‘Buying? Yes, good, good. Well, come in, come in, everything’s inside. Just don’t touch too many things you don’t plan on buying. They might look like old scraps to you but some of us have to live on them.’
‘Right, thanks.’
Tomás walks past the counter and he can hear Abdul starting to laugh to himself again.
Inside the hut there are thick black wooden rosaries hanging from the ceiling. There are more VHS tapes on shelves and bicycle wheels and seats under them. There are old suits and dresses on hangers, figurines of horses made of leather, old powdered milk pots with vintage pictures of vintage people in vintage seagull haircuts. Then, on one corner, there are machines Tomás can’t recognise, like oversized cassette decks, with two circular belted motors but nothing in them, stacked up on one another. Some of them are about to touch the ceiling. There are also old skis and ski boots and poles leaning on them. Next to them are single bricks with single price tags and on top of the pile there are tea mugs and coffee cups.
Across the room, Tomás sees Lucas and Jesús. Lucas is brushing the floor with a wooden broom and Jesús is playing with one of the hanging rosaries, twisting it, letting go, and watching it spin.
Tomás walks to the coffee cups and checks the price under one with a picture of a naked woman.
‘That’s a nice cup.’
Tomás looks behind and there’s a girl holding a typewriter. She’s wearing a short summer dress with faded flowers on it. The dress is slightly too large for her.
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I collect them.’
‘You collect cups? Are you having a quarter-life crisis or something?’ she asks, laughing.
‘Never thought about it,’ he says, putting the coffee cup back in its place.
‘Well, hope you find more cups,’ she says.
‘Bye,’ he says, and she turns and leaves with the typewriter and Tomás thinks that he should go out more often to these kinds of places. No, no more parties. No more clubs and booze (as if!). But no… He should go out to places where he can meet people like him. Now, he’s not too sure what this means (and that doesn’t matter), but what he does know is that he should join a reading or pottery club where bored and lonely people go to pretend they too can be passionate without love because there, the women he’d meet would probably hate men and he’d show them that he’s different, that he’s better, or at least just like them. Or he should frequent second hand shops because people there love the old and the broken and they buy typewriters in summer dresses and talk to strangers since everyone must notice, should notice them, because broken things should never break in silence and…
‘Hey, Tomás, look! Maybe you could use this?’
Tomás walks up to Lucas and he shows him a large square of ridged tin. He shakes it and it sounds like cardboard.
‘What for?’
‘For your ceiling, man.’
‘Oh, sure. I’ll come and pick it up later.’
‘I’ll take it to your place after I’m done here.’
‘OK.’
‘I told you it was worth having a look.’
‘Yeah.’ Tomás looks over behind where Jesús is standing. There’s a red door with a padlock on it. ‘You mind if I use the toilet?’ he asks.
‘That’s not a toilet.’
‘What is it?’
Lucas shrugs and Jesús stops spinning rosaries.
‘No one knows. We’re not allowed to go in there,’ he says.
‘That’s alright… Well, thanks for telling me about this place and the cover for the ceiling and all that.’
‘No problem.’
‘Before I forget…’ Tomás starts.
‘What is it?’
‘Do you by any chance sell old kitchens?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something with gas hobs, at least four of them.’
‘Oh, we had a few some time ago in the storage at the back. I’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks.’
‘See you back at home.’
‘See you.’
Tomás gets the coffee cup with the naked girl and takes it to the counter where Abdul’s sitting and smoking a pipe.
‘I’ll take this, please,’ Tomás starts, searching his pockets for money.
‘Are you crazy? That’s some damn ugly cup you got there,’ Abdul says, raising his eyebrows.
‘Well, I collect them.’
‘Well, not this one you won’t.’
Tomás puts the cup down on the counter with a sigh. They look at each other in silence for a few seconds until Abdul starts laughing real loud.
‘Oh, don’t be like that, man, I’m just fucking with you. Take it, it’s a gift,’ he says, and Tomás smiles and takes it back. But then Abdul’s laughter disappears and he says, ‘That’s right, take it… you fucking pervert.’
Tomás comes out of the market and the sounds of the city come back. All the sirens, all the pedestrian crossing beeps, all the high heels against the pavement. He heads down to the bus stop. There’s a homeless woman with a child on the steps of a bank and a small boy’s playing a pan flute behind a baseball cap with coins in it. It starts to rain again and people use their briefcases and handbags as umbrellas. They all do it at the same time, like some coordinated dance they don’t know they’re a part of. Tomás decides to go to a Fuente de Soda because it’s only six in the afternoon and that’s still too early to start working.
He goes into a Fuente called Taca-Taca and sits by the window. The saltshaker is a Playmobile doll with holes on its head and Tomás laughs when he sees it. Is he really just having a quarter-life crisis? And worse even, is it visible that he is? He smiles at the saltshaker, the hollow doll, but he knows that no matter how much he laughs at it, some things just aren’t funny. Is this the turning point to adulthood, to getting old, when a saltshaker makes a joke worth laughing at just because a doll is not meant to be a saltshaker? But no, surely quarter-life crises are an invention, a farce, a story for the weak who can’t wait for a mid-life crisis because people keep living longer, and while blaming others for your misfortunes feels great, what is better still is to have no one to blame. If you’re a victim of nothing, then you don’t have to hate anyone, fight anything. It keeps you happy. Happy . And so, no, Tomás isn’t having a quarter-life crisis, because he thinks he could have done things very differently with Eva, and so he must blame himself and he must change. Also, he doesn’t want to travel the world, or quit his job to be a barista in an indie café, or get a motorcycle license, or take some other douchy exit. He would, however, like to join Yiyo’s band again because that… But he has way too much work. Maybe after the game’s done he can…
A short guy with thick glasses and a hat that says ‘The King of Chicken’ comes up to him with a notepad. He’s chewing on gum with his mouth open.
‘What would you like, sir?’
‘What do you have to drink? I just wanted to get away from the rain really.’
‘Well, you still have to buy something, sir.’
‘I know, that’s what I was… Do you have coffee?’
‘Yes, we do other drinks too, sir. Want to see the menu, sir?’
‘Just coffee, thanks. What coffees have you got?’
‘We got coffee, sir. Just coffee.’
‘Alright, that then.’
‘Big or small, sir?’
‘Medium, please.’
‘We don’t have that, sir,’ the guy says with a sigh. He makes a chewing gum balloon.
‘Small, please.’
The balloon pops.
‘OK, sir.’
‘Oh, can I pay by card?’
‘No, sir, that’s not possible. Cash only.’
‘Really?’
‘I wouldn’t tell you otherwise if it wasn’t, sir. Not for a small coffee.’
‘How about a large one then?’
‘That could work, I guess.’
‘Thanks.’
Tomás looks at people getting in
and out of buses trying to avoid the rain. From inside, the rain and the dark look beautiful together. Even the crappy cumbia on the speakers above his table sounds a lot better just because it’s dark on the other side of the glass.
When he got home with Eva’s business card the day they met, he thought about calling her straight away. But he called Yiyo before instead because Yiyo is great with women. At least, even though he’s always been single, he’s good to them for a night. In high school he lost his virginity when they were still fourteen to a much older girl. Yiyo told him not to call Eva until he had something to say to her, something exciting, something he’d done in the week. Anything to avoid trivialities and formalities because ‘attraction,’ he said, ‘is above all about the illusion that people can be anything other than trivial. You can be trivial later,’ he said, ‘because when you’re old you’ll have no choice.’ Tomás still doesn’t understand what he meant by this, but he’d understood the part about not calling Eva that same day and that he must lie to women at first, until he’s old and unable to keep up with the lies.
And maybe that’s what happened. Maybe that’s what a quarter-life crisis is. It’s about not being able to hide. It’s about visibility. That girl at the shop, Fran, Jaime… Can everyone now see how trivial he knows his own life to be?
The waiter comes with a mug the size of a cereal bowl filled with boiling water, and he puts a tin of Nescafé on the side with a small teaspoon. Tomás sighs and puts in five spoons of coffee powder and stirs. He can’t remember when he called Eva or what he said, but it was probably something about how happy he was writing stories at the time, and how all his friends, whom he would have named by their first names to increase the sense of familiarity, organised a birthday party for him and all the crazy things that happened there, like people in bathtubs together drinking champagne and… Being young in Santiago. He’s sure he used the word ‘crazy’ for things that weren’t crazy at all. But normality changed over time. And just like the ease he had in making jokes out of anything and anyone has been reduced to overthinking and shameful silences, so too has the way he had once felt alive by drinking champagne in bathtubs. Nothing, nothing is crazy, and nothing ever was. But whatever it was he said, they met shortly after in a café in Bellavista, and then climbed the San Cristóbal Hill on the cable cars. The city looked so small, tiny specks of light, and she said she was happy right then and there and he agreed. When she asked him if he had a girlfriend he remembered Yiyo’s advice about lying to women and said that he didn’t, and she kissed him in the cable car on their way back to the city. It was late and empty.
He drinks his coffee while looking out the window and notices that the girl with the typewriter is outside. She sees him. She smiles and comes into the Fuente de Soda.
‘The usual?’ the waiter asks her.
‘No, thanks, I don’t want anything. I’m just getting away from the rain,’ she says, catching her breath.
‘Well, stay for as long as you need to,’ the waiter says with a smile.
‘Thanks,’ she says. She comes over and sits facing Tomás, her shoulders wet with rain and her summer dress with darkened flowers where raindrops have landed. She takes out a napkin from a wooden cone in the centre of the table and dries the typewriter.
‘Cool typewriter,’ he says.
‘I know, right?’ she answers without even looking at him.
‘Yeah.’
She puts the typewriter to one side and looks through the window behind her. For a moment everything’s just rain and they can only see distorted wet lights and the colours of the cars and buses and houses moving into and away from one another, like the mosaics of a kaleidoscope.
‘So,’ she turns, ‘did you buy the mug?’
He shows it to her. ‘Yup.’
‘God, that’s ugly.’
‘Most collector items are.’
‘Not this typewriter.’
‘No, I guess not… So, what are you going to do with it?’
‘What do you mean? It only does one thing.’
‘I know, I know. I meant, what are you going to write with it?’
‘We’ll see, I’m not sure yet.’
‘I know how that feels.’
She turns to face the window again and he finishes his coffee. Neither of them says a thing. Tomás understands that the silence is normal because strangers never have anything to say to each other. He should take the time and effort to elaborate on stories from simple observations: the rain, how once he was so wet the guards at the university wouldn’t let him go inside to work, the lights of the city, how from space they look brighter than stars. Something. With Eva it had been too easy and maybe that’s what he misses, the way she made effort seem so trivial, a thing for old and miserable people.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks her.
She turns to look at him with a smile.
‘Does it matter?’ she asks him back, and he doesn’t know if it does matter.
‘What do you mean? You’re asking me if names matter?’
‘No, does my name matter to you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well then, it doesn’t.’
Tomás gets up to pay and the girl leans towards him.
‘What’s that?’
‘A windmill, they sell them at the park.’
‘Can I have it?’
He gives her the windmill and she blows on it and it makes the sound of rain.
‘Good luck with your writing,’ he tells her.
‘Thanks.’
Outside, he looks up at the rain. He’s the only one in the street and he walks to the bus stop because when it’s raining, when Santiago is dark and empty, when there are no birds or mountains or voices or anything at all that you could miss, then it’s worth going home over ground. Trivial. The city makes everyone so trivial, just like rain, like buses, like age, like names.
He gets in the bus and smiles because all he can see are spots of light growing and shrinking, breathing, and he hopes that, even if his whole fucking cream-coloured flat gets flooded with its own interior waterfall, it will continue to rain through this crazy trivial night.
10
Items List
So forget about the whole killing yourself and jumping off the balcony thing. You have a 9–5 job and you’ve had it for a while now. It doesn’t pay much but it covers your mortgage, your Sky TV Sports Pack subscription, the electric, gas and water bills and it even lets you save a little because you’re a smart shopper, and you buy your groceries in bulk so that your freezer is full at all times. Why in hell would you want to die with a life like this? And so you tell your flatmate, the asshole who’s always right, that you’re taking a holiday to travel the world instead of committing suicide. And he tells you that you won’t, that you’re not the kind of person to just pick up your things and go. He reminds you that you’ve barely even left the flat this month unless it was to go to work. But now you’re pissed off. You don’t know if you’re pissed off at the fact that your flatmate doesn’t believe in a version of you that you like better, or the fact that you care so much about his approval, or that he attacked you after a week that you thought had been good, normal good (you even applied for a promotion!), but now seems like wasted time. So you really search some way in which to prove him wrong for once, and he reminds you that you didn’t jump, just like he had predicted, and that this time it won’t be any… I’ll quit my job, you say. I’ll quit it altogether. You’ve had the means to do it for a year or so and you will travel the world, travel light, so that whenever you feel hungry or get stung by some dangerous mosquito, your lack of preparation will only make you smile as you remember the asshole who never believed in you. And then he tells you again. He just doesn’t think that you’re the kind of… Fuck it, you pick up the phone but he takes it from you and hangs it up. He tells you people at work will need you at first and you’ll feel free, freer than you’ve ever felt, whenever they call you up to reconsider. But then, the
calls will stop, and you’ll be at the top of Machu Picchu during low season, you won’t even meet any tourists, and they’ll already have a replacement for the job you now really want back, the life you’ll really want back, in this flat, with him on your side. You see, he adds with a smile, the same fucking smile, everyone is replaceable, but there’s no one out there exactly like you. And that kills you. But you want this guy dead. You should have jumped. He should jump instead. And you pick up the phone to call the office and you tell them you’ll be a little late for the 9am presentation that you so well prepared.
Tomás thinks for a moment about quitting his job and travelling but stops the instant he crosses the threshold to the office building. He puts his hood on to walk past Anna and the secretaries. He walks fast and when he gets to his office door he notices the keyhole has been replaced by an electronic coded lock with two rows of numbers and some letters. He knocks but Jaime doesn’t answer. He has no idea what the code is. He tries 000 in case but the doorknob won’t move, and so he walks up to Anna’s counter, hood still on, and he leans sideways on it, and he asks in a low voice, a bit like Batman does in the movies…
‘What’s the code for the doors?’
Anna doesn’t look at him and keeps tidying piles of paper on her desk.
‘It’s with the marking you still haven’t done,’ she says with a sigh.
Tomás takes his hood off. ‘It is done now, but I left it inside,’ he says.
‘Really?’ Anna stops tidying papers and smiles back at him.
‘Really,’ he says trying to maintain the smile.
‘Well, I never thought you’d say that. The world might actually end tonight.’
‘So what’s the code?’
‘Four zeros.’
‘Oh.’
‘Bring them over as soon as possible, OK?’
‘Will do.’
Tomás gets to his office, presses the four zeros and opens the door. He must finish something by the end of the week or Jaime won’t have anything to start. And so he sits down and looks out the window but there are no Blue Peace people out with their banners today, and it must be because it’s getting hotter and they’re feeling defeated by global warming; by the way they couldn’t stop anything from changing with their volcano signs and cheap megaphones.
We Are the End Page 15