybody.” I burrow under the blankets, covering my head. I’m shivering.
I hear Naomi roll out of the room. I really don’t want to talk to her or anybody else. I want to be alone, to be left alone.
Five minutes later she comes back with Mr. Abacuc. Wisely, she stays near the door.
“Are you not feeling well, Liborio?”
“Who told you that?”
“That’s not important. You didn’t go running today like Coach Truddy instructed you to. How
are you feeling?”
“How’s coach doing?”
“Still resting at the hospital. It was just a false alarm, but he needs to rest for now. How about you? What’s the matter?”
“I’m sick. I’ve got a fever.”
“Let’s take a look.” He pops a mercury thermometer into my mouth.
Naomi watches from the door, and I can hear the pipsqueak giggling.
A minute later he pulls the thermometer out and examines it.
“If I weren’t seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it,” Mr. Abacuc says in a worried voice, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“What?” I ask, alarmed.
“See for yourself!” He holds out the thermometer. I don’t know where to look, so I don’t see anything. “Am I really sick?”
“Yes,” says Mr. Abacuc, his brow furrowed. “You’re really sick.”
“What from?”
“Well, as it happens, you don’t have anything at all—no fever, no cold. Your temperature’s better than any of ours, I can assure you.”
Mrs. Merche comes in, her eyebrows raised.
“You see, son? I told you you were going to get sick! Everything has its consequences. Every action has a head cold lurking outside the door.” She turns to Mr. Abacuc. “Oh, I came here to tell you that contractor, Barnes, is finished. He’s waiting for you in your office with the others.” She spins around like a top and leaves, though not before telling Naomi, who’s still hovering by the door, “Get out of here, squirt, you don’t want to catch any of that monkey’s bugs.”
“Anyway”—Mr. Abacuc changes the subject—“if I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. Mrs. Marshall sent the contractor and five men first thing in the morning to patch the holes in the roof. They changed out three sheets of tin that were beyond repair. That’s a real miracle, why, yes, it is, and all thanks to you!”