When she finished, her face wore a beatific smile. I was on the point of exploding. She grabbed hold of my sex and, waving the vibrator in the air, said to me: Your turn. Terrified, I had visions of a proctologist. Feeling my wrists tied tightly to the head of the bed I told her that I’d never done that and I wasn’t at all interested. You’re really stupid, she said, this one is vaginal; anal ones have a different shape. She grabbed her bag, slipped the metallic phallus back inside, then searched again through its interior. This time she took out a plastic bottle of honey. You carry honey in your purse? I asked her. It’s for coffee, she said, I don’t eat meat, so I’ve got to get my nutrients wherever I can. She popped open the top with her thumb, turned it over, and squeezed. A thread of gold spilled over my sex. Good little boys, she explained, come quickly when you do this to them because what happens is that the flavors mix. She closed the bottle, licking her finger. She put it back into her bag and fell to work voraciously. I came almost immediately. While she was untying me she told me that the bastard’s smile on my face had improved. Now, get cleaned up. You’ve got to look great, so that whore Teresa sees what she lost. Go on, you’re already way ahead of the game.
By the time I got out of the shower she’d left. On the bed she’d laid out for me my best-cut suit with a French-collared shirt and one of Raul’s Italian ties; he always spends more on clothes than I do. On the shirt was a note torn from a stenographer’s notebook in which she’d written that she’d come by to get me at eight thirty, and that I shouldn’t comb my hair until it was totally dry — that’s the secret.
Dawn, Friday, March 27.
The gallery owners from Colonia Roma made me an offer: bring Los Empeños to Mexico City, its natural location. They showed me the house that a couple of them had just bought together; the restaurant would go on the ground floor. The location is unbeatable and they’re prepared to invest in a kitchen that would be a faithful copy of the ancient ones I’ve envied.
Just as Susana predicted, Teresa appeared, now late, seated at the bar. She looked spectacular, more beautiful than ever behind the veil of an adult melancholy that I was not expecting. She was with someone. She’s always been more skillful than me in the fine art of watching her ass. We exchanged kisses in the air — I liked the shape of her crow’s feet — with the promise that we would talk; she introduced me to the millionaire she was with but I didn’t even listen to his name.
When at last I was able to get away from the gallery owners I went down to the bar to look for her and they’d already left. The bartender handed me a napkin on which she’d written the name and address of a café near Raul’s house, saying that we should have breakfast at ten.
Not only am I going to go, I’d marry her again right this instant.
Monday, March 30.
I find airports and airplanes exasperating: we’ve only just taken off and I already feel exhausted. The worst is yet to come: passing through the police fortress the gringos have erected to protect their obese bodies from the muscular universe beyond.
I enjoyed spending Sunday at home with my mother and sister: I was able to rest a little, go to bed early, eat reasonably well, visit again with the endless parade of my brothers and their wives and their children — I had no idea whose they were; they all look like each other and like the rest of us. I found it very moving to see how eagerly they listened to the possibility that I might take up the gallery owners’ offer and come back to Mexico. All this blood is your blood, said my sister after the second glass of anís, indicating the gathering around the table with a vague gesture that took in the whole family, as well as all those others who, at some time, had believed in the miracle of the Incarnation.
When I’d first arrived home, a little before midday, my mother was openly upset with me: Your aunts and uncles are pretty offended, she told me, that you haven’t gone to eat dinner with them; God knows how many days Alicia spent making tamales for you. I told her that I’d already explained how I’d run into Teresa: I hadn’t seen her in five years, we’d gone to lunch, and I was a total wreck when I called to cancel. It was better that way. You haven’t seen your aunts, either, she said. But I was never married to any of them. That made her laugh. I shrugged my shoulders and told her to believe me, that it hadn’t been easy. She nodded her head and pinched my biceps just like she did when I was little. It’s all right, kiddo, stone has got to be stone.
During the meal everybody asked me — with ageless wisdom — how Teresa was doing, but without prying into any of the details of our meeting, which I suppose went very well. I arrived at the café a little bit after ten o’clock and she was already there, nervous; Mexican women, like their counterparts in Lima, are the last women on earth who maintain the mysterious art of knowing how to style their hair. Who knows if it’s because they understand their body as one single harmonious mass, or because the bad taste of the hairdressers at large is so awful that they have to find some way to defend themselves. Contrary to all my own expectations, I acted like a wholesome, self-assured, grown man. She’d called in sick to work, so we had the whole day ahead of us.
We spent breakfast arguing, as if we were friends, the advantages and disadvantages of my moving back to Mex-ico, and some other minutiae: the eternal difficulty of her relationship with her parents, Tijuana’s shortcomings, how fucked life in the United States really is — the word Chicago never passed her lips — her fantasy of being a professional hooker, and her inability to carry it off: I turned out more prude than slut, she told me. Up until that moment I’d had all my senses focused on the spiritual quality of her mature beauty: I’d arrived at the café with my fear of another rejection weighing much heavier than my desire to have her, but the image of her receiving a succession of unknown men gave me an electric jolt that was immediately translated into the memory of her body beneath mine and a rending of the veil way down deep in my testicles. I asked for the check. What are we going to do? she asked me. I told her we should stop by the market then go cook something at Raul’s house. She thought that was a good idea.
Leaving the café, it was no trouble at all to hold her hand while we walked along; I was telling her about the success my restaurant was enjoying thanks to the enormous public humiliation of being the first contestant eliminated from Lard. My clients began bringing their friends out of pure sympathy — it’s true, I didn’t say it just to amuse her.
I bought a big piece of rump roast so I could stuff it with pulped carrot and guava; also dried shrimp and rosemary for a broth; dragon fruit with cream and honey, amaranth, a chunk of heavy brown cane sugar, and pumpkin seeds to make alegría balls. We stopped to pick up a bottle of Ribera del Duero wine, and some Tehuacán spring water. Loaded down with shopping bags, we walked the four or five blocks that separated us from Raul’s house, the sunlight streaming through the blossoming jacarandas.
While I unpacked the bags, she crouched down to check the oven — we had no idea if it worked. As she was walking by, taking the meat and the dragon fruit to the fridge, I calmly reached out and grabbed her ass as if we had never been apart. She stood straight up, turned around, and planted a tight, high-pressure kiss on my lips. We went running upstairs to the bedroom.