been stretched out too far, and now, yes, the discordant giggles from afar embellished the retreat of the gallant, whose dandyism had done him no good. Laughter like barbs. Each step a gasp. Shame flaming from the lilies he still carried. As for the suitcase, what more can be said about it. Of course, the suitor longed to hide the bouquet under his jacket, but that would embarrass him even more. Circular then spiraling resilience. He refused to rid himself of that pleasant prodigy (throwing it—where?) because it would be proof of a frustration that tomorrow, at five in the afternoon, would be turned on its head, and, with a sharp pang, he wondered if the bouquet, especially because his aunt had given it to him, had brought him bad luck. When he arrived, she hugged him. She said nothing. She divined the course of events (rejection resulting from the surprise) and … A cry, meek, from her—of course! while he, with a knot in his throat, let her caress his disheveled head. Interior scene, so warm, in the kitchen rather than the grocery store, where the señora prepared café con leche; there was also a basket full of rolls, those familiar conchas, plomos, and pelonas for him to savor slowly. Bites as pauses. Words, all difficult and somewhat virile, rows of sweet relief. There must have been few: his: so-called sputum; though hers …
“I warned you, that’s how women from Sacramento are, but I think it’s worth your while to be patient.”
“You know what, Auntie, I don’t want to hear about it anymore. Renata and I agreed to see each other tomorrow. Now I want to be alone. I want to take a walk through town, climb a hill, I don’t know, watch the sunset, and then see what stars come out at night; I think it will do me good to look at the moon for a good long while. I want to think, understand, because I am starting to despair.”
“Do whatever you want. I’m going to give you a copy of the key to the house, and as you know, you can come back whenever you feel like it.”
The moon. The scrublands. The gray and luminous hills. The desert ground to sleep on, as he had done days before, the suitcase: O pillow! O companion! Resolve. Apathy. Desire. But first, to dress appropriately: a short-sleeved shirt for wandering around, a T-shirt, in fact, a trifle bought just in case, or just because. In Monclova he had also bought a new suitcase for his new clothes, which, without a second thought, he had left at Doña Zulema’s house. And where to next? Wheresoever to gird himself, to build up resistance against his circumstantial sorrow, but alone, absorb some kind of new and suggestive blessedness. So he ambled, dined in a tavern—a mendacious plate—then resumed his deliberate aimlessness. No dearth of onlookers watched him depart: hie to the hills, to hell with it all! The moon: light from a waning crescent (no trace of a path), and onward he trudged, trying to find his way. He wished that the night would silence all sounds then awaken his grief and sorrow with a tenuous tinkling. One footstep after another along the path to purification. It was not long before he found a small rise. There he sat. The sparse and far-off lights of Sacramento were also his own sparse flashes, already embossed upon the darkness. Drifting distances; he, extraneous: a fleeing spirit unable to glimpse a center or a refuge along the edges or a place beyond. His ideas failed to flow, but his soul … what weight? Barely any: a formless mass that would never be shaped. A hefty mass of flesh, a medley of legs, breasts, asses, and two faces: Renata’s and Mireya’s: heaven and hell, sanctity and sin, eternal and circumstantial, ruthless struggle and mere toy, but only one really deep intersection, an arid depth, and therein the absurd. If Demetrio kept thinking, he’d turn bright red and break out in tears, because any and every choice might prove fatal. Be that as it may, he had now firmly settled into the enigma of true love, love that placed the most impossible obstacles in the way, and to what end: to reach a cloud? the peak of a mountain? a star? Desire submerged in another desire and hence legions and thereby diminished, until ultimately it wouldn’t know what it was or could be.