22.

What a day, my god. It’s done now, I’m going tomorrow. I’ll leave you. I went to get my ticket, but I didn’t; something happened on the way.

I walk up Alvear perfectly calm, and just when I’m about to cross, right in front of the station, someone honks. I need to just stipulate, before you jump to any judgments, that I had—I really had—made a decision. I thought more seriously or took a colder look, without so much stupidity, about my relationship with Manuel, and about what we had, about what we have, and I decided, I made a decision. That I don’t want to lose him, that that, this, is my life now, and that I can’t just leave everything, everything I have, everything that I’ve built in whatever ways, for nothing. Because that’s what it is, because there’s nothing, in reality, nothing else for me, nothing awaiting me. Here, I mean, that’s what I mean, here. There is there, in Buenos Aires, I think at the very least I made myself a space where I belong that—as much as it tears me up to leave Esquel—I shouldn’t take for granted. Because it tears me up and will always tear me up, and it’s not because of you, you know. Not at all, before you died it was just as awful or maybe not just as, I mean, it was different, but still terrible. Besides, your death isn’t specific to a place, not at all, you’re dead everywhere. So that, basically, I realize that it isn’t wanting to escape, not at all, it’s combating wanting to stay, because I would stay, I always would have liked to stay, I’ll always want to come back, that’s very clear to me, but it’s also clear, I think, that’s what I’m deciding, that it’s precisely that distance, that tension, that sustains me. That desire towards that other thing. If I have it, I succumb. If I stay here, I succumb. I know that. Maybe, then, my doubts these past days have been nothing other than to succumb or not to succumb. Like with Julián, as though he were a mise en abyme of Esquel, or the reverse, as though Esquel were a mise en abyme of Julián, I don’t know what order it would be in, but they’re the same, in me, they’re the same. If I stay, I die, it would tear me up inside, I know that, I’m aware of that much. It’s a very strong drive, now I understand, I remember why I come so rarely, I get why it’s so hard for me to come back, it’s like vertigo, it has the logic of vertigo. And I would throw myself off, like you would throw me off, pull me down, like the girl in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That’s what it is, the death drive, the drive to be ripped apart.

So anyway, all that, that I had decided to return to Buenos Aires first thing tomorrow on the earliest bus I could take, at whatever time, to get there as soon as I could, to get on with my life. My life. That split is odd, speaking from here and referring to my life as though it were something else, as though it were happening right now in some other place, as though it were possible to return to life, to my life, to one’s life. And I’m waiting at the light to cross the street and someone honks, a pickup honks and stops. It’s Juli, it’s Julián in the truck from the other day. He’s not alone, on the passenger side, just sitting there loose like a little parcel, is the kid, his son, León. I can’t believe it. The kid’s closest to me. I go up to the window and he looks at me, the two of them look at me. Julián looks happy, surprised and pleased, he asks where I’m off to, if I want a ride, I say no, that I’m going right across the street, to the station, to get my ticket. You’re leaving? he asks me, and I say yes, as soon as possible, that tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest, he asks me if I’m running away, you’re trying to escape, he says, playfully, and I flash him a fake smile, as my only response, to his provocation. Is he yours? is the rhetorical question I then ask, and the child looks at me with eyes wide, brown eyes, light brown, just like Juli’s, and his dad introduces us: this is León, this is Emi, Emilia, my ex, take a look at her, isn’t she pretty? She could have been your mother. You’re such an asshole, I say, wipe his face off, at least, you jackass, he’s got snot all over him. I reach over through the window and wipe the snot off with the filthy bib the kid has on. I’m inundated with tenderness. I can’t believe it and would like to avoid it at all costs, but I’m touched. So fucked up, maternal instinct or feminine instinct, whatever the fuck it is. Something like that desire to have stuffed animals, that’s it, that stupid stuffed-animal sensation/need. Although it’s not always, often I don’t give a shit about kids, I mean I don’t care about them any more than I do adults; there are a few I like and others I don’t, like with anything, their condition neither exempts nor favors them. But this one in particular—I’m so predictable—I like. He’s a little gruff, like Juli, I can tell. He looks at me suspiciously, and of course he’s right. He scrunches up his forehead and watches me closely. Scrutinizes me. I say, hey kid, and he doesn’t even remotely respond, he just stares at me. He’s the exact opposite of a little demagogue. I like that. Soon enough, when he starts talking, he’ll probably turn out to be just as sarcastic as his father. Captivating. Cute kid, I say, such a bad attitude. He does, he says, he has a really lousy character. He’s also very aware of everything, says his father. I like him, I add. Do you want me to give you a ride? he asks, and I look at him askance, remind him where I’m going is a few feet away. No, no, he says, tomorrow at dawn I’m leaving for Trelew, I have to make a delivery, if it’d help I could take you. What would I do in Trelew? You’d take a bus. It’s been ages since I’ve been to Trelew. I ask him if he thinks it’s a good idea, he says he thinks it is, and it strikes me that it would be, that it is a great opportunity to have Julián all to myself, for the last time, probably, and to share a trip with him, with him and across the desert. But to be returning, at the same time be returning. I can’t believe how fortunate and perfect the prospect is, it’s been a while since anything has excited me this much. Okay, I tell him. And we agree that he will pick me up in the morning. I say goodbye to little León with a kiss on the forehead, he makes no sound, just closes his eyes, his head smells like things, a little bit like baby and another little bit like baby fluids, and a smidge like fried food. Give him a bath, dickhead, he smells like cutlets, I tell his father, and the kid looks at me with his eyes wide open, as though requesting I behave myself, as though demanding that of me. I’ll see you, adds Julián, and he gets going. I wave goodbye, León responds by lifting up his little hand, he shakes it a bit and puts it in his mouth, his hand covered in dirt and snot.

Get a load of that, will you, a trip with Julián, in a truck, across the desert. Five minutes prior, one minute prior to that honking I was heading to the bus station to finish with all this, or, at least, to distance myself from it, or, at least, to put a safe distance between us, and now—boom—I find myself embarked upon a dangerous, attractive, not to say tantalizing, trip across the desert with the death-drive guy. A good opportunity to die, perhaps? Just crash the truck, and both of us could be smashed to smithereens, the two of us together on some torn-up road, blow a tire at full speed and flip over, hit some little animal at full speed and flip over trying to avoid it and not being able to, not being able to avoid it and plough right into it and have it smash into the car, have it break the glass and come into the cabin with us, have it plough into us and disfigure us, because of the pressure, because of the weight of its body and the glass, to die, to die together and have them find us days later, many days later, maybe a family, maybe another traveler on a bus, a bus driver, torn apart and in the sun, half-eaten by vultures, half-bored-into by larvae, fly larvae that would have already nested in under our skin, taking us over? Nothing bad, a tragedy, two lives literally destroyed, that’s what the papers would say, in Esquel, in Buenos Aires, two orphaned children, one of them about to be born, what a tragedy, and yet, destiny; those closest to us would understand that, the destiny thing, you would understand it, as much as you might disagree with this trip I’m taking, that I’m accepting, that I’m choosing, you’d understand it. You’d have no choice but to understand it. Of course, they died together, that’s how it had to happen, such was their destiny, to rest together for all eternity. They’d need to leave us there, rotting in the sun, alongside a road in the desert, between Esquel and Madryn, so that order could impose itself anew, so that it would be restored, and becoming dust and spider food and worm compost, on the desert earth, which doesn’t need us, which won’t absorb us, fat, two stains of fat over infertile ground, dry, cracked, that would be good.