by Romina Paula
3.
Before leaving town the bus makes a stop in Liniers. The seat I chose isn’t bad, all things considered. It has a number of pros: it’s upstairs, more or less in the middle. There’s no one next to me. The only little con, which I do detect immediately, is that right exactly where my part of the window is there’s a divider—I mean, the window, the glass, is bisected smack-dab where my face is. This is bad because the view will not be optimal, although I still think I did okay, in terms of safety it’s a good thing because it’s a divider that could absorb a blow, you know, if it ever came to that. It’s a divider that isn’t glass at least. So I reconcile myself to that metal/rubber strip standing between me and the landscape.
Getting out of the city itself is hell, it takes an hour to get from the station in Retiro to the neighborhood of Liniers. Emilia from Retiro to Liniers, that could be the name of another movie. In that hour, Clemente, the attendant charged with making our bus ride more comfortable, busies himself with welcoming us and explaining that they will be serving a hot dinner, followed by coffee with a whiskey option after for the movie they will show, then breakfast on our approach to Bariloche. Clemente is very excited about his job and about his microphone, he’s very excited to be able to tell us everything he tells us and to be able to do it over a microphone. Clemente darts between the rows of seats and insists we not deposit solid waste into the toilet. He repeats this. He says: We repeat, no solid waste. The prohibition alone upsets my stomach. The seat is wide and there’s no one sitting next to me, the bus isn’t that full, they have wine to go with dinner and whiskey for later, but all of this that bodes so well in the beginning quickly turns into nightmare: Clemente feels obliged to entertain his passengers nonstop. Like we can’t just look out the window. When he’s not talking on his microphone, he’s walking around passing out things, taking up things, offering us refills, asking if we’re too warm, if we’re cold, if the AC’s okay. I try to look out the window so that he doesn’t talk to me, and he ends up suggesting I shut the curtains because of the rocks. Rocks? There’s nothing outside but prairie, not even any little towns. There’s not even a landscape to look at anymore. So then I try to get into the movie, which has been on for ages already and has this man with all these arm muscles trying to play nanny to a group of extremely blond children who are having none of it. He has bottles in his belt like grenades. It doesn’t work. I’m not into it and I can’t sleep. Clemente comes and goes. For god’s sake, Clemente, enough already. There are some people who are actually snoring now. I realize that the trip I had pictured and hoped for is not going to happen now. That that thing about looking out the window and letting go and permitting my mind to wander freely is no longer possible. I’m trapped inside a moving box that smells like armpit and has Clemente drifting around all over everywhere. And I’m tired, but I’m not sleepy.
I disobey Clemente and crack the curtains. You can’t see much, but I have to distract myself from the bodybuilding nanny. I want to be able to get some distance from Buenos Aires, let Buenos Aires go, in order to be able to understand my situation there as it actually is. I think about Manuel’s face by the side of the bus at the station, think about his faded jeans, his tennis shoes, his curls, remember how he looked at me, waited until right as we were leaving with his hands in his pockets, the candy—the little umbrella-shaped candy and the chocolates—that he slipped into my pocket when we hugged that final time. I feel like I already miss him, which happens with those relationships where you see the other person so much they become a necessary outgrowth, which is the thing about them that’s not good. It throws me off or at least just throws me for a loop to have his body be in fact so far away from mine. I’ve gotten out of the habit now, that’s what it is, I’m out of the habit. I’m out of the habit of being by myself. Now, on this bus, I begin to be aware of something like Manuel withdrawal. And yet, is he the person I choose, would I choose him now, from scratch? Could I in fact now choose not to choose him? Did I choose him, did I choose all this at some stage? How did it even start? I can barely even remember how it started. Through Ramiro, I guess. That’s right, at some party. After a number of evenings, of course, and afternoons of drinking yerba mate, too. From me taking no notice of him to me not paying much attention to him to me being obsessed with this other guy from school and not seeing Manolo as anything other than one of my brother’s friends. To finding out all of a sudden because my brother tells me, reluctantly, almost in spite of himself, that this guy, this Manolo, really likes me, that this curly headed kid just really likes me and has been asking after me. And then I’m caught off guard: I hadn’t noticed that he liked me at all, I had never thought of it, not at all, not ever, never for a moment had I thought of him as a possible prospect. To getting drunk later at some party and ending up kissing him, after some concert, in Banfield or in Lanús, to me throwing up, and him taking care of me and wanting to keep kissing me even after I had thrown up, and then coming back on a train to Constitución one Sunday morning, my face resting on his jacket or his scarf or in between his jacket and his scarf. From not having thought of it ever before to sleeping with him and then being inseparable from him from that moment forward. Two years now, since that morning, and I never once so much as reflected on it, not before, not after, not during, everything just sort of drifting along, of its own accord, and I started to grow fond of him gradually until suddenly I was very fond of everything, and we never really parted after that time we kissed up by that stage after that concert in Lanús. Or in Banfield. Where I liked that he took care of me when I threw up, that he kept kissing me after, and that he held my hand on the way to the station, with my purse slung over his shoulder, to help. I liked that he was holding my hand already, like we were together, liked him taking certain liberties I let him take because I was drunk, because I wasn’t feeling well, and also because I also felt kind of good, that, too.
Clemente wakes us up in the morning, not without violence, putting on a DVD of Latin music videos. I open my eyes, and besides Patagonia I see Ricardo Montaner in white on some Greek terrace, which is very white, singing to this dark-haired girl in a flowy dress attempting to look attractive, on some beach somewhere. Ricardo sings on boats, at sunset, in interiors with terracotta vases. Clemente comes and goes, ever diligent. His hair is styled, he’s put some effort into it. He sets a tray on my lap while I try to get rid of the groove the window frame left on my cheek. My forehead is moist and my hair is all squashed. My forehead is damp from the condensation on the window. Outside, the mountains. In about an hour we’ll be in Bariloche. I had a strange dream, which I can’t quite remember, but something, lurking. Some familiar sensation, something recovered.
When I get off the bus in Bariloche, the wind from Nahuel Huapi Lake rustles my bangs, and the icy air unstops my nose, fills it with the smell of people. I feel the cold in my teeth, open my mouth, drink it in. Breathe in a mouthful of southern air. I’m starting to feel good. Now, from here, from this station, while I wait to get my bag back, Manuel, with his pants and his curls, seems far away/removed.
4.
Monday. I’m not quite sure how to settle in/be in your house, I’m not exactly sure what to do. I try to stay in motion to regain a sense of familiarity, I make the rounds. Your cat doesn’t recognize me, she keeps her distance, and if I go up to try and pet her she bites me. She sleeps with her back to me. She insists on this. I guess I deserve it for having left her behind, for having cruelly stopped coming, as though Ali’d only ever been an extension of you. I empty a couple of ashtrays; your mom told me to make myself at home, of course, and that I could do whatever I felt like, and to make myself comfortable. But obviously it’s not my home, and I can’t even be sure now that it was ever really yours. Your dad even lets me use the computer, just imagine how sensitive he’s feeling right now in order to leave me the password on a little yellow paper, one of those with the sticky strips across the top, for reminders, with his imperative that I memorize it and destroy th
e evidence at once. I don’t really know what to do, I appreciate his generosity and I appreciate—knowing him—the magnitude of his gesture, but for now I’d rather write by hand. It’s such a big deal, that computer, that I’m afraid something might happen to it. Your dad, that maniac, put a sweatshirt on the monitor, can you imagine? One with UCLA written on it, absurd, it must have belonged to one of you guys, they put it over the screen so the cat wouldn’t scratch it.
Today I snooped around in your stuff, but like, just because, like demelancholized, like my eyes were dry, as I was snooping, just checking things out, taking a look. I came across that drawer you keep filled with scraps of paper and things, the one that has all sorts of movie tickets and little invites and little notes, a million of my little notes, pure nonsense on them, so much nonsense written down, the reconstruction of a history of stupidity, basically, of silliness, of whatever. Plus notebooks, all begun but none completed, with just a few things written down, just a couple, in frantic handwriting. Thoughts jotted down frenetically, that’s what it looked like, things written in moments of duress, fits of rage, based on the penmanship, because it was yours but different, not like yours at school, not like yours in letters, which had so many things crossed out, so many mistakes and things you changed your mind about, retracing your steps, your words. Here it was all nonstop, no going back, like you hadn’t even reread it, not caring about errors. You were writing feelings or dreams, I don’t know, just different things. But that wasn’t it, it wasn’t what you were writing that surprised me, I actually even remembered some of those situations, I guess you must have told me some of those dreams. The weird thing is the tone, the way. That’s the weird thing. That’s not the way you talked. It’s also not the way you wrote, not when you were writing to someone, to me, for example. Lines brimming over with anger and despair, hatred, almost, very severe, with yourself, with everything, but above all with yourself. So hard on yourself, my goodness, what force of personality. And yet, it was actually a happy discovery for me, I mean, it was good. I mean, I should say that at first it made me feel insanely strange and deeply sad to think I hadn’t really known you, but of course that isn’t true, of course that would also be ridiculous, because let us just agree I did know you, because, I mean, if not me, who? And then that ended up being what I liked about it, that there would still be things about you that I had not yet had the chance to find out. I liked that, the fact that you would not have shown me everything, or revealed it all to me, that there would still have been some things that you had kept to yourself. Look at what a little mystery you turned out to be.
Yesterday I had another dream about the people from Six Feet Under, but just Nate, David, and Ruth. Ruth reminds me a lot of your mom, and I guess now my unconscious must have conflated them, because in my dream Ruth was Ruth but she was also your mom and the guys were kind of like your cousins. At any rate we were at your place in the country and the sprinklers were on, and I was getting wet, I was kind of showering under one of them in a dress with this pattern of green leaves, kind of like the outfits that Fräulein Maria made for the Von Trapps out of their old curtains. I was rinsing off under the sprinkler, and I was really happy. Nate and David were around and Ruth/your mom was too, but she was inside the house, I knew she was in there, and I felt a deep affection for all involved. Then someone, it might have been you, was asking me if I had a crush on anyone, and Nate was taken, because Brenda was there in my dream as well, your mom was talking about her and saying that she had hooked up with who knows how many other dudes, and I think it was you who was asking me if I had a little crush on David. We both knew he was gay, but it didn’t matter, I liked him so much that I did kind of have a crush on him, and Nate too. So stupid, the characters, because it wasn’t even the actors in this case, just these characters who end up somehow being a part of your life, you know? But in any case the Fishers reminded me of your family from the moment I first saw them, nothing I can do about that.
5.
I haven’t stopped sleeping since I got here. I can’t, I just can’t stop sleeping. It’s a little bit embarrassing, because of your parents, who knows what they’ll think, that I’m depressed, maybe, I don’t know. Maybe not. Your mom leaves me a breakfast plate on the table with a little note whenever she goes off to work. She’s incredible, your mom. And I have the most bizarre dreams because I just don’t stop, I cross over from dreams into something else, I get into something else, into this very bizarre state. I mean, it’s your bed, it’s your house, your room, it’s all super strange, very weird. Even though it doesn’t really look like it did before. It’s been sort of neutralized, you know? I feel like, between the fact that your sister kind of lived in here for a while and the fact that it seems like it’s being used as a guest room now, it’s just become sort of transient. I always liked it that your parents kept your room going, like that they kept it up to date, so that way it’s neither yours nor not yours, I don’t know exactly how to explain it: it’s yours, but neutralized, taken down a notch. And yet you’re still there in certain things. Certain pictures are still there, the ones you cut out of magazines, the Berni you got from a magazine, or Pettoruti maybe? I don’t remember, and it doesn’t say, the one you cut out of the magazine, but it’s still there, tacked up on the bookshelf. Bulgo’s picture’s still there, too, under the plastic part of the desk, and next to it there’s a piece of Johnny Depp’s face that you can tell somebody tried to remove, but Johnny held on to the plastic, really gave it his all, and there he is, he’s still there, young and beautiful. There are a few more things. Mostly in drawers. But I already told you that. They didn’t give away all your stuff. Your mom kept quite a bit of clothing, some of it she wears; I took a thing or two too, back at the time, the blue pullover with the little balls, which I slept in until really recently, it’s pretty disgusting at this point, but I still couldn’t toss it, even if it means nothing now, I mean, the pullover. It’s weird to see your clothes, really odd, to see them here again, more or less intact, and just the very fact they still exist.
I talked to Ramiro, and it sounds like the mouse hasn’t left yet, but he has taken a couple of concrete steps. He bought a mousetrap (ugh, an inquisition), and he put a piece of cheese in it; he said the mouse hasn’t tried it yet but that now the whole kitchen smells like cheese. Meanwhile he put out poison for the mouse to eat, and he mixed it with who-knows-what-type of seeds for the mouse to nibble on, but apparently he was told that the poisoning takes whole entire days to happen, because the mouse takes such small bites it takes it a long time to die. This is horrifying. My humble household has quickly been transformed into a site of terror, institutionalized death, and everything, I don’t know, I find it disgusting just to think about. But Rama sounds pretty stoked about it. Like he’s gotten reacquainted with his bloodlust, his former vocation of roach catcher, that masculine thing/virility.
Today my plan is to walk around a little, get out, see if I run into anybody, by chance, I mean, although I kind of hope they don’t recognize me, like I won’t be going around ringing people’s doorbells; there’s very few folks I would actually like to see. After that I’m meeting your parents for dinner. Julián, for example, Juli’s somebody, one of the people I would (most) like and not like to see. Ever since I got here, since we started coming up on the valley, like even back on the bus, on that morning, as soon as I woke up and there started to be mountains I suddenly had the strongest sense of Julián, as though it had simply been anesthetized, put on ice or something, or in salt, that sense, all this time; I woke up and my nose had fogged up the freezing window, my face was cold and squashed, I scattered the condensation on the glass with the sleeve of my jacket, I saw the first light of morning over the peaks, not yet reaching the highway, and I felt—god—that memory in my body, in the view, everything, sense memory, sensations lodged there, memory mocking plans, mocking decisions.
And now that I think about it, those strange dreams I had last night also included Julián. I don
’t quite remember what he was or anything, but I exited those dreams with still some sense of him. What I don’t get though is if that means I’d like to run into him or just the opposite. I know I’d like to hear, but just hear, what he’s been up to, but anything I might do, any movement I might make, could run the risk of being misinterpreted. I’m afraid of calling him and having his wife answer, I don’t know if he’s married, I don’t even know if he’s still in Spain or if he’s back, and if he’s back I don’t know if he came here or stayed in Buenos Aires, I doubt it, that I highly doubt, but I don’t know, I just have no idea. I don’t want to ask your mom, I don’t know why, exactly, I guess I’m slightly humiliated by the thought of her thinking I’m still into him or whatever, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not even that, maybe there are just certain answers I don’t feel like hearing, who knows. I hate that these things are like this, so tough, ex-boyfriends. The strange thing is going overnight from sharing everything with someone to no longer knowing anything about what they’re doing, the person you shared everything with and knew everything about, every day, everything that happened every day, and then, suddenly, from one moment to the next, nothing, and not even the option of giving them a call, or maybe you can call them anyway but then everything gets awkward, even the most basic things become uncomfortable. Losing all claims on the other person, losing them, completely, just like that, like it’s nothing. I hate that, that artificial death, that rehearsal for death: forcing yourself to accept this idea that that person’s disappearing, has disappeared, is gone from your life, and you no longer have any reason to expect to hear anything else about them ever. It’s absurd and overwhelming. If they’re still alive and still around, or even elsewhere, you want to know how they are, what they’re up to, I don’t know, something. Right? Isn’t that the logical response? I’ll see, I might end up going by his place this afternoon, by his parents’ place, to see what the situation is, I could end up ringing the bell, potentially find out something.