by Romina Paula
It’s true the trip is not that long, and the route is unusual: all straight. I mean: it rises and falls, because of the landscape, which is hills, but the route itself is all straight. Then, from atop the hills you can see very, very far, see the long line of lights that leads into Madryn. As for the rest, you can’t see any of the landscape, because there isn’t much to see, and because there’s no light left. The line that is the road seems suspended, a long corridor like a bridge over nothingness itself. You don’t always get good things out of fantasies, nor do they always follow a useful path. We’re silent but chewing mint gum to not fall asleep. Every so often, on this long road, Juli puts his hand on my knee, the hand he uses to shift gears, since he almost doesn’t need it, he rests it on my left knee. I take it, put my hand over his, and I stroke it, just a little, just a tiny bit, just to acknowledge it, really, just that. It’s gone now, that tension, from before, from talking, from having to say things, explain. And my stupid thing of wounded pride is mostly gone as well, and my wanting to pester him with questions about his family, and my wanting to be a mother and to know are gone. Now, here on this road, we are suspended in time, we’re not in it, this line that we trace with the car is outside of the plan, the net, the structure. We’re coming from and going to, but there isn’t any here, this road does not exist, it’s just us suspended, holding hands between the lights, on seats, with no music, no cigarettes, no coffee, no mate, no needs, with only night, nothing else.
33.
The place is called something like the Solar Inn or Sun Inn. No, Solar. It’s a new building, with two stories and—yet again—a brick facade, but polished, unpainted. Our room doesn’t have a view of the sea, we’re at the back of the building, which looks out onto the garden of some neighbors, with receptacles/ugly lawn decor and a wild dog. In our room the decor and the furniture is neutral, not very decisive, but fairly new and tidy, agreeable, everything pretty white. The first thing Julián does when we get there is take a shower, and it’s a long shower. I don’t know what’s going to happen, now I’m kind of nervous. The matter of the double bed scares me a little, de-erotifies me, even if maybe it’s just an issue with the light, so white, and of the excessive euphoria in the car. Now I really could feel like I’ve been married to Julián for ages, that we’re a married couple, that he’s my husband and I’m his old lady, and I’m keeping him company on a business trip. In fact he asks me to get him his toothbrush from his bag. And I do. I know he brushes his teeth in the shower, it’s not a habit he would have given up. Fortunately he takes it from me by sticking his arm out, I wouldn’t have known what to do with his naked body. I tell him I’m going to get some beer, he asks where, I say around here, he says around here there isn’t anything, I’d have to walk a ton, and it’s way too cold. That I should just wait a second, for him, and that we’ll drive into the city center. I’d rather walk, I say, we already spent the entire day in the truck. All the more reason to wait for him, he says, that we’ll go out to eat in the city center, and we’ll walk.
Juli comes out of the bathroom in his boxers, I don’t look directly at him, but I can tell. I keep writing. Aren’t you going to shower, you animal? Not now, I’ll do it when we get back. If I shower now I’ll be too cold. I feel like a steak. I feel like beer. Let’s go.
It’s fucking freezing outside, a different kind of cold than in Esquel, this one’s an ocean cold. We cross the highway and go to the beach, to see the water. But you can’t see the ocean that well because it’s nighttime, and it’s just a huge black form, immobile and sounding, noisy and dark. And on the shore it’s really cold, because of the wind, a very strong one. Julián cries out into the night, at the ocean, and he grabs me from behind, and he hugs me, wrings me out as best he can with all that jacket in between us. Fortunately I don’t quite manage to feel him completely, all that fabric prevents me, but he hugs me this way and I lean my head back and lean into him, on his shoulder and look out at the water and am a little less cold, and I like it, of course I like him holding me and hugging me this way, but I’m not sure if I feel like having this turn into a little romantic escapade, an ocean love story, couple on the beach, reunion, I don’t know what I want. I hate that he can have everything: wife, kids, family, lover, it’s all so easy for him, all so great, ready to go. I hate it, I hate that I’m attracted to him and that he can have me, and on the other hand everything is so finite, such finitude, that I do feel a little bit like going all the way with the whole rose-colored picture and kiss him on the beach and have those ballads playing and say certain things to each other and then leave tomorrow. But, now, that sappiness destroys me almost as much as the double bed, there’s something so predictable about it that really wrecks me. I think I would have preferred the crash in the desert; it suits me better. I say I’m hungry and I’m cold and I want to go. Aren’t you going to give me a kiss? he says, and I say no, and he says screw you.
We walk pretty fast, to warm up, the neutrality of the fabric of my jeans doesn’t help much, it does nothing against the cold. But the friction of my knees in movement helps quite a bit to warm up the denim, and in this way it works. We barely talk, white vapor comes out in clouds from our mouths. Madryn isn’t bad, not bad at all. I remembered it as being quite a bit uglier, industrial, and with no trees, but no, it turns out to be nice. It’s quite a few blocks till we get to the center itself; it takes a while before we start to see all the stores that sell reproductions of whales and penguins in wool and metal and ceramic and stuffed and T-shirt and mate and photographic and rubber versions. We go by a couple of bars for young people—some of them with pool tables, others with draft beer, or big bottles of beer—but we’re not fully convinced. We want to eat. Juli says he knows a grill where you can get just about anything, Don Román or San Román, something with Román. It’s on the north side of the city. Almost a cantina. Behind the door where you go in there’s a foul smell lurking, a powerful whiff of food and frying, very powerful. The grill and the guy manning it—believe it or not—are inside. We’re on the verge of changing our minds, but the cold at our heels and the prospect of walking more around Madryn in denim dissuades us, and we enter into that intangible material odor. The vibe is that of an old tavern subjected to renovations less cheap than in poor taste. There’s an annexed room that is remarkably different, with a white lacquered floor, glistening, and the walls are tile, too, with paper in various shades of pink, and matching tablecloths. The chairs have a plastic covering over another pink, yet another shade. They seat us in that room, the newer room, and the easier one to clean, the one they probably feel proud of. We look at each other again: it’s now or never, if we want to flee, but we don’t do it. I’d be too embarrassed at this point already. I choose to believe that for whatever reason I deserve or we deserve this odor, these shades of fake pastel. On the walls there are maps—some comic, others not—of Madryn, the Valdés Peninsula, photos of their most valued fauna—orca, whale, whale calf, sea lion, seal—and other adornments more themed around the puna: tapestries and Inca-ish things, or what looks like that, photos or paintings of llamas or guanacos, more Andean. And to top it all off every now and then a Coca-Cola decoration/souvenir, those things they have at pseudo-country-club-type places, family country clubs. My back is to the room, I see the wall, Juli, the restaurant. On the table, some paper place mats with, once more, animals. They’re photocopied photos, in colors. Each one has a different animal on it with a little caption giving some information about that species. Juli gets a fox, I get a whale. My whale is in blues and his fox in oranges. We look at them, discuss them. I hate that I got the whale, it depresses me, Juli laughs. I hate having to know that it’s a cetacean mammal, and that it comes up to the coasts around here once a year to reproduce. The waiter comes over to our table and tells us that if we like them we can take them with us, that’s what they’re for. How awful, the worst is that later, because the waiter and his offer make me sad, I’ll end up taking the place mat with the gigantic cetacean
folded up into fourths in my jacket so that the waiter doesn’t feel bad or think we were making fun of his place mats. I order a beer, blessed beer, and Juli gets wine. To stomach the stench, which, psychological or not, has already attached itself to my palate. There isn’t any beer smaller than three quarters of a liter, so I start off with that, and then I’ll get in on the wine. Juli orders a steak with french fries, I add a salad and another steak. The beer does me a lot of good, the bread does the beer a lot of good. The basket comes with those little old-fashioned Provençal toasts: they smell like the tavern, I’m not up to it, I prefer the sponginess of the little black rolls. They bring leber, two slices. Juli eats it, I prefer butter with salt.
“You happy, babe?”
“You know, I actually am, you know, I actually really am quite happy. I hate to admit it, but I am.”
“Me too, I’m happy too. I’m happy to see you, I’m happy you’re here; I’m happy we’re here.”
“Just me and you and a portion of leber.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I laugh. “It’s from Reality Bites. About making do with not very much, just that.”
“You look really pretty, you know?”
“I am really pretty.”
“Yes, you are, but that’s not what I mean. I remembered you were pretty, but now you look pretty in a different way.”
“Different how?”
“Older.”
“More worn?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s the city.”
“Maybe, in any case it suits you.”
“Well, thanks. You look hot.”
“Fuck off.”
“I mean it, the beard works for you; fatherhood too. Even if fatherhood looks better on you with the kids off in the distance.”
“You’re such a piece of shit.”
“The point is you look hot.”
“You’re not going to kiss me at any point tonight, idiot?”
“I don’t know.”
“I just want to know so I can get ready.”
“You look red.”
“You too, it’s the wine.”
“It’s this dump. Doesn’t it stink?”
“It definitely does. I think I’m used to it now, but when we came in it really stank.”
The waiter is a little bit intimidating; he and his colleague, in reality. They’re circling around the room where we are the whole time, and it’s not that busy, with their backs to the walls and watching everything. I guess it’s part of their job, being attentive and at the ready, but it really does get a little bit intimidating, because they see everything we do at every moment. I feel like they can even hear. Every so often waiter number two, the younger one, takes his phone out of his apron and sends or receives messages. Or is he checking the time? In any case, they have very prominent roles this evening. The salad comes out, and it’s really good, plentiful and fresh, and shortly thereafter the steaks and the fries come out too. The least appetizing thing is the fries, in the end, who would have thought, with that oil smell overpowering everything. But between the steaks and the salad and the wine it works out totally fine. Not to mention the company, of course, that goes without saying. I feel the alcohol settling, feel it working. I switched from beer to wine a while ago already, and perhaps, only perhaps, it was too fast. Now I can feel it in my face, I imagine it’s the food, too, and I tell myself to stop chugging it, even if it’s just a little break I take. My mouth feels kind of numb, relaxed, and I know perfectly well that it will—inevitably—turn into/end in wanting to make out. The steak makes my stomach happy, and everything seems to be getting good. I feel, I’ve been feeling, for a while up to now, very good. Who could take that away from me? Juli is attractive, he eats and is attractive. It’s appealing watching him eat, looking at him. He’s starving and very focused on his prey. Every so often he lets a this is good escape, onto his plate, onto his steak, which doesn’t expect a response, doesn’t have any expectations, which is just singing to his meal, singing its praises. He becomes childlike when he eats, which makes him touching. His brown hair falls almost to his shoulders, lightly curly and messy, from the wind, from the walk. He has thick eyebrows, kind of reddish, and his beard, too, his beard is also different colors, a little copper, a little bit brighter red, slightly golden, too, every so often. Very uneven, I hadn’t seen him with a beard in forever. In fact I don’t think I ever saw him with a beard, it’s more of a fatherly thing. He’s more angular, the life of a grown-up, I suppose, responsibility, that kind of sinks his eyes, the cavities of his eyes, and makes the circles underneath them more pronounced. And those dark circles call, in turn, more attention to his brown eyes, makes you see them more. Although they are sort of set back, that sitting back and the darkness of his skin brings them out somehow, makes you see them. Fuck, he has nice eyes. Beautiful eyes. All these changes, a domino effect of changes set off by that beard, the presence of so much hair on his face. Or adulthood, that could also be it. The sweater he’s wearing is very sweet: a wool cardigan, big, made of wool in different shades of brown, mottled, with a brown zipper, too. It has a broad collar, the cardigan, and it looks really good on him, with his face, his hair, his jeans. Lord almighty, the wine in my head is beginning to wreak havoc.
“That sweater is so ñoño,” I tell him, as he chews. I finished eating a while ago and am now nourishing myself with alcohol, a base of barley and grape, and I gave up, very politely, a portion of my generous steak. “Did your mom knit it for you?”
“Yes indeed,” he says, still chewing. “What is that, that’s a new word, is it like popular at school or something?”
“What, ñoño?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, idiot, I think it’s from The Simpsons, from the Mexican dubbing. I always said ñoño. Me and my brother always said it.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, I guess you remember what you want to.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“All right, enough with the belligerence, it’s exhausting. Your cardigan looks great on you.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s very sweet.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I might be. Are you not?”
“A little bit, maybe.”
He finishes the steak, pounds down the last little battered potato, wipes the fat off his hands, his mouth, with a napkin, and takes my hand. He reaches out over the table, over the side with the fauna place mats and takes my hand. He pushes the sleeve of my sweater a little bit back, with the tips of his fingers, and he takes the whole of my hand, all of it, touching it all. Immediately—this is what it is—I get turned on. I mean: it hurts, my cunt hurts, awakens, I don’t know how to talk about this, but something gets switched on, desire, maybe. And it’s just a hand, even just that. I guess I would kiss him now, but he pours me some more wine, with the hand that isn’t touching me, he orders another bottle with a gesture that is almost unnecessary because the waiters are practically in our faces, and he asks me if I want dessert, asks, Would you like dessert? And I mean I don’t know, like, sure. When the wine comes they bring the menu back, and we want ice cream with chocolate and dulce de leche, with two spoons, to share. I’m doing it for him, I want very little of it, of the ice cream, just to soften slightly the harshness of the red wine on my tongue, to balance out that bitterness. And I keep drinking the wine, imbibing. We’re not going to finish this other bottle. Julián asks if we can take it with us, the waiter grants us this and brings us a cork, a different one, not from this bottle. Taking the wine to go reminds me of the place mat, so I fold up the whale and put it in my pocket. It has a few vinegar or lettuce stains, but whatever. We pay the check, we bundle up, we go out. Behind us that odor, before us, the cold. We go left, towards the coast, we’re half a block away. At the corner we come across a bale of hay, the kind you always see in Westerns—like the tumbleweeds that roll through the desert, symbols of there’s nothing going on here—bu
t the weird thing about this one is that it’s in a city. A coastal city. It makes us laugh because basically we’re very drunk, because it’s bizarre that it’s here and because it is—it really is—very big. I suggest we take it, we drag it a few feet, people are looking at us, I sort of trip, and we let it go. We pass by a cool bar, and Juli suggests we go in to have a nightcap, a couple of whiskeys. I remind him of the bottle of wine, suggest we go drink it somewhere. He suggests we go back to the hotel. I say no, that I want to go somewhere natural, in nature, to the beach, for example. Juli says that there’s no way he’s going to the beach in this cold, that it’s just that right now I’m drunk and I don’t really realize, but that tomorrow I’m going to want to die on the bus dribbling snot all over. So then what, I say. He suggests getting the truck and heading for the peninsula. Now? I say. What’s wrong with now? he says. Now is great because there’s no one on the road, and we can go to this spot on Punta Flecha that has an amazing view, it’s like ten miles away, maybe we’ll be able to see a whale or something still. I don’t want to, I say, I hate whales, they scare me, their heads are covered in crustaceans. Don’t be an idiot, he says, at this time of night you can’t see anything anyway, in terms of animals, but the view from there is really pretty, there’s this wooden path and the whole trajectory is great. Are you going to drive like this, drunk? I say. We’ll go slow, and there’s nobody out now anyway. Okay, fine, I say. We walk back to get the truck, walking quickly, singing, “Palm Tree.” Days go by, minds change. / What was a meadow, is now a lion / or it’s a cat with dreads and leprosy / and it isn’t my imagination.