take you with me once I put the money down on the house. It won’t be long, I promise.”
“Really, promise?”
“I swear, and … hmm … I have to go now, but I’ll come tomorrow so we can keep doing what we always do.”
“Come back, my love, because it gets better every time.”
To top it off, a long expressive kiss, that is: lots of tongue and lip action. Oh, let’s just say that it became an enveloping spiral that aroused them anew and: a quick screw? Go for it! and, of course! an avid fellatio and other unusual positions in a mad and agitated dash, and let’s take this opportunity to mention one detail: these girls were rented by the hour, hence the countdown. Mireya and Demetrio had already been together for three. Already the largest outlay ever. The second hour was double; the third, triple. The madam had already informed the agronomist of these fees, and only once before had they breached the two-hour zone. Only once! and you can infer the intense calculations, as well as their effect on habitual action. Finally, painless payments, rather, the resulting coldheartedness. Confusing—also—for Demetrio, who began to glimpse an obstacle, an enormous and very black one, expanding like a doubt that was taking its sweet time to edge its way over the cliff; like a long tape that would never break no matter how far it was stretched. Thinking hard in the taxi … The trip and its sparks … he would need to spell out so many and such complicated explanations and plan everything once and for all, yes, but—where would it lead? For instance: the house. It was yet to be seen if the agronomist wanted to buy it in Oaxaca, or where the hell else …
Not in Parras.
Not in Sacramento.
Better to wait, though the storm would continue to gather if he kept seeing Mireya … Fed up with explaining. Solemnity makes a mess of things. It never weaves in well. Better to peek into the most elemental things: become a wisecracker, whatever it takes, because after days of conjecturing, humor prevents the other from ever really penetrating one’s own psyche. Humor is—would be?—a pleasant-enough defense, just misleading enough, in that it implies proximity while establishing distance. Life is—would be?—hilarious … This paradox must somehow be irrefutable … Intermittent and ambiguous reflections from one who didn’t, as a rule, flesh out ideas as they occurred to him, hence the most precarious one could be the most efficient. And now to the praxis: daily experimentation with Mireya. At first he called her Bambi, as if to say “beloved whore.” Demarcations: intentional banter, useful when she’d make her familiar demands: Hey, don’t call me Bambi, whereby he could respond: You should know that I’m a playful guy. I like to tease you, to make you feel how much I really love you. Then, if she asked him: How are things going with the house? he could take a different tack by saying: I’m thinking about buying a palace. You deserve nothing less—surely you must know that you have become a queen in my eyes? Harmless snares. Strategies buried under obtuse explanations of cause and effect. Nothing explicit, thus harmony by employing the same measures love does to protect itself against the tedium of certainty.
Let us leave the anomalous lovebirds to their romps and pass in haste to Sacramento. Demetrio’s first letter was in Renata’s hands. A messenger boy, a mere child, brought it to her at noon, he being one of six local lads (about ten or eleven years old) in the employ of the post office. Doña Luisa Tirado watched the delivery of the missive from the kitchen. Theoretically, she kept cooking. She didn’t want to appear nosy. She wasn’t one to interrogate from afar. She didn’t move, but her nerves … Howsoever that may be, let us try to imagine the daughter’s mad dash: to find a place to hide; surely this the result of reflexive modesty, the desire to read unhindered. In her excitement she found a spot near the chicken coop, where she planned to bury the letter. First, the gradations of emotion provoked by perusing praise heaped on praise. Moreover, she appreciated the penmanship.
She savored it slowly.
The ample light falling on the sheets for an almost chromatic celebration. The ink as illuminating as the words. But the enchantment was broken when Renata saw her mother approaching with remarkably long strides. Busybody. Confrontation. Abusive … clearly no way to