OF COURSE I DIDN’T BELIEVE shit when Spider told me to bet with confidence because his pecker wasn’t all the way dead yet; if I took the bet despite everything it was because ultimately I didn’t mind losing, or at least that was how I explained it to myself, since after all I’d skim the money they won from the wad that Pablo Escobar sent them through me and they wouldn’t even notice, how could they, when they were flapping their ears in delight at the rapturous and hygienic way they were getting rich, not sullying their hands in dirty business or being driven to sin or lifting a single finger, because all they had to do was wait for the filthy money to fall from heaven, already washed, laundered, and disinfected.
Or could you possibly have thought things were any other way, princess? Can it be that you didn’t know where all those dollars came from, the dollars flowing to your brother Joaco and your father and all their buddies, and so many others from the Las Lomas Polo Club and the society circles of Bogotá and Medellín, the dollars with which they opened those fat bank accounts in the Bahamas, Panama, Switzerland, and every fiscal paradise in existence, as if they were international jet-setters? Why do you think your family welcomed me into their house like a sultan, Agustina kitten, why they dusted off the Baccarat crystal and the Christofle cutlery for me, and served me mousses and pâtés and blinis that your mother made with her own hands, even though I had gotten you pregnant and not even threats could make me marry you as your father demanded? Why do you think they treated me like a king despite it all, ignoring your rage and shame? Well, because it was thanks to me that they’d bought the lobster they were serving; don’t look so surprised, sweetheart, don’t tell me you hadn’t already solved that little puzzle, because what would that say about your powers of divination.
The business I handled was bloodless and juicy, and had nothing to do with the Aerobics Center, which was just a front. To strip the veil from your eyes once and for all, Agustina doll, I’m going to give you a brief summary of the crooked dealings so that you see them in wide-screen Technicolor. Spider, Silver, Joaco, and a few others gave me X amount of money in checks in lowly Colombian pesos that I arranged to have delivered to Escobar, and when Escobar landed his shipment of cocaine in the USA, he returned their investment to them through me, but magic, oh magic! now it was in dollars and had multiplied spectacularly, by three to one, four to one, even five to one, according to the blessed whim of Saint Escobar. And so, without tangling with the law or tarnishing their reputations, they became smug and invisible investors in drug-trafficking and fattened up their foreign bank accounts to the bursting point. Escobar was happy because he was laundering a fortune and I had no complaints, either, because I took a hefty cut.
The whole thing involved risks, of course, and to get mixed up in it you had to have steady nerves, because if the shipment didn’t land, Pablo wouldn’t even return the investment. The five-to-one deal made the old-moneys drool like crazy but it had its downside like everything else, which was that no tantrums were allowed, or in other words, the Olympian investors couldn’t complain if the money was delayed or never reached them. Not to mention that any of them could be killed at any moment, according to the rights that Saint Escobar grants himself over the lives of those who get rich at his expense; I don’t know whether you’re following me, sweetheart, I know finances aren’t your strong point, but what I’m trying to tell you is that the instant you put a dollar from Pablo in your pocket, you automatically become his pawn, a worthless lackey at his beck and call. By now you must be able to imagine who it was risking his hide in gringo-land, poking the balls of the DEA big boys over there, why who else but yours truly, Midas McAlister at your service. As soon as Pablo sent word that the oven was hot, I would fly to Miami, set myself up in an oh-so-discreet hotel in Coconut Grove, wait for the suitcases to arrive full of cash from the street sales of the drug, take what was mine and dispatch the rest to the spotless investors of Bogotá. Mission accomplished, I head back home, end of story.
TOMORROW, TOMORROW I’LL really do it, I said to myself each day, sitting in the lobby of the Wellington Hotel while I drank a cup of absurdly expensive tea. Until I did dare. Last Friday night I came into the Wellington at nine, knowing that I’d find the Fearless Girl in reception, with her long nails and stormy mane. And there she was, very businesslike and efficient, effortlessly improvising languages according to the nationality of each foreign guest, so I marched up to her, putting on my best face so that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that all I am is a poor bastard racked by despair because the woman I love went crazy on me, and in my best VIP voice I told her that I was there to make a reservation for a couple of friends who wanted to spend a few days in Bogotá, Bzz! mistake, I made my first mistake, no one travels to Bogotá of their own accord; the only people who come here are those who have no choice, Anyway, I continued, these friends of mine are coming to Bogotá and they asked me to make a reservation for them, Of course, Señor, no problem, Well, yes, Señorita, there is a small problem, which is that they asked me to take a look at the room before I gave my approval.
At that point she seemed to glare at me with a policewoman’s eyes; what if she worked for the police, like all receptionists in all hotels everywhere? You see, my friends were already here once, at this hotel, a few months ago, I was explaining more than necessary, And, well, my friends would like to have the same room they had last time because they liked the garden you can see from the window. She asked me which room it was, Room 413, I answered, and I felt sick saying that number, so intimately associated with my misfortune, I can’t show you 413 because it’s occupied right now, Señor, she said checking the screen and managing to hit the right keys on the computer despite her mile-long nails, each perfectly painted in stripes of red, white, and blue nail polish, like a miniature French flag, and I asked myself whether she painted the design herself, the nails of her left hand with her right, and the right-hand nails with her left? she must be ambidextrous, this girl, to manage such a feat.
Instantly my thoughts swung to Agustina’s lovely oval nails, always short and never painted, and to the mother-of-pearl case that once belonged to her grandmother Blanca, where she kept the files, tweezers, emery boards, and other tools for giving herself a manicure, Agustina pronounces the word in French, and when I hear her I grimace, The word exists in Spanish and it’s almost identical, Agustina, we say manicura, see how easy? in this country we get a manicura and not a manicure, the advantage being that we don’t have to work so hard to pronounce it. Leaning there on the reception counter at the Wellington Hotel, I sweat in remorse when I realize how sharply I criticize Agustina for her rich-girl mannerisms, how cruel I am to her sometimes, but fortunately Agustina ignores my bitter remarks and keeps doing things her way, not only does she say manicure ten times over but she also impassively claims that the little orange emery board you use to expose the white half-moons of your nails must be made of orangewood, my wife manages to live in a poor man’s house like mine, where all we eat is hamburger because we can’t afford sirloin, while at the same time she considers fussy things like those emery boards indispensable; exactly a year ago, when I was invited by a German university to travel to a symposium on the poet León de Greiff, I spent almost all the extra money I had at the duty-free shop at the Frankfurt airport buying the Clinique face creams Agustina had asked for; Marta Elena, my first wife, always made do with Pond’s, which can be bought at any drugstore, but Agustina, like all her kind, has the unpleasant habit of systematically rejecting products made in this country and being prepared to pay anything for stuff from abroad, and now I’m thinking of her face, which has always seemed incredibly beautiful to me, and of her dark eyes, which no longer see me, which means that I’ve become invisible, ever since Agustina won’t see me, I’ve become the invisible man.