by Paloma Meir
“I think Jimena needs a doctor.” I pulled her closer to me and rested her head on my shoulder.
Arturo’s father, Mr. Zarate snapped his fingers and one of the Japanese visitors came and sat on the grass beside us. He lifted Jimena’s head and ran his fingers over her nose. He spoke to me in Japanese, a language I did not understand.
He gestured me to follow him into the house with Jimena. I lifted her up as she cried and muttered into my ear. I held her against me and followed the doctor into the kitchen. The spectators followed behind, telling me all about the National team. They thought I would be joining. I almost laughed.
In the kitchen, I placed Jimena on the center island as the doctor went to look for his bag. The group carried on about the national team, and how I would lead them to the Copa Cup. I ignored them because although I was good player, even a strong player, I was not great. I would not be taking their National team that was generally thought of as one of the worst teams in South America, possibly the world, to the Copa Cup.
“Does it hurt Jimena?” I looked for a clean spot on her blood smeared face to kiss but did not find one. “Arturo could you get me a wet cloth?”
“A little bit,” she stared up at me with a twinkle in her eyes. I was relieved to see they weren’t bruised.
“We’ll do it together, Serge.” Arturo handed me the towel. “I did it last summer, relief player.” I wiped her face clean, avoiding her tilted nose.
“Can we take care of Jimena first?” The doctor came back with a small black leather bag, put his gloves on, and unwound yards of gauze. I looked away. “PhD starts in September.”
“Defer it,” he said.
“Defer it, Serge” Jimena said as one last gush of blood squirted from her nose and on to my chest. I almost threw up. The doctor twisted her nose firmly back into place, stuffed it with gauze, and placed a molded piece of plastic over it to hold the setting in place.
“Defer it,” she said again as I looked at her ordinary, almost mousy features.
“Are we done?” I asked the doctor. He nodded back in the affirmative.
I picked her up off the counter and carried her up the stairs to her room, waving away the crowd of soccer mad guests and family of the injured Jimena. I laid her down on her bed, and told her I was going to go take a shower and would be back as soon as possible.
I passed her mother in the hallway. She hadn’t been at the game and seemed to be hysterical with the news of what had happened to her daughter. I was glad someone other than myself cared.
Her mother was gone by the time I got back to her room with my laptop in hand. I sat down next to Jimena on her bed and opened my computer to write an email to the head of the astrophysics department. I did not know if I would send the email requesting a semester deferment, but I did write it out as Jimena told me of her worries about going to Yale in the fall.
I thought of my family. They had been looking forward to me coming home for the summer. Carolina was coming out for the last two weeks of August. Jimena chattered on about her years at convent school. I closed my laptop and took the phone out of my bag. I didn’t know what to say to Danny. I knew Brendon was with him, but he needed more.
I put my phone down as I listened to Jimena and wondered why parents chose to keep their daughters so sheltered, so trusting in the world around them.
“It’s a big country. I’ve never been away from home before.” I had a strong sense of déjà-vu as she spoke.
“It is a big country, but you’ll be in a small city, well not too big of a city.”
“I won’t have any friends. The dorms...”
“They’re coed.” I gently propped her up next to me, “Is your nose feeling better?”
“I don’t like the cotton. I have to breath through my mouth.”
“That will make it hard to kiss you. I don’t want you to suffocate.” Her unexceptional dark eyes opened wide reminding me of Zelda. I put my arms around her kissing her for a few moments, moving away to let her breath, going back again, our lips making smacking noises.
“You’re very pretty Jimena.” There wasn’t anything wrong with her, more nondescript. Her brother had gotten the looks in the family, much like Carolina and me, “When you get to school.” I paused to kiss her again, pulling away to let her take a breath, I opened her robe, “The boys, stay away from the men, they’ll try to push you into doing things, you’re not ready for,”
She took a deep breath as I laid her back down on her bed. I ran my finger across her nipple. Her breasts though small were perfect. The dark nipples not much larger than a quarter with the way they tightened up under my finger.
“Has anyone ever touched you here before?” I wanted to take her breasts in my mouth.
“No.”
“Tell me to stop Jimena.”
“I don’t want you to stop.”
“Okay then.” I took off my shirt and threw it on the floor beside her. I opened her robe taking in her whole body, thin, athletic. I found myself getting more aroused than planned. I ran my finger down her stomach to the line of her pubic hair. “You’re beautiful Jimena.”
“Are we going to?"
“No.” I kissed her and ran my hands across her body, “I’m trying to teach you. Pay attention. Do you like this?”
“Yes” Her head moved side to side.
“It’s hard to kiss you. Tell me to stop if you don’t like this, okay."
I buried my face on her chest going back and forth between her breasts, my lips lightly brushing against her nipples. My erection annoyed me. I sat up beside her.
“Did you like that Jimena?”
“Yes. I love you.”
“You don’t love me. You have a crush on me.” I lifted her up so that her chest was against mine. “You need to learn the difference or you’re going to get into a lot of trouble at school.” I kissed her again, “This is the only way you should feel. If it’s any different or someone tries to make you do something you don’t want to do, what are you going to say?”
“No.”
“Excellent Jimena.” I kissed her forehead.
“Can we do this again?”
“No. Arturo would beat me.” I kissed her one last time. “I have to email my professor and family. Take a nap.”
That’s how I ended up staying in Peru, not for one semester, but for four years.
Chapter Ten
Jimena and I had checked into the Sanctuary Hotel not far from Machu Picchu and fell straight to sleep not a minute after entering the room. We had just completed a month long bicycle ride along the Inca Trail. So imagine my surprise as I stood in the bathroom and saw myself for the first time since we had left Lima thirty days before. My long hair I wore in a ponytail during my games was dreadlocked.
I ran my fingers over the coarse tube-like clumps of hair and wondered how I hadn’t figured out what Jimena had been doing as she playfully braided my hair. She had not braided it. She had put vertical knots in my hair that would not be washed out.
I opened the drawer hoping to find a sewing kit with scissors included so I could cut them off. It was only hair. It would grow back, or maybe I would keep it short. No sewing kit to be found. I closed the drawer and looked in the mirror again. My hair was ridiculous, and my olive skin tanned darker than the native tribes we had seen on our bike tour. Nobody would mistake me for an American anymore. I didn’t look Peruvian either although they did like to claim me as their own.
I looked lost and that’s how I felt. The hair suited me perfectly. I looked like one of those traveler kids that populated the beach areas back home in Los Angeles. I clenched my hands over my face as I thought of my team. The league had been shut down for months while the owners worked out the financial mismanagement. Mismanagement was just another word corruption as far as I could tell. I didn’t know when it would start up again, and I didn’t care.
My shoulder ached. It had been popped out of its socket so many times I feared permanent nerve damage. I imagined
a useless arm hanging limply by my side as I grew older. There wasn’t much medical support for the players. We were left to care for our problems on our own. Four years in, I felt qualified to do emergency work with the Red Cross. All the players did.
I looked out into the bedroom at the sweetly sleeping Jimena. I wanted to wake her up, and satisfy my insatiable desire for her. The tiny bump on her nose from the hit she took all those years before gave her a beauty, a character her face had lacked before.
I crawled into bed next to her and pulled her close to me. I drifted in and out of sleep, reliving all the times over the years that she had come to my room before going back to school. She would sneak into my room late at night, lay against me. Sometimes we would kiss but mostly we laid locked in each other’s arms. The longest courtship of my life, but well worth the wait.
She had remained a virgin until well into her junior year at Yale. It was not me, but a Jamaican boy who had that honor. Their “great love” hadn’t stopped her from her late night visits, and now as some sort of divine justice, I was wearing his hairstyle. I laughed at the thought and woke up to the sweet Jimena.
“Do we have to get up? Is it time to go?” She lifted her head and asked.
“Our flight is at 5:00. It’s only noon. We have time. Go back to sleep.”
“I wish we could stay here forever. I don’t want to go to Belgium anymore. I want to stay with you, Serge.” She nuzzled into me, making me very happy.
“I don’t think my groupies would like that, Jimena.” She laughed because she knew that I had never taken advantage of that particular perk of being a world-class, in Peru at least, soccer player.
Other than the season breaks when Arturo and I would head down to hotels in Lima to “party” as Arturo put it with the tourists, I had been alone. The only women I met were the groupies, who didn’t interest me, or the relatives of my teammates when I would go back to their villages for long weekends. It all seemed pretty meaningless without really knowing them. It was easy to abstain. Soccer had been all that really mattered to me, and now that interest was gone.
“You could come with me. My father could get you a job at the embassy or maybe the UN.”
“Jimena, what have you done to my hair?” I kissed her forehead and ignored her suggestion. “How do you wash them? I shampooed but they are not clean.”
“You don’t like it?” She laughed into my shoulder. “I’m serious Serge. Come with me. I know you don’t want to play anymore. You have all the skills for diplomacy. People are always impressed that you went to MIT, and the men, because unfortunately it’s mostly men in diplomacy, will be impressed by your soccer. It’s not like America. Europeans love it as much as we do here in South America.”
“We would spend the rest of our lives together, happily ever after...” She didn’t take that as a joke because it was not meant as a joke.
I considered my options. Diplomacy, why not? She seemed very sure her father could pull the correct strings to get me a position at the embassy. I had no interest in a career in international relations, but what did that matter. I had never wanted to be a professional athlete either.
I looked at the top of her head as she rested on my chest. She would be the only reason to pursue such a ridiculous path, and she was well worth it. How many women could spend a month biking along a trail without lodging, going days without cleaning oneself?
She was a brilliant although not bright woman. Watching her mind blossom over her years at Yale had been a gift. It did not get better than Jimena Zarate. Her family was my family by this point.
I did not see myself marrying her anytime soon. She was only twenty-one and I was twenty-five, but I could easily see spending the rest of my life with her happily, challenged in everyway, always interested in every aspect of her being.
All the same, I knew something was missing. I didn’t like to ponder the mysterious and damaged Celena, but whatever I felt for her was missing and always had been. It was even missing with Marianne as painful as that was to consider. I wanted more even if it were just the powerhouse train wreck of emotions I experienced with Veronica.
“Jimena... it’s time for me to go home. I can’t keep living lives I don’t pick for myself.” I kissed her before she could respond and kept kissing her until her body completely relaxed under mine.
…
A little over forty-eight hours later, I sat on the bench outside of Logan Airport in Boston. My body was stiff from the long flight and six hour layover in Panama City that had saved me fifty dollars over a more direct flight. Carolina was driving in from New Hampshire where she was finishing up her Master’s Degree in British Literature and worked as an adjunct Professor.
I hadn’t seen her in three years, not since my family had come out for Copa America which Peru had hosted that year. We lost in the quarterfinals against Argentina. The coach had lost his mind behaving with the maturity of a teenage girl. That was Peru for you.
I stood up and paced around, stretching my back, aware that nobody recognized me. I felt pretty stupid as I looked down the road at the cars approaching not knowing what my sister was driving. I was impatient for her, missing her, wishing I had flown out to visit her over the years. I had never done that because I knew deep inside that going home even for as little as a week would have ended the hold Peru held for me.
I sat back down on the bench and placed the backpack I used on the biking tour onto my lap, and wished I had gone home and broken the spell. In spite of having been a big deal in a very small country for close to four years, I felt like a failure. I was twenty-five years old, no prospects, no goals, a living waste of the gift of MIT. Physics was my past. I never wanted to relive the obsession of the last few months of my senior year.
“Serge,” I heard my sister yell out from down the walkway. “What have you done Serge?” She looked at as if she were about to tumble over from laughter.
I ran to her and caught sight of myself in the reflection of the glass sliding doors. What I saw made me laugh too. I was still wearing my biking outfit of navy corduroy shorts and a t-shirt with the faded name of a Peruvian ska band. My dreadlocked hair stood up as if I had slept on it. A mess I was, but a mess who suddenly knew what he wanted.
Money. I wanted big money, money to go back to Peru. Money to go anywhere I wanted to go, anytime I wanted to go. Money so that I would never have to make another budget. Money so I could relax. America was not Peru. America did not have an easy lifestyle, but America did have money unlike anywhere else in the world. Money for the taking if you worked hard. I knew how to work hard. I spent years of my youth teaching other’s how to do hard work. A piece of fucking cake.
My look? My fashion state? My hair that looked like it belonged on a madman? It was a finite state. It was comfortable, and it was mine. I picked my sister up off her feet and swung her around, squeezing her in a tight hug.
“What have you done Serge?” Her voice was like music, her smile like sunshine. I picked up my heavy backpack swung it over my shoulder, and put my free arm around her.
“Should we stop by MIT? Visit Professor Tompkins?” she asked as we got into her Volvo. “We have to call Zelda. She was so excited that you were coming in for a visit.”
“No and no and no,” She glanced over at me questioningly as I sat down in the passenger seat and shut the door. “I’m not here for a visit. I’m home Carolina.”
Chapter Eleven
Four days later I stood in the driveway of my childhood home, staring at my car. It was no longer just a few years old but ancient looking. The back bumper was covered in AA stickers, every square inch, some even overlapping.
Another item to add to my budget. My mind had begun to organize on the flight home.
“Hi,” yelled out one of the most beautiful blonde women I had seen in years. “I’m Becky.” She held out her hand, and I shook it. “You must be Serge. Your Mom didn’t tell me you were coming home. Lucky for you Suzanne just moved out.” She laughed as sh
e got into the car that was once mine. “Going to a meeting. See you later. Bye.”
I added another line to my budget as I watched her drive down the canyon. Move out of my parent’s home immediately. I would not be tempted by the vulnerable and apparently stunning woman my mother helped guide through recovery. Some wounds I could not heal.
After about an hour of my mother hugging me, talking non-stop about every memory of my childhood, and how happy she was I was back while my father stood next to her with arms crossed and a frozen smile on his face, I managed to convince them that I was very tired from my travels. Finally I was allowed to go upstairs to my boyhood room.