Manuel Manrique? a voice asked. You have an appointment at the modeling agency on Friday night at seven. I said I’d be there on time.
Three nervous, frantic days passed. When you’re waiting, time is heavy, impossible to get hold of. I don’t know anything about time.
By 6:40 on Friday evening I was at the door of the building, looking insistently at my watch. I smoked a cigarette, then another. 6:49. I went in slowly and walked up to the third floor. The secretary was more jovial than usual. How delightful of you to come back and see us, she said loudly; but as she said the last words drool ran from her mouth. Very strange.
This time the former Miss Colombia had a bottle of vodka and a cooler. With her was a man who also looked familiar, an old TV heartthrob whose name I couldn’t remember.
They poured me a drink. She was the one who spoke first.
I’ve been thinking over what you told me about Tokyo, but the truth is, what we might be interested in is Bangkok. I told her that my sister’s journey had taken her through Bangkok.
She and the man looked at each other for a moment and nodded. Then he spoke.
We’d be prepared to pay for your entire journey, to give you the fifteen thousand dollars, but you have to bring us back a small case some friends of ours in Bangkok are sending us.
And what’s in this case? I said, although, Consul, you’d have had to be an idiot not to realize that it was something to do with drugs. I knew where I was and who they were, but my need was great and required me to take risks. Beggars can’t be choosers.
Some pills, the kind that people take in discos, the man said. It’s no problem, my friends there will help you to pack them. We’ve already done it lots of times and nothing ever happens.
It was my only chance and I thought I’d be able to get away from them. Or that I’d come back with her. When I was with Juana, we’d find a way to get out of this. So I said yes.
I accept. What do I have to do?
A relatively simple process started. I had to go to 100th Street to get a passport. Then decide on a date. The Holy Week holidays would be ideal in order not to arouse suspicion. They agreed. That was less than a month away. They gave me half a million pesos for the preparations: a suitcase, vacation clothes, things for the journey, a diary, a camera, I had to make my journey credible. They asked for my address in Bogotá and my parents’ names. That bothered me, since I knew that if I didn’t do what they wanted they would go looking for them. But that would be after Juana, and with her the problems of the world would cease to exist. Together we could face anything, so I gave them the dates, the names, I told them where my father worked, the telephone number of his office.
They checked it in front of me, calling him, telling him it was a special offer of a trip to Cartagena de Indias, to which he, of course, answered no and told them to go to hell and hung up on them, insulting them for calling him and bothering him during working hours, which was very much like him, of course, a trip to Cartagena de Indias? what an idea.
I couldn’t keep the things at home, so I left them at the modeling agency.
One Thursday, I arrived after five in the evening to leave a digital camera that I had gotten hold of, secondhand, at the Lago shopping mall, and the secretary opened the door to me, smiling from ear to ear. She was more cheerful than usual and said, come in, darling, can I help you?
I explained it to her and she came with me to the office of the former Miss Colombia, who wasn’t there. I bent down to open the suitcase and put in the camera and a memory stick.
When I turned around, I saw that she was lifting her skirt and showing me her shaved pubis; the strange thing is that she was laughing and at the same time drooling, a strange expression, either of stupidity or anal dilation, so I said to her, are you all right? and she said, oh, darling, don’t you think I’m pretty or what? look how sexy I am, and she reached out her hand and said, here, take this and she came up to me and gave me a red pill, take it, handsome, and just see how good you feel.
I put it under my tongue without swallowing it and straightened up, but she threw herself on me and tried to kiss me, and in the struggle I ended up swallowing the damned pill; a minute later I felt a tickling in my blood, a great calm, and a desire for lots of things, as if my body and my skin couldn’t cope, and then the woman led me over to a couch, pulled down my trousers, and started to suck my cock. A mountain of sugar dissolved in my veins, and I lost all notion of time. Suddenly she turned, put herself on all fours, kneeling on the couch, and said, will you fuck me, darling? I stopped seeing her, there was nothing in front of me but a spiral of colors, like fireworks.
I regained consciousness on the street, walking to Seventh with the sun behind me, in the middle of a violent sunset that brought out the outlines of the hills and turned them into masses of color, like paintings by Rothko; I walked along, feeling strong, and told myself, all this is about to change, for the first time my life is going to be truly mine.
When I got to Eleventh I had a hallucination: Juana was sitting in the branches of a willow tree, next to a shop selling cell phones. With her hand, she said to me, come, Manuel, come, and she whispered, I’m waiting for you, you’ll find me if you follow the signs I left, a path of shiny leaves in the wood, a symbolic wood, like the one in Baudelaire, you’ll see, it’ll be easy, and when we’re together we’ll go to another planet, the one you’re going to create with your imagination for the two of us, so that both of us can be happy.
Five days later, I left my home forever.
I said goodbye to Father, who was in the dining room underlining and analyzing the newspaper, which he did every morning before going to work. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, goodbye, Dad, look after yourself. He looked at me for a moment, a little surprised, but didn’t say anything; then I waved goodbye to Mother, who barely responded, just lifted her chin slightly.
By ten, I was at the airport. The flight to São Paulo wasn’t leaving until past noon. The former Miss Colombia and her friend went with me as far as Immigration. In the Juan Valdez Café, before boarding, the man gave me an envelope with five thousand dollars, which I put in my jacket. I already had a list with the telephone numbers and names I had to contact, and in any case, they said, someone would be waiting for me at the airport. In Bangkok I would spend a couple of days making those contacts. Once that was done, and everything was ready, I would go to Tokyo for a week to look for my sister. Then I would go back to Bangkok to pick up the merchandise and make the return journey to Colombia. They agreed that, in that way, I would arouse less suspicion. It was a simple plan.
My secret plan was different: once I found Juana in Japan, I’d get lost. Nothing else mattered to me anymore.
They went with me to the international departures entrance and said goodbye with big hugs, as if they were my parents. I was trembling slightly as I walked to Immigration.
I was leaving Bogotá, leaving Colombia. I couldn’t believe it.
The Immigration officer asked me a routine question, where are you traveling to? São Paulo, I replied, showing my boarding pass. He stamped my passport. I passed through baggage check, where they searched me a couple of times. I went into the duty-free shop. Then I sat down in the departure lounge and looked at the other passengers, the hustle and bustle, the rush.
When I got on the plane everything was new. They gave me a window seat, just behind the wing. Was I nervous? Yes, a little. The movie of my whole life passed through my mind, the way they say it happens when you’re about to die. Next to me sat a young Brazilian girl with an iPod. She smelled good and was very beautiful. When she leaned forward she revealed the top half of her tanned ass. She asked me if I was going to Brazil on vacation. A few moments later, the plane started moving and taxied to the runway. It gathered speed and I sank into my seat. I felt a strange pleasure and a second later saw my hated city from above.