“What are they doing?”
“They’re standing outside the car. One is smoking and the other ones are drinking water from plastic glasses. It’s boiling hot around here.”
“Well, please go and tell them they can leave. Tell them there was a change of plans.”
“Actually, I don’t have the slightest wish to leave home right now.”
“Don’t be afraid, Bettini. Tell them, ‘Coco orders you to clear out.’ ”
“Coco orders you to clear out.”
“Ecco. And everything’s solved.”
“I really appreciate your generosity. May I ask you why you’re doing this?”
“When dinner is over, the dishes should be done. You scratch my back, and I scratch yours. We’ll be in touch, Bettini.”
FERNÁNDEZ HUNG UP the phone as if he were throwing off a stone. On the contrary, Bettini put the receiver back on the hook extremely slowly. Like in a trance. Exorcising something.
He was home alone. Standing in front of the hallway mirror, he tucked his T-shirt inside his pants. It was the old T-shirt of the Rolling Stones with the drawing of the red tongue sticking out. Moistening his lips, he tied his basketball shoes. It took him an eternity to run the laces through the eyelets.
“Coco orders you to clear out,” he whispered. “How much longer will this nightmare last?”
He opened the door wide. The sun fell over his face, blinding him for a second. He held his right hand to his eyebrows, like a visor, and directed his gaze toward the men around the car on the other side of the street.
The one who was smoking threw the cigarette on the sidewalk and crushed it with his foot.
Another one put the plastic glass he was drinking from on the chassis.
The third man threw his cup on the sidewalk and then started to massage his right fist in the curve inside his left hand.
The last one kept drinking, almost indifferent.
“Out! Get out of here!” Bettini whispered, walking toward them.
And once he had them within reach, he stretched out his arm toward the horizon and emphatically told them, “Get out!”
40
THE PAY PHONE on the corner is available and I have a coin in my hand, but I don’t make the call. I walk to our apartment thinking that I’m going to fix myself a tuna-stuffed tomato. At the grocery store, I buy some bread and an apple. I like the green ones because they’re acid.
On the elevator, someone has written with a black marker, “We won, beauty.” And on the other side someone scratched with a knife, “Nora.” I start to open the door of the apartment when someone opens it from the inside. There, in the threshold, I see Patricia Bettini. She’s wearing the uniform of her private school, that is, light blue blouse, blue tie, and plaid skirt with white kneesocks. It’s weird. Every time I feel that something is weird, I pretend that I’m not surprised. I find it cool to be this way. And there are reasons to be surprised — my friend never had the keys to my apartment.
But Laura Yáñez did.
And it’s Laura Yáñez who now comes out from the kitchen and surrounds Patricia’s shoulders with her arms.
She winks at me.
While I shake the key chain in my hand, two things happen — Patricia Bettini’s mouth opens up in a smile that can’t hide the imperfection of her middle tooth, which is slightly bigger than the others. And Professor Santos appears behind her, holding a cigarette between his lips.
No.
I’m telling the story wrong. First a puff of smoke appears and only afterward Professor Santos shows up, with a cigarette between his lips.
We hug each other in silence, and I probably take longer to release him than he to release me. So I think that he wants to look at me, and I move away a little and my old man asks me how I’m doing. I’m holding the green apple in one hand and the keys in the other, and I give him the same answer that I gave Valdivieso: “Still here.”
In the dining room there are four seats and the starters are already served — ham stuffed in avocado on a bed of lettuce. Dad stretches his hand to put out his cigarette in the ashtray, and I see that his skin is full of burn marks. When he realizes that I notice it, he covers that hand with the other one and then rubs both enthusiastically, as if he were getting ready for a banquet. But I move away one of his hands and look carefully at his sores.
“There were no ashtrays in jail, and the boys would put out their cigarettes anywhere.” He smiles. “Nothing serious, anyway. Everything as foreseen by the Baroque syllogysm.
“And you?”
“I’m great, Dad.”
“Didn’t you get in any trouble?”
“Zero problems.”
“Today’s the last day of the month. Did you go to pick up my check?”
“I forgot.”
“It’ll be interesting to know whether or not there’s a check for me. I hope they didn’t have the chance to stop it.”
“I’ll go after lunch.”
“That’s fine.”
Patricia Bettini goes to the kitchen to get the bottle of red wine and my father takes out a tiny piece of tobacco that was stuck on his lip.
“She got me out,” Dad whispers to me confidentially, pointing at Laura Yáñez with his chin.
“How did she do it?”
“You ask her.”
“How did you get him out?” I ask without looking at her and hiding a smile while I fill Dad’s glass.
She rubs her forehead with the cork.
Patricia strikes the table with her fist.
“She talked to people, Santos.”
“With bad people, I suppose.”
“Leave her alone, Nico,” my father intervenes. “We’re not living in the world of the Platonic ideals. In reality, Good and Evil are mingled.”
“But in different proportions.”
“In different proportions, son. Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“Of course I am, Dad.”
“Then?”
“It’s all right.”
“Let’s eat, then.”
IN THE AFTERNOON, I go to the payroll office. I wait in line for ten minutes. There’s a check for Professor Rodrigo Santos. I take it and put it in my wallet. I buy the magazine Don Balón and see that it comes with a poster of two of my idols — Rossi and Platini.
I have philosophy class the following day.
Professor Valdivieso hands back the tests with his comments in green ink. He writes the grades in huge red letters. My Billy Joel song gets the highest grade, a B.
When I come back home, Dad asks me about my new philosophy teacher and I tell him that he’s a good guy. I also tell him that he gave me a B for my test on the allegory of the cave. My daddy has a sudden fit of professionalism and wants to see my test. I hand it to him, and when he sees it, he leaves his cigarette on the notch of the ashtray. I take a puff and put the cigarette back where it was.
“What is this, Nico?” he asks, pale, after reading the Billy Joel song and seeing that the rest of the page is blank.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Justice to the extent possible, Dad,” I reply, plucking the poster of Rossi with Platini out of the sports magazine.
41
SHE WANTS IT THAT WAY and I’m not going to refuse.
She asks me not to be insulted, but she will take care of the expenses.
She wrote a letter to Don Adrián and attached it to his pillow with pins.
It’s not a matter of her being a silly, romantic girl like the ones in the shiny magazines, but she says that Santiago is wounded by the smog.