But she doesn't understand. She, like the majority of women, are 99 percent jealous and 1 percent distrusting. Chance doesn't help, and Murphy's Law is the biggest enemy of the male party to any relationship.
To my misfortune, this morning she called my cell phone and I had left it at home (her fault, of course, because she kept me awake until late, and when I woke up I had to run to work and I forgot my phone and wallet), and Rosana, hearing the musical ringtone go on and on and on, picked it up.
I've had to sit through three astounding admonishments, the likes of which I've never experienced in my life. The first, when she called Lolo and tracked me down in my office and let me know that there was a woman in my house and why wouldn't I pick up the phone.
The second, when I finally got her to quiet down and told her it was the housekeeper, a Colombian girl, and she wanted to know why a young guy like me specifically sought out a probably sexy and young Colombian to "stick her in my house," etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. and it went on like this for fifteen minutes, with all the regional representatives waiting on me for a budget meeting. I told her, well, I lied, telling her Rosana is an older woman with seven kids in her care who came from Colombia to make an honorable living and I didn't have a choice but to hire her. She didn't believe me, of course. She made me promise that I was going to let her see my housekeeper to make sure that I hadn't lied. I explained that tomorrow wouldn't work because the girl, excuse me, I mean the lady, comes twice a week, and she stopped talking, dangerously. Then, she said I should call her in the afternoon when she had calmed down and hung up.
The third came when I got home. As I had left my phone there and I wasn't able to find Lolo, I didn't have Consuelo's number to call her at work. Result: When I got home that evening and was able to grab my phone, it was too late, and she hadn't calmed down. She was angry again, and I had to endure thirty-eight minutes of her talking. Fortunately, we've decided to postpone our dinner to another day. Tomorrow. Tomorrow don't stand me up. I'm warning you.
Could things get worse? This definitely doesn't happen in elephant seal colonies.
Published by Felix at 12:29 a.m. * Post a comment
Wednesday, October 17
Squeaky clean
Luckily, Consuelo seems to have no trouble getting over her anger. We went out. Call, dinner, and sex once more at my place. When I saw her, I knew she had forgotten all about my housekeeper. Then, we went out to eat a light dinner. Caesar salad, mustard-glazed steak, dessert and coffee. Can I interest you in any cocktails? No, thank you. We're in a hurry. Yes, we were: Immediately when she came into my apartment, she tested the level of cleanliness by running her finger along the television screen. Squeaky clean.
What followed was our reconciliation, even though she never made any reference at all to our tiff yesterday. Another round of world-class sex, yes (though I'm going to skip over the details because this diary began as a way to unburden myself of my troubles, not to record my exploits, which happens to be my business, no one else's), and she was so sweet, so smiley, so nice. Well then, if I keep going to bed this late I'm going to have to ask for a special schedule at work.
Published by Felix at 2:24 p.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, October 18
The memory of elephants
Naturally, Consuelo hasn't forgotten. Women never forget, like elephants (the terrestrial kind). She went to my apartment!
Without telling me, she went in the morning, assuming the housekeeper would be there (a woman's instinct) because a Tuesday-and-Thursday schedule was more logical than any other one...
I'm in your apartment. How? What? How did you...? Oh, your housekeeper let me in.
And that's when the world came crashing down on top of me. I froze up, the typical human response to seeing a lion that is going to eat you, "human" because other animals don't freeze up—they run like crazy. But I wasn't able to run away. I remained rigid with the phone to my ear, holding my breath. Sorry, but it's just... I don't know what she said. She made up a stupid, absurd excuse to justify the unjustifiable: that she had gone to my house knowing I wouldn't be there to look for who knows what. To size up my housekeeper, of course! I'm leaving. You were right. This older woman who cleans your house is very nice and friendly, and it seems she does good work.
I couldn't have heard that right. Consuelo had seen Rosana as an older woman. Magic? Mirage? Witchcraft from the tribes of... What tribes are there in Colombia? Well, it turns out that yes, she was an older woman.
Then, I improvised.
I asked her to pass the phone to my housekeeper with some ridiculous excuse like wanting to ask her to clean the bathroom. Consuelo, who I guessed was smiling on the other end of the line, obliged and passed the phone to "my housekeeper." An older woman's voice answered. I swallowed. I was saved, but who was this woman?
Don't worry, sir. I'll clean it, she said in a Latin American accent, and then added, despite my attempts to hang up, My daughter Rosana hopes you forgive her. Today, she couldn't come because she went to a model casting to see if she gets recruited. And then, to add insult to injury, I heard her clarify to Consuelo, My daughter Rosana is tall and beautiful. I always say she could work as an actress or a model, but the poor girl has only been able to find work cleaning Mr. Felix's apartment...
As things stand, Consuelo hasn't called me or answered my calls, and given how late it is now, I don't think she will.
Published by Felix at 1:12 a.m. * Post a comment
Friday, October 19
Emergency bonbons
Yes, things are fixed. There was a date, dinner and all the rest. Lolo tried to help me with a couple pieces of "his" advice, but his secretary caught him talking to me and cut him off cold. She told me I shouldn't pay attention to him as she picked up the phone, and then she ordered some flowers and bonbons, asked me for Consuelo's address, I said her work one, she wrote on a piece of paper for me the address of a restaurant that she described as "cute," and here I am once again.
Consuelo has been sleeping like an angel for a while. She acted like an angel all night! I wanted to give her an explanation about the Colombian girl, but it seems she already had a conversation with her mother and cleared it up. She limited herself to accepting the flowers and telling me that she didn't expect them, that yes, I should feel guilty and all that, but she said it with such a syrupy voice that I almost died of fright. The restaurant worked too, so between courses I excused myself to the bathroom to call Lolo. I'll trade you secretaries, I told him, but the bastard said no, that she's the only woman in this world who has him on a tight leash and if he had anyone more docile he wouldn't get any work done.
Now I'm going back to bed, lest Consuelo has a nightmare about the spider webs in my apartment and I'm not there to feed her the emergency bonbons in my nightstand.
Published by Felix at 1:05 a.m. * Post a comment
Tuesday, October 23
Jealousy
I can't shake Lolo. He doesn't do anything but ask me for details. I tried to explain to him that I "went out" with Consuelo, that this isn't like one of his conquests, another notch in my bedpost, but the bad thing is that she is one of his conquests. So he doesn't believe me. He knows how crazy Consuelo gets when she drinks and he knows who knows how many more things about her that I'd prefer not to know myself. So he doesn't believe me.
But he became serious when I told him no once again. He put his hand on my shoulder and asked me if I was falling in love (not in those words, but I don't plan to repeat them) and I responded shakily that I wasn't.
Published by Felix at 12:20 a.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, October 25
I need a vacation
Consuelo has been weird lately, saying that she's getting bored, that she needs a change of pace, and talking about her friends' plans and trips, moments in the conversation when I always go inside myself because, honestly, that many words per second makes me zone out so much that it's worthy of study.
But las
t night, while I was dozing next to her in bed, I figured out what she wanted. Actually, she told me because I hadn't been able to figure it out. Consuelo wants us to take a trip together. There's nothing that appeals to me more than disappearing, but we've only been dating for three weeks...and I heard her say this and I began to do the math. To what extent was she going to make me buy two tickets for a flight with adjacent seats?
I was in a daze thinking about this, dead tired, and Consuelo took the opportunity to scold me. She didn't say why, if it was for not listening to her or for not paying attention to her needs (whatever those may be) or just because. A scolding like that can only mean that a woman is being serious.
And that left me shrouded in worries of all sorts.
She kept repeating that she was bored, but I don't know why. She doesn't have time! She has work, her house (a small four-hundred-square-foot apartment with five rooms, to which she hardly ever invites me over), she has her aerobics at the gym, her tai-chi on Tuesdays and Thursdays, her friends and me, who never tells her no. Despite everything, I was understanding and promised her that we would go on a trip to some exotic locale. This had a soothing effect on our relationship: Not only did it calm her restlessness, but also made her sweet and purring like a kitten again. She jumped on top of me, and we spent the next hour between wild thrusts and sweet nothings in my ear. Completely exhausting.
That was last night. This afternoon, I answered my phone and she assaulted me with a distraught It's unforgiveable. You promised me a trip and I could die waiting. When I counted that it hadn't even been eighteen hours since we spoke, I didn't know what to say. Consuelo pretended to despair, and I pointed out emphatically that I only had a couple days left of vacation, but women (oh, women) have a unique mathematical brain: She calculated how many remained based on a previous conversation we had had, reminded me that next week is a long holiday weekend and said there wasn't an excuse. I promised her that we could go anywhere, that it would be the best week of her life and that she could pick where we went, thinking, as all men think, that she would take as long to choose the perfect destination as picking which purse goes best with a dress, but Consuelo must have been planning the trip for a while because she responded that we were going to an exotic beach to swim in crystal clear water and drink cocktails under palm trees. With some half-naked indigenous woman as our waitress, I shot back, trying to shake the idea from her head, but she pretended not to hear me. She blew me a kiss over the phone and hung up.
At dinner time she burst into my apartment loaded with brochures for vacations on resort beaches in Central and South America. All-inclusive. It doesn't look like there's a way out of this.
Published by Felix at 12:12 a.m. * Post a comment
Friday, October 26
Two tickets to paradise
Neither Lolo nor Juan Carlos nor Google has found a way to free me from this damn trip that Consuelo wants us to plan. I explained to them that it's not only the trip. To travel ten or twelve hours in a plane just to lie on a beach, given the amount of beaches in Spain, seems absurd to me, but it's not that. It's the commitment embodied in the photos that will surely be taken. The commitment.
Then the girl from the mailroom came in to grab a coffee and as if she were the teacher at the end of recess, our clique broke up. I was going to go to my office, crestfallen, but the girl grabbed my arm and took me aside. Buy the tickets, she said. Don't let her choose. Only she knows what she wants, I protested. What she wants is to go somewhere with you. Buy the tickets and surprise her.
I would have preferred to go to the travel agency with Consuelo to avoid her complaining about my choice, but I decided to listen to the girl from the mailroom. I called Diana at the agency, who always helps me in such a friendly and concrete way, and I asked her to search for two tickets to any (a-n-y) destination in the Caribbean for the long holiday weekend next week. Afterward, I left the office, walked into a candy shop and bought a box of chocolates for the girl from the mailroom. If a woman like her were in control of my fate, it'd be another story altogether.
She wasn't there, but I left the box of chocolates and a big thank you note in her internal mailbox. Then, I came home to shower. I'm meeting Consuelo at nine at that cute restaurant where we always make up. I have the tickets in hand. Let's see how she reacts.
Published by Felix at 8:26 p.m. * Post a comment
Saturday, October 27
Smooth as silk
Consuelo is more affectionate and obliging than ever since she saw the plane tickets. I don't know how to handle it. I’ll ask Rosana to iron every single one of my summer clothes and I‘ll close my eyes.
I also close my eyes when Consuelo calls me. To visualize my apartment, hell, because lately I only have nightmares of beaches in paradise where a matchmaking priest in swim trunks walks around looking for a couple and that couple is Consuelo and I.
She called me a little while ago. She said she bought a million things for the trip, even though at the end of October it's really hard to find bikinis, and that we have to spend the weekend shopping. I can't think of a better plan than spending it with her. I mean.
Published by Felix at 12:04 a.m. * Post a comment
Tuesday, October 30
The Caribbean, again
We leave tomorrow afternoon. Destination: the Caribbean. Why does every woman take me to the Caribbean? Yes, I know that I could have bought a trip to the Norwegian fjords, but didn't she spend an entire week talking to me about her friends' trips, about her friends' photos, about her stupid annoying friends? Yes, it had to be the Caribbean. Luckily, the woman at the travel agency, Diana, understood my need to find a destination that didn't look anything like Punta Cana. I think first going with Laura and then going by myself is enough closure. I don't even remember the name of the place we're going, but I don't care. It's the first time that I'm not worried about crushing my clothes because I don't know how to pack a suitcase properly. Anything for Consuelo.
Published by Felix at 12:20 a.m. * Post a comment
Tuesday, November 6
Vacation in paradise
With the time change, we came back early Sunday morning and I still haven't caught my breath. Now I know what Consuelo calls "a vacation."
I was never really into relaxing vacations. If I like travelling abroad, it's to discover new places. I usually traipse around for miles and miles, visiting strange alcoves, stores, lookouts, typical restaurants, jazz clubs, places where historical figures used to spend time or places that are simply interesting...
But Consuelo had to take me to the Caribbean.
In the end, staying positive, I will say that this vacation taught me what it means to sprawl out for twenty-four hours a day in a hammock, which for how cushy it looks, becomes uncomfortable after a while. Another detail that stuck with me is that in Caribbean countries, you can't go for a stroll wherever you feel like it, even if the hotel has an incredible lawn and a few gardens where you would think you're supposed to go for a stroll. No. Those damn gardens from hell are full of watchdog geese. Yes, geese like German Shepherds, and more ferocious if that's possible.
By the way, it's easy to confuse the infirmaries in these hotels with the massage parlors, if they're not the same place, because eventually a girl in a white robe comes to cure you of your ills as if they care, and the only thing she manages to do is make your girlfriend pull a face that's longer than a Peter Jackson film.
Important note: To everyone who thinks it's a pain in the ass getting lost in the T4 terminal at the Madrid airport, I have to suggest that they board a plane and look out the window as it's landing at a Venezuelan airport. It's a pair of huts! My hair stands on end thinking how advanced the civilization in T4 is by comparison.
It was hard for us to come back. Consuelo seems to have been born for the all-inclusive life. She was quiet the entire way back (twelve hours with the wind in our favor) and she didn't recover until I promised her that we'd go on another trip soon. From that moment o
n, everything has been going smoothly again.
In the end, even if I still haven't been able to understand women, I've spent enough time with Consuelo to be able to confirm that our...well, whatever’s going on between us does exist.
Published by Felix at 1:26 a.m. * Post a comment
Wednesday, November 7
Modern jazz
Consuelo ruined dinner. I think there's something going on.
She started fawning over me for having made dinner. I didn't want to contradict her by pointing out that the Italian restaurant had actually delivered it, but she knows that my cooking always ends up burned, so much so that I'm starting to get suspicious. Then, when she had me disarmed with so much false flattery, she began to criticize my taste in music. She made me turn off the jazz that was playing. I don't like this modern music you play, she told me, and I silenced old Thelonious Monk, who's been dead for twenty-five years, and started listening to her.
After dessert, she sat down on the sofa and deemed it "not very clean." She said that. Maybe you should switch housekeepers. Here we go again, I thought, but it stayed there, in my mind. I think she was letting comments loose like scattershot, hoping her message, which to me seems obtuse and indecipherable, would get through to my brain and reveal her secret feminine intentions.
In the end, we made love, or more accurately, she made love to me (I was distracted contemplating what she'd said) like nothing had happened. Well, like how she usually does it when she's had less than three drinks, except for one detail—when I thought we were getting to the best part I heard her say that my bedroom seemed a little cold with the empty walls, and that she would hang some painting or another here and there. If I don't mind.
Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man Page 11