Chapter 9 Where the Wind Takes Us
Where the Wind Takes Us
Coco
We shouldn’t have left Madrid so late. Even people in China could’ve told us that.
It’s five in the afternoon, it’s already been an hour since our tire blew, and the roadside service from the insurance on the “Imperial Boozer Cruiser” can’t find us.
And it’s not his fault, by the way. We’re basically in the middle of a goat farm, and—guess what—there’s enough service to make calls but no data, so we can’t send him our location.
Our attempts at giving directions don’t seem to be helping, and we’ve already quelled three tantrums from the little emperor—that would be Loren.
This has set off Aroa’s sometimes infuriating optimism.
“Come on, kids, we have chairs, a table, cold beers, and a bunch of leftovers from Loren’s parents’ bar… What else do we need? There’s no rush.”
The no rush part is relative. We don’t know how long it will take to get hooked up to electricity and water at the campsite.
But to do that…we’d have to get there first. We still have, if I had to guess, four hours of driving left, but we’re stranded on a country road in the middle of nowhere, probably in Cuenca, but the harsh reality is that we don’t know where we are.
We obviously weren’t paying very much attention to the signs on the highway.
“We’re going to die here,” Loren says, lifting a cold Coke to his lips.
“Have a beer, dude,” Aroa says, trying to cheer him up. “One won’t matter and it will help you lighten up a little.”
“It won’t matter? With my luck, the highway assistance will finally show up, they’ll fix the tire. and two hundred meters later the Civil Guard will stop me and make me blow into something.”
“It’s one beer, dude, not a crack pipe,” I say, giggling at how he blows everything out of proportion.
He shakes his head and hands over the Tupperware of Russian potato salad his mother made. It weighs as much as one of those newborns who make the news for being born the size of a toddler. And it’s amazing.
Marín loves Russian potato salad. On Sundays, we often eat potato salad and Spanish tortilla, with our chairs in the living room and our feet propped up on the ledge of the almost nonexistent balcony. I make one dish; he makes the other.
I sigh.
“Why are you sighing?” Blanca asks me, putting her hand on my back. “Don’t worry, Coco.”
“I’m not worried,” I lie.
“You are. I know you like I birthed you, but it’s okay. This is just a little hiccup. One more story we can tell about the bachelorette party. It’ll just add to the legend.”
I see her smile and waggle her eyebrows as she sips her beer, and it makes me smile too.
“I wonder if Marín got there yet. Where was it he was going?” Aroa mutters dreamily.
God, she’s so annoying about Marín. She can’t talk about anything else lately. Or maybe she never did. Stop, Coco, you’re being malicious. You just have a grudge against her because you think they’re going to get back together.
She’s taken off her socks and shoes and has her feet perched on Loren’s chair to his abject horror. He doesn’t like being touched by feet. Or getting too close to boobs.
“Do you dummies remember when we were planning this bachelorette trip and someone mentioned this could happen and we all cracked up?” he recalls.
We can hear cicadas chirping in the trees all around us, but nothing else. Not a single car has passed since we got the flat.
“It’s like a typical Hollywood film where everyone’s dead by the end,” Loren moans. “And of course my character will be the first to die. Hollywood never liked homosexuals.”
“Aroa will be the first to die, Loren. Beautiful blonds with big tits are always the first, usually when the murderer finds her taking a shower or having wild sex.”
“Patriarchal language,” Aroa points out with a smile. “That’s how the movie industry indoctrinates us: The ones having a good time are the first to die.”
“And the gays. The gays die first too.”
“The virgin always survives… I still have a chance,” I joke.
“Oh, yeah? Because I seem to remember that just a second ago you were howling during four-hour sex sessions with Gus,” Aroa retorts.
“It’s been so long since the last time I had sex, I think I’ve revirginized.”
“Exaggerate much?” Loren laughs.
“Exaggerate? Of course…”
“How long has it been?” Blanca asks wickedly, with a sardonic smile.
“I’d have to try to remember.”
“Well, go on, do it. As far as I know, the only entertainment we have right now is talking, and this is my bachelorette party… I was expecting a bunch of gruesome conversations about huge dicks and stuff like that.”
“We do have a deck of cards,” I quickly point out to my interrogators.
All three burst out laughing, but I was serious. I don’t feel like trawling through my memory…or to inspire anyone else to. I don’t want to find out that Aroa and Marín had sex yesterday morning or something.
“October of last year,” I say, giving in to their stares.
They do mental calculations. I can almost hear them thinking November, December, January, February, March…up to August.
“Ten months? You really are a virgin! With who?”
The question, of course, is from Loren, who always wants to have all the tea on everything, including who we’re banging, especially if it’s the kind of guy who makes you do the walk of shame the next morning.
He says we threaten his super-stable life (because he’s been in a relationship for six years) and he lives vicariously through us, but I know it’s because he loves giving us shit and our stories keep him up at night.
They should take us to schools to talk about some of our experiences.
We would be a really effective birth control method. Kids wouldn’t even want to try it.
“With Gus.”
Silence sits down at the table with us and serves itself a helping of potato salad. I shift uncomfortably.
“I didn’t tell any of you because I was embarrassed,” I add. “Too much of a cliché even for my boring ass.”
Blanca smiles.
“So how? I mean,” Aroa clarifies, “it’s not like I want all the gory details, though that too. I mean how did it happen. And, considering you’re so sprung on him, how?”
“I mean, the thing is”—I wriggle in my seat as I interrupt her—“it was so romantic and ethereal I didn’t want to tell you so it wouldn’t ruin the magic.”
Loren laughs so hard he snorts Coca-Cola out of his nose. I think he might’ve clocked that I’m just fucking around.
“He sent me a message that said: ‘I’m rereading that shitty poem I wrote to you about eating your cunt, and I got hard as a rock. Should we take a little stroll down memory lane?’”
“Please tell me he didn’t say that.” Aroa covers her eyes.
“That’s what he said, sweetheart. Maybe he didn’t use the word ‘cunt’…”
“I’m sure he didn’t. You just love adding that in whenever you can,” points out Loren, who’s always griping about how filthy-mouthed we are.
“But it was something like that.”
“And it was good?” Aroa insists.
Was it good? I mean… Wouldn’t the normal thing be gushing about the encounter and obsessing a little over the chance that it might mean something?
I fake a sad puppy face. “It was great, and it was exactly how it always was with us in bed.”
“Smashing,” Loren pipes up impishly.
“But now it’s been more than, what was it? Nine months?”
“And she hasn’t popped out a baby.”
“Can you shut it already, funny guy?” I beg. “A long time has passed, and obviously any hope I had that it might mean something has gone to shit.”
Plus, it was a disaster. We did it on my desk, and he hit his thigh on the corner and lost his erection and then eventually we came at the same time.
Plus, we didn’t have any condoms, and I made the terrible decision of letting him raw dog it.
He had to stop twice so he wouldn’t come inside me, and he ended up coming on my thigh.
I took an early pregnancy test two weeks later because I was scared that my life would become three times weirder with an unwanted pregnancy.
“So how long has it been since you’ve had sex?” I ask Loren.
There’s a silent exchange of looks between us.
Mine is panic because I just realized that, in my attempt to change the subject, I started a round-robin that’s going to lead to Aroa confessing when the last time she slept with Marín is and I don’t think I can stomach it.
Loren’s look says he’s going to rip me a new one as soon as he has the chance.
He must be thinking I’m the biggest idiot.
“You’re asking me at a good time… We had a little dry patch, but yesterday Damian came home from work all hot and heavy.”
“And gave you yours,” I point out wickedly.
“Yeah, and even yours too, which apparently you needed.”
I crack up, and Blanca turns to Aroa.
“What about you? Drought or monsoon?”
“I guess somewhere in the middle.” She shrugs and seems kind of mortified. “I slept with someone I was filming with a few weeks ago. It was a huge mistake.”
“Marín and you haven’t… You know… No relapses?”
I feel Loren’s flip-flop connect with my shin, but I pretend I’m titanium and nothing can hurt me.
“Well…in the beginning we did a couple times, but not for months now. He says that if we’ve decided not to stay together, it doesn’t make sense to keep sleeping together.”
Dear God. Thank you. I’m going to start going to mass with my mother every Sunday. Well, not really, but maybe I’ll go by a church and put a few euros in the altar to the patron saint of liars.
“Makes sense…if we knew why you broke up.” Blanca makes a face. “Maybe this bachelorette party is the time to drag all the skeletons out of the closet and clear the air.”
“Drop it,” Loren murmurs, looking embarrassed. “Secrets are secrets.”
“It’s just that…” Aroa goes over to the table, picks up a fork, and plays with the potato salad.
“You know, it’s a couple thing, and we don’t want it to tarnish the rest of the group.
When we’re all friends, it’s hard to share this stuff.
We decided at the time that there were ‘irreconcilable differences’ because, well, a couple doesn’t always agree on the path they should take to keep growing and… ”
“Okay, okay.” Blanca nods at her. “We’re not gonna peer pressure you. If it makes you uncomfortable, let’s talk about something else.”
“What about you?” Aroa returns the question.
“Well…it was…um…a month and a half ago.”
“A month and a half?” Aroa and I yell at the same time.
“I told you we’ve been slacking off.” She pushes her hair out of her eyes and makes a funny face.
“It’s fine. It just means more passion for the honeymoon,” Loren points out with a smile.
“Yeah, true,” we all chorus.
Blanca springs up from her seat and looks into the distance. “What is that?”
“A car!”
“We’re not going to die!”
“Come on, girls. Let’s blow this popsicle stand. We have a lot of road to cover.”