We can’t go to a hotel with a dog. That was my first thought. Less still with that dog. Years and years of genetic manipulation had edged it toward what it was today: a jaw of a dog, rough, tough, a canine cudgel of lethal chomps, a Tasmanian devil with a huge square head. The muzzle canceled its very essence. It was a handcuffed Tyson. Every now and then it gave me a glance.
Who would want a dog like that? What emotional vacuum was a monster like this supposed to fill, in a home? Was it a metaphor for something? For what? What was it an extension of ? Double animal, nagual—whose? Why the fuck was this chick bringing me her boyfriend transformed into a dog, leaving me to tend to him? Or was the dog watching me? I poured beer into the two glasses. And Guerra showed up. She was gorgeous, my God.
“You’re thinner, Pereyra,” she said as she sat down.
“You’re different, too. Didn’t you change your hair?”
“I got rid of my flex.”
“Your what? Your bangs?”
“We call it a flex here.”
“It looks good on you. You’re more sort of …”
“More what?”
“Less of a kid.”
“You mean it makes me look older?”
“No, it makes you look like a woman. Not a little girl. It looks great.” We looked at each other for a moment in silence, smiling.
“Want to pass me Cuco?” she said.
“Cuco’s its name?
“Yep. He’s a bit of a monster, isn’t he?”
“A bit … He won’t run off ?”
“No, but tie him to the chair just in case.”
I got up and tied the leash around the chair leg. “There we go. Does he bite?”
“No, he’s very easygoing. But for a couple of years now these kinds of dogs, fighting dogs, have been required to wear muzzles in public.”
“Such an organized country, Uruguay. Is he your boyfriend’s dog?”
“Yeah, but no.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, the dog is his, but no, he’s not my boyfriend anymore.” (I’m not a Peronist, but sometimes you’ve just got to shout, at the top of your lungs, silently of course, keeping your poker face: Long live Perón!)
“So what are you doing with the dog?”
“A friend is going to take care of him, until he gets back from a tour.”
The waiter arrived. He asked Guerra what she wanted to eat.
“What are you having?” she asked me.
“I’ll have that lamb with the potatoes and the boñatas. What was the word? They’re sweet potatoes, right?”
“Boñato,” she corrected me. Lots of little things had different names in Uruguay.
“That,” I said.
“I’ll have the same,” said Guerra.
The waiter went back inside to put in our order. I raised my glass.
“It’s good to see you, Guerra.”
“Same, Pereyra.” We clinked our glasses.
For a moment I thought: Who is this person? She was like a total stranger. It was hard to match her to my months-long delirium. I don’t mean she wasn’t good-looking—in fact, in those jeans and that t-shirt, which was kind of open in the back, she was hot as hell—but the ghost of Guerra that had been with me all that time was so powerful that I found it strange that this was really her, here, before my very eyes.
“What happened with your boyfriend?”
“The latest Uruguayan epidemic happened.”
“What?”
“The worst part is that it was my idea. They raised our rent by quite a bit at his place, so I asked my friend Rocío—the one with the publishing house, remember, from Valizas?”
“Yeah …”
“I asked her if she wanted to rent a place with us because she’d been looking for something.”
“Mmmm … What had she been looking for, exactly? This can’t end well.”
“Wait. We each paid a third of the rent. Things were going well: we cooked together, we took turns cleaning, plus she’d occasionally leave us alone because she went to her mom’s quite often … The ideal situation.”
“Did she and your boyfriend get along?”
“No. César said he couldn’t stand her.”
(First time I’d heard her boyfriend’s name: César. I looked at the dog. He’d fallen asleep under the table.)
“She would hole up in her room, she wasn’t one to be out with us having tea or watching television. She’d grab these cookies, take a couple, then go back to her room with her yerba mate to read.”
“The perfect roommate,” I said.
“The perfect bitch. Little miss prim and proper who couldn’t get a boyfriend, didn’t want to go dancing or anything else. One day I’m airing out her room a little, and I start sweeping, my plan was to freshen her sheets, and that’s when I saw it: a short gray hair. Rocío doesn’t have short gray hair. César does.”
“That’s horrible,” I said.
“Horrrrrrible. I was stunned, but then I started putting the pieces together, and I worked out the whole thing: all the times they’d been alone together when I hadn’t been there, the way César would put off leaving the house so I’d go out first, even the seemingly bad vibes between them took on this new meaning—it was awkwardness!”
“That made it seem like they didn’t like each other.”
“Yeah!”
“But wait,” I said, “because … and sorry for saying this: I didn’t see your friend in that much detail, but it’s not like she’s some irresistible goddess.”
“She’s not at all. She’s ugly! That’s exactly what I screamed at César. I still can’t get my head around it. Obviously I wouldn’t have put some bombshell in my house to get my boyfriend’s dick hard. Rocío was my friend, low profile, no curves, no tits at all, super quiet, practically a spinster, this little bookworm … The problem is you guys will hump anything that moves.”
“Don’t lump me in with him.”
“Men don’t fuck their sisters because their sisters won’t let them, otherwise they would. Mothers, too.”
“Okay … Let’s get back to this man in particular. Did you confront him?”
“First I wanted to be sure.”
“What did you do?”
“I recorded them.”
“No. Seriously? How?”
“One Saturday morning, Rocío was taking a shower, and I left my cell phone under her bed, recording. César was listening to music in our room. I told him I was heading into the city center for a bit for a meeting about the movie.”
“What movie?”
“I’m working on a movie.”
“That’s so great.”
“I agree, very salty.”
“You’re acting?”
“No, I’m in production. But wait, I’ll tell you about that after. The point is I left. I went back at noon, waited for Rocío to go to her mom’s place and got out my cell.”
“It was there, they hadn’t found it?”
“No, I’d put it on silent: it keeps recording, but it’s basically off. I put in my headphones and told César I was going to take Cuco for a walk.”
Guerra fell silent.
“And?”
She didn’t say anything, just made a little movement with her head, like a mini no. Suddenly she spoke, her voice cracking. I’m terrified of women crying. I thought: How did I get mixed up in this Venezuelan soap opera? How do I come back from this? What does the manual say for cases like these?
How do you seduce a girl who’s crying and has her boyfriend’s dog? That’s my first reaction when a woman cries, my brain flees as far as possible, to the very bottom of my selfishness, to the other end of grief and love, I plan out my escape, and only then do I start to return, little by little, I become soothing, perhaps because the crying finally has its intended effect on me.
“I never thought … I swear, I never thought,” Guerra said with tears in her eyes. Her face sort of melted. “He said the same things to her that he said into my ear when we were in bed!”
“What things?”
“No, I’m not going to tell you, it’s very intimate, but he said identical things to her.”
“That’s so awful, Guerra. It isn’t good to have that much information. You shouldn’t have recorded them.”
“But they would have denied it to my face. And I wanted to know the truth.”
“Sometimes the truth is too much.”
“No, I prefer it this way. This way, you know what? I’ll never see the son of a bitch again.”
“Where are you living?”
“With my dad.”
“Didn’t you not get along with your dad?”
“I still don’t, but we never even see each other.”
Suddenly I felt very affectionate toward her and wanted to protect her. I wanted to hold her. But there was the table in between us. I seized her hand between the glasses, like a tender arm-wrestling match, I kissed her fist.
“You’re going to be okay,” I told her.
She nodded. She used her hands to dry her tears. I handed her a packet of tissues, and she blew her beautiful nose.
“Let’s order whiskey,” she said.
They brought us the lamb, and I ordered two J&Bs on the rocks.
“How are you?” she asked me.
“I’m fine. But finish the story. What did you do after that?”
“Oh my god, what I did after that was pretty outrageous. I overdid it a little, but it’s done now. I went back and said nothing, I just went to sleep. That night some kiddies were coming over. They started showing up at eight. More and more of them … so I waited. Once everyone was there, I told them I was going to put some music on, and on the big speakers I put on the audio of them having sex right at the worst moment, when she was screaming ‘Fuck me harder, fuck me harder.’ ”
“Are you serious? What about the kids?”
“What kids?”
“The kiddies who were there.”
“No, ‘kiddies’ means ‘friends’ in Uruguay. People my age.”
“Ah! Still. That’s crazy.”
“I know, but it was worth it. Their faces! You could even hear him spanking her. Nobody could figure out what was going on. Some of them were laughing. César went up to the speakers, disconnected my phone and threw it against the wall. He didn’t even look at me, he just went to the door and as he was leaving I said: ‘Yeah, get the fuck out of here. And you may as well get out, too,’ I said to Rocío. She burst into tears. Our friends had figured it out by then, but they didn’t know who to console. I was standing there, waiting for her to leave, when suddenly she says: ‘We were going to tell you tomorrow: I’m pregnant.’ ”
“What?!”
“Exactly what you heard,” said Guerra. “The snake is pregnant.”
They brought us our whiskeys, and we downed them quickly. That pregnancy changed everything. I didn’t know what to say to her. We started eating.
“Were you able to take care of your errands?” she asked me.
“Yeah, that’s done.”
“Good,” said Guerra.
I don’t know if it was because I was very hungry or what, but that lamb was one of the most delicious dishes I’ve had in my whole life. It was prepared with rosemary, the potatoes and sweet potatoes cut kind of big, these crispy wedges. I sat back in my chair, relaxed. Under the awning there was a patio light—Borges had been right. I watched Guerra eat. It felt like my odds had improved. Maybe she wanted revenge sex, to restore her self-esteem. But I needed to be careful not to overplay my role as a shoulder to cry on, since I could get sucked down into a whirlpool. The biggest problem was still the dog. I ordered two more whiskeys.
I pulled up the picture I’d taken from the window of the hotel room.
“Look, Guerra,” I said and handed her my phone. She put down her knife and fork and took it.
“The Palacio Salvo?”
“Yeah, I just took that photo in the hotel.”
“At the Radisson? Look at you, Pereyra! You’re doing pretty well these days.”
“I got a room so we could be alone.”
“You’ve got it all planned out.”
“Yeah.”
“And how long has this plan been in the works?
“Since I saw you dancing in Valizas.”
“Well, look at you …”
I leaned in, and she leaned in to hear what I was going to tell her in a low voice:
“I want to be in bed with you. See you naked. Cover you in kisses.”
I watched her mouth. The number of things that crossed that mouth in two seconds. She kind of bit her lips, almost puckered them, curled them to one side, smiled.
“I have a friend who works reception at the Radisson. She could see me. I told you that Montevideo’s full of eyes.”
“What do you care? You don’t have a boyfriend anymore.”
I had phrased that poorly. She recoiled in her chair. The intimacy I had fostered broke. I wanted to fix it:
“You can tell your friend you have to do an interview for the paper.”
“Who writes these scripts of yours, dude?”
I laughed, I sat back in my chair, too. It wasn’t going to be easy.
“Forget about that graybeard.”
“That graybeard is younger than you are. How old are you?”
“Forty-four.”
“He’s thirty-eight, ten older than me.”
“An old man! How does he have all that gray hair? He isn’t doing too good.”
“I like my men worn in, just like my jeans.”
“I’m at death’s door, in that case. Totally destroyed.”
At least I made her laugh, but she regained her footing swiftly:
“You’ve just been spoiled by life,” she said. “You’re a Peter Pan who never wants to grow up. That’s why you don’t age.”
“That’s because I’m waiting for you. I sleep in a freezer like Walt Disney in order to wait for you.”
“You won’t be attracted to me when I’m forty.”
“Let’s do a little test. A friend of mine came up with this. I’m going to name a character, and you tell me the actor that first comes to your mind. Deal?”
“Sure.”
“Batman.”
“Um … Val Kilmer.”
“Good!”
“What does that prove?”
“That we can be together.”
“Because …?”
“According to this rule, you can’t go out with someone if there’s a difference of more than two Batmans. To me, Batman is Adam West, the psychedelic one with the light blue leggings from the seventies.”
“What other ones are there? Val Kilmer …”
“Michael Keaton, the one from American Psycho, what’s his name?”
“Christian Bale.”
“That’s the one. If you had said Christian Bale, our affair could never have been. There’d be a difference of too many Batmans. That would mean different worlds, imaginations that don’t coincide at any point. Every single thing one person says the other imagines in a completely different way.”
“Do you really think it’s like that?”
“No.”
The money belt was getting extremely uncomfortable. I tried to move it up a little, so it wouldn’t gouge me in the groin. What did I want all that money for if I couldn’t have Guerra? I just wanted to make her fall in love. She hadn’t shown the least bit of interest in going to the hotel with me, so I decided I couldn’t keep pushing. It wasn’t going to help me win her over. I needed to let our time together flow, flower. The afternoon. The conversation. The alcohol. I needed to loosen up a little, like they say. Not annoy her by bringing it up again …
“Shall we go to the Radisson, Guerra? We can order champagne to the room. If you don’t want to, we don’t have to do anything. We can just take a nap. I’ll spoon you.”
“Lucas …”
“What, Magalí? Maga, you’re La Maga. I’d never thought of that, and you’re Uruguayan, just like Cortázar’s La Maga, from Hopscotch!”
“Lucas, seriously. Can we have a serious conversation?”
“Yes.”
“You send me an email out of the blue saying you’re coming, you suddenly show up, you want us to race off to a hotel and have sex, and then you’re off to catch the ferry to go back …”
“You’re right, and I’m being clumsy, it’s just I don’t have much time.”
“Well, of course you don’t have much time, you don’t have much time here, because your time is elsewhere, with your wife and your child. You’re from a completely different time.”
I looked at her.
“I’m down for the count, Guerra. That was Uruguayan Taekwondo. That was a knockout.”
She studied me to see how I took it, watched me gradually absorb the effect of her words.
“Uruguayan Taekwondo,” I said, “is Taekwondo but with a thermos under your arm, am I right? All the martial arts are like that here: thermos and mate in one hand, offense and defense with the other. Extreme sports, too. Bungee jumping with a thermos. Even the surgeons here operate with a thermos …”
“Are you hearing what I’m saying?”
“Yes … I heard you say something about time.”
Guerra’s face remained serious.
“I heard you,” I said, “I’m making jokes out of sheer patheticness, to negate my demise. If I’ve got to go, I at least want to make my executioners laugh on my way out.”
“I loved what happened in Valizas, our walk to Polonio,” Guerra said. “I was really into you. But then we didn’t see each other. I can’t afford to just go to Buenos Aires. And you only show up from time to time. We’ll get involved again, you’ll leave again, we’ll spend months sending each other little emails, you’ll show up next year … I’m hurt right now, I don’t want any more pain. And that’s not because I’m scared you’ll hurt me, it’s because I don’t want any pain, I don’t want to miss you. I don’t want to miss you.”
“You’re right,” I said, looking her in the eye, and I raised my glass with its half-melted remains of ice. “A final round?”
“Sure, a final round.”
We ordered some more whiskey. Cuco was snoring, stretched out over the big cool stone tiles.