3 It’s impossible for me to be levelheaded when you come in and ask me about us
3
It’s impossible for me to be levelheaded when you come in and ask me about us
I met Tristan twice.
I know the concept of “meeting” implies that it’s impossible to do it more than once, but you have to believe me: I met him twice. I’m going to try to explain it, but it’s not easy.
In that year, I was tired. My professional life was on a roll, I was healthy, I liked what I did, I lived in an apartment I loved, my father was strong and healthy, my best friend always had a fun plan, I went to parties, enjoyed people, traveled… In that year, I bought my first designer bag in a fit of superficiality to reward all the work I had done to get where I was.
But I was tired in my personal life, or actually my emotional one. Wrapped up with a beautiful bow of “I don’t need love” was a lot of tiredness. Also some disappointment and a lot of cynicism.
Wait, let’s rewind. Sitting here on the office toilet, I keep thinking the same thing: Love doesn’t make me who I am. It’s not the only way to be happy. But life is a race to share what we have, what we are, and what we feel.
I didn’t mean that whole “I don’t need love” thing way back then. I didn’t want to fall in love because I had loved too much and I was stumbling down a path of lies. Because I had a lot of fun flings, but I had a scar down the middle of my chest that split me in two, reminding me that one day, I fell in love with a guy who, after telling me he would pull the moon down so I could step on it, decided it would be better to…stay married. Two punches at once: “Hey, Miranda, I’m married. See you later, Miranda. I’m not leaving her.”
So I had a good time. When the wound had healed, of course. When I felt up to it, when it suddenly sounded fun to me, when I knew I wasn’t doing it for the wrong reasons, I got on Tinder. And I had a blast. I had dozens of fun dates with guys who wanted to impress me to get in my pants, and I pretended to be impressed and got in theirs.
Until Tristan.
The first time I met Tristan, he was calling himself Manuel. I matched with him on Tinder. His pictures and most of the information on his profile were true.
Manuel
32 years old.
I’m one of those uncomplicated guys.
I like what everyone likes, no surprises here.
I don’t rock climb and I’m not going to claim I make the best tortilla de patata in the world.
But what I can promise you is I’m good company. And I know a little bit about wine.
I don’t blame him for the little white lies. I was called Laura on Tinder. It was easier. Miranda always made guys ask a bunch of boring, weird questions that I didn’t feel like answering with the classic “ha ha” that you send when your face is more serious than a nun. I liked his profile for its honesty. In the meat market, where everyone tries to stand out as funny, built, sexy, or sophisticated, this guy was defending normality. He was showing himself as he was. So he caught my eye…but his name wasn’t Manuel, and it did get complicated.
We talked for a few nights. In the beginning, it was the same old “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “Have you lived in Madrid for long?” “What kind of music do you listen to?” “Where do you go out?”
We cut through the bullshit pretty fast. I told him I wasn’t looking for anything serious. He said he wasn’t either; he was just passing through. After two or three days, we sent each other a few photos, no dick pics or anything obscene. We were both chatting from our respective beds, and we sent each other a selfie. We made stupid faces. We suggested a few things we could do when we saw each other and tried to pick a day for our first date in person…a first date that never happened because, of course… I met him for the second time.
At the magazine.
As Tristan.
Thirty-two years old.
Lawyer.
The ones who come to fix shit shows at the magazine.
And remember where they’ve seen your face…
And that you told them in passing that you like when guys pull your hair during blow jobs.
So…if what I’m afraid is happening actually is, in an hour, Tristan is going to show up at the magazine in a black turtleneck and black pants and a gray wool coat, one of those beautiful, elegant, stylish coats that have already lived a lot but have been well taken care of.
Yes. If it is actually November 11 five years ago, instead of the team of lawyers we’re used to meeting, we’ll see a partner from the firm in Madrid, one of Marisol’s childhood friends, and Tristan, the new hire.
Tristan, the fake Manuel. The man who I spent five years of my life with. The man who dumped me last night.
The door to the bathroom opens, and a few timid footsteps approach the cubicle I’m locked in.
“Miri…” a noble, mature voice that engenders trust whispers worriedly.
“Marisol?”
“I heard you’re not feeling well. Can I come in for a second?”
I look at the door in panic. I’m becoming aware that if this is a break in the space-time continuum, I’m violating all the laws for this type of travel, and I’m going to create a really fucking bad butterfly effect, because this didn’t happen on November 11 five years ago. What if I wake up tomorrow and I’m a lizard? What do I know?
I open the latch and sit back down, hugging my legs against my chest again. She enters hesitantly and smiles calmly at me. Her perfect, short black hair is combed as stylishly as ever, and her glasses hang on her chest from a chain with oversize black links she bought in Paris on a trip in the sixties with her grandmother…and that broke at the Milan airport two years ago.
“Miri, what’s going on?”
“It’s not a panic attack,” I try to answer calmly.
“Well…” There’s a whisker of condescension in her smile, but only a whisker. The type of nonjudgmental condescension you can impart when you’ve run the gauntlet yourself. “We’ll have to see about that.”
I suck in air and lean against the wall in front of me.
“They say you were asking what year it is…”
“I just got disoriented.” I make excuses, even though I’m still very confused.
“What year is it?” she asks the question back to me.
I echo the year back to her, but I must still have a funny look on my face. She furrows her brow.
“Miri…if this is too much for you, if you need help or maybe a longer transition period, don’t worry, okay? We chose you for the position because we trust in your abilities. It’s no good for us if you try to take on everything right away and your head ends up exploding. I don’t want the cleaning crew to have to clean your brains off your office,” she jokes.
“I’m a good deputy editor.”
“You will be, of course, but if you need help to handle all this…that’s completely fine. You just have to say so.”
She says it a lot when we’re all running around her hysterical, saying we need everything ASAP.
I have the urge to hug her, to inhale her Bulgari perfume, for her to stroke my hair like we were mother and daughter, but I don’t move because everything is incredibly intense right now. And weird. I’m worried I’ve lost my grip on reality.
“Marisol…” I mumble.
“I’ll be with you in the meeting with the lawyers, okay? I know it’s really stressful that in your first month as deputy editor, you have to face how the publication handles a lawsuit, and I won’t pretend it’s normal or that you’ll get used to it, but these things happen. We do a story on someone, that someone isn’t satisfied with her statements and photos, and instead of telling us, she approves the content and then sues us. Wonderful. It won’t go any further… We have all the digital correspondence and consent contracts.”
In that year, one of the cover girls threatened to sue us. Or sued us, I don’t remember exactly. All I remember is that the lawyers got her to back down. I’m not worried about the lawsuit or the paperwork or that the magazine’s image will take a hit…because I already know none of that is going to happen. I’m worried that I’ve already lived through it.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes.” I nod.
“Miri, you’re really pale. Why don’t you pop over to the hospital? One of the girls from the editorial department can go with you, and they can just check you over.”
“No, no. I’m fine.”
“I’m not going to ask if you’re on drugs, because I’m pretty sure the answer is no, and I don’t want to risk finding out I’m wrong.”
I laugh. It’s like the time an actress stole the clothes from a shoot. Some situations are so unbelievable all you can do is laugh.
“That’s better. You seem like yourself when you laugh.” She sighs. “Let’s try something… You go take a walk. I’ll finish up the planning meeting. Come back at 11:30, and we’ll deal with the damn lawsuit, which is not happening today, you’ll see. Does that sound good?”
I feel like I’ve totally lost my head, so I say yes, trusting that whatever happens, in the current planning folder on the server, the me of yesterday or today or the parallel reality has been uploading all the previewed topics for the next issue.
The door on my father’s shop has a little bell on it. I have always loved it because it feels like you’re going into a magical store. Like it’s straight out of Diagon Alley in Harry Potter. Plus, if I find an invisibility cloak in there one day, I won’t be that surprised. My father sells antiques and knickknacks. You can buy all kinds of stuff in his cave warehouse he’s turned into a store. It’s crazy that, in these times, he can still do that for a living. It’s a jackpot for directors of artsy movies and TV shows. If they can dream it up, they can find it in my father’s store.
As always, he’s not at the counter but sitting in the wing chair that has been on sale since 1995, even though everyone knows he doesn’t actually want to sell it. He’s drinking coffee from one of the mugs that’s also probably for sale and reading a heavy book with yellowed pages and maroon binding.
“Miranda!” He’s surprised. “Are you feeling sick? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
A giggle escapes from my nose.
“It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been in school.”
“Isn’t work basically the same? Like going to high school, except you get paid.”
“The truth is there are days when I feel like they’re paying me to play, that’s for sure.”
It’s a sixteen-minute walk from the magazine offices to my father’s store. It took me twelve. I can’t see how many calories I burned on this walk on my smartwatch because…I bought it in the future, and apparently that hasn’t happened yet.
I can’t stay long, but when I breathe in deep and the smell of antiques, dust, and my father’s aftershave fills my lungs, I know I did the right thing by coming. I need a little sanity.
“Dad…”
He stands up, worried by my tone, sits me down in the chair he was in a second ago, and touches my forehead and my neck. It’s a gesture that many would mistakenly call maternal, but it’s paternal too. It’s important to remember that the birth of a baby doesn’t only awaken protection and care in women (or it shouldn’t).
“I don’t have a fever.”
“You’re sweating,” he says. “And what are you doing not wearing a coat? You must have caught some strange virus.”
“Yeah, the inaugural case of COVID,” I joke.
“Of what?”
For the love of the divine cosmos.
“Can I ask you some weird questions?” I propose.
“Of course.”
“What year is it?”
“Miranda, sweetie, I’m not senile. Give me a break,” he grumbles.
“I’m not saying you’re senile. Can you tell me today’s date?”
“Well…tenth or eleventh of November. You know I’m terrible at remembering what day it is.”
Well, what if I tell you…
“Of what year?”
“Miranda, you’re scaring me.” He puts his hands on his hips.
I pull my feet up into the chair and curl back into the position Marisol found me in in the bathroom stall half an hour ago. I know he’s not going to scold me for putting my feet on the furniture; he’s not that kind of dad.
“Dad…something really strange is going on with me. Is there any history of mental illness in the family?”
“Your great aunt Conchi was pretty weird, but that’s not a mental illness. She was original. Like me. She went through a phase where she wore purple from head to toe. She looked like a Nazarene with a hood.”
I sigh.
“I’m serious.”
“No, Miri, there’s no mental illness. You’re really scaring me.”
“Dad, yesterday, when I went to bed, it was five years from now.”
My father raises his eyebrows, which peek curiously over the lenses of his glasses.
“My god…”
He perches on the arm of the chair and puts his palm on my forehead again.
“Dad…I’m not joking.”
“Sweetheart, you’re not well. You’ve had a lot of very stressful months. And I’m sure you’re not taking care of yourself. When was the last time you cooked yourself a decent meal? I have the feeling you only eat things that are delivered to your house by motorcycle.”
“What if it’s a brain tumor?” I’m freaking myself out now.
Another father might have dragged me by the arm to the emergency room, but he’s calmer than that. Maybe less sensible, I don’t know. Even I have the urge to drag myself to the emergency room so they can do sixteen scans on me. But he rubs my back.
“Sweetie…you’re going to do really well in this job, but maybe you’re investing too much energy in it. You’re exhausted. Look at you.”
I hope I don’t look ugly. This is the day I’m going to meet Tristan. Because that’s it, right?
“Do you believe in time travel?” I ask point-blank.
“Of course.”
His answer surprises me a lot…until he keeps talking and I see where he’s going.
“We’re always revisiting our past. We travel backward almost every day. Sometimes we need a photo to catapult us into that past, other times just a smell or a song. It happens to me every day. When I get up, I never know what day of my history with your mother I’m going to live again.”
I suck my teeth.
“It’s not like that, Dad.”
“Yes, yes, it is. That’s how we learn. In the painful times.”
I look at the clock he has in one corner. When it strikes twelve, a bunch of little birds pop out and hellish music plays, which, of course, is the thing that has scared people off buying it throughout the years. It’s been rented twice for film sets on horror movies, need I say more.
The hands mark eleven, and I should get moving. I don’t understand what’s happening, but even in a situation like this, being late seems completely irrational to me. You don’t arrive late to places where you respect other people because you’re making them waste their time. Something weird is happening to me, but that’s not anyone in this dimension’s fault.
“Dad, I gotta go. I have a meeting.”
“Are you coming over for dinner? You’ve piqued my curiosity with this time-travel stuff, so you’ll have to tell me all about it.”
I look at him in complete shock.
“Dad, shouldn’t you be worried? I am.”
“If I were, then who would you confide in?”
Well, he was definitely right about that.
“Call Ivan and tell him. I’m sure he’ll find all this hilarious.”
Ivan and I have worked together for a while now. I met him in a showroom where we’d often borrow clothes for photo shoots that we were producing ourselves. He seemed like a fucking blast. We ran into each other at a few soirees for the magazine or brands…stuff like that. And I have no idea how it happened, but we ended up attached at the hip. Now he’s a stylist, and he charges through the nose for every job. And I’m glad.
Even though I’m sure that right now he’s probably sitting in his apartment smoking and drinking coffee, I don’t call him. It’s not that I don’t want to bother him (I always want to bother him). It’s just that I don’t know what to say. The whole “last night, I went to sleep five years in the future” doesn’t seem like it’ll do the trick.
And yet I get a message from my friend right as I’m crossing the street to the office. My father must have called him.
Ivan:
Wait, I must be tripping. You go on an astral journey and you don’t even call me? You’re a shitty bestie, just so you know.
I would laugh if I wasn’t going to find out five minutes from now whether I’ve returned (I don’t know how or why or even when) to that day. I’m trying to remember every detail of how things went down, and I suddenly understand why I felt like I was copying someone with my look this morning: I was copying myself. This is exactly what I was wearing when I met Tristan. Except that day, I included a coat in my accessories. I’m not sure if I’m using the right verb tense. This is all so weird.
I think I was sitting in the conference room, going over the agenda and the information I had on the iPad, when I looked up and saw him. And I wanted to die because I had just answered on Tinder that we could meet up whenever he wanted (and I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon or under these circumstances) and…of course, also because I had given details to one of the magazine’s lawyers about how I liked giving blow jobs and all that. Not to mention that when he showed up, he was even cuter in person. I thought this run-in was going to put an end to my sensual expectations.
I’ll be honest, now that I’m sitting in the office: I don’t get it at all. What the fuck should I do? Go to the hospital? That’s what I should do. I know, I know. But…is it crazy to want to erase any doubt first? It’s simple… Maybe it’s all a joke. Maybe it’s all a dream, like in the movies at the end of Los Serrano (oops, spoiler). But I’m sticking around to see if he’s going to show up like I remember. I need to see him. I want to smell him. Then I’ll go find out if I’m crazy or if I need to find someone to water my plants while I’m gone. And figure out a digital will because I don’t want my Instagram account just flapping in the wind for the rest of eternity.
I head out of my office, check that I don’t have red lipstick on my face with my front-facing camera, and when I get there and sit down, I realize I left my iPad and my planner on my desk.
I retrace my steps, running in heels; I’m vaguely aware of many eyes following me. The girls must be a little worried about me, and I get it. I think if I had been a spectator this morning instead of the victim, I would have dragged the protagonist of the hallucinations to the ER. It’s just that…I’ve never been a fan of the limelight for some reason.
My phone vibrates, and I’m scared to look at it. Maybe it’s a message for time travelers with the phone number for the space-time embassy where I can call in case there’s any trouble, but no, it’s just a message from the magazine group chat:
Marisol:
Miri, are you ready? They’re on the way in.
“I’m coming!” I yell at the top of my lungs.
“And remember what year it is, babe!” jokes Rita, who’s walking behind me.
“I was going to call you a douchebag, but you don’t even deserve that, you giant jerk.”
I say it right as we’re going through the doorway of the room where the meeting is taking place and where, unfortunately, everyone is already seated. And to top it all off, they are staring in slight shock at the mouth where this string of urban poetry just streamed from, which, by the way, is mine. I assume Marisol is cursing me through Morse code with her eyelashes, but I don’t notice because all I can see is him. Tristan. In his black turtleneck sweater, standing by the table, looking at me with subtly raised eyebrows. I think he recognizes me, but I don’t know if that’s because he just realized I’m the girl he’s been chatting with on Tinder or because this is all just an act and the five-year relationship is still there, where I can remember it.
“Hi,” I say timidly.
“Hi,” he responds.
For a few seconds, there’s nobody else in the room or maybe in the world. If it’s possible that we jumped back five years in time, maybe it’s possible that the entire planet’s population could’ve disappeared, except the two of us.
I can smell him from here…and that smell, like so many other times, makes a knot in my stomach, another in my throat, and a final one between my thighs. The body has a memory. Skin remembers. How am I ever going to get him out from inside me? I can’t.
It’s him. It’s Tristan. With him, I knew exactly what every one of the four letters meant in a word I thought I didn’t believe in. I laughed. I traveled. I hugged. I argued. I discovered. I fell in love with myself again. All by his side. He can’t possibly have forgotten all of it. There must be some trace in his blood, a vestigial feeling that lights up at least a spark of memory. It’s me, Tristan. It’s me.
“Laura?” He raises an eyebrow.
When I was living through this moment for the first time, I responded: “Manuel?” but right now, I have no voice. It was stolen, like in The Little Mermaid .
“Miranda,” Marisol corrects him.
“Interesting name,” he answers, offering me his right hand. “Tristan, nice to meet you. Another not very common name.”
I give him a strained smile and sit down. The floor is wobbling, but I seem to be the only one who’s noticing the earthquake.
We’re sitting around a table in the conference room: the editor in chief and the deputy editor, as in Marisol and me, plus the team that were on the photo shoot and the interview that we are (were? Oof, look, I don’t know) being threatened with a lawsuit over: an intern, an assistant, the session stylist, the makeup artist who I haven’t even said hi to, and Rita, as the fashion editor of our publication. Then: the lawyers. I remember in the real first year that we met, I recovered pretty quickly from the initial shock; I even called him “fake Manuel” before he left. I was good at flirting. I was in control immediately. Of him. Of his tone. His way of running his eyes over my lips. I bit my lower lip as I looked at how his sweater clung to his chest, and I know he liked that.
Right now, I’m not capable at all. I’ve lost my rizz.
Maybe a truck hit me yesterday and I’m in a coma, reliving my happiest days?
“Okay, introductions done.” The partner from the law firm smiles. “Please excuse Ricardo’s absence, but he’s at an important trial right now, so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get Tristan out of the office.”
Tristan had just arrived in the city when I met him. He was still living in an Airbnb, trying to find an apartment. He transferred from the office in Vigo, but he was already making an impression in Madrid. And…he’s not going to admit it, but right now, he’s overheating and scared shitless that he must be sweating like an animal and making a bad impression.
“He just moved over from our Vigo office.”
“Welcome to Madrid, Tristan.” Marisol smiles.
It seems like he’s about to say something when I interrupt:
“Can someone open a window?” I direct it to the person on the other side of the table. “This room is like a weird microclimate.”
“Thank you. Heating and turtlenecks aren’t a great combo,” Tristan pipes up immediately. He’s thinking about how to approach our meeting on Tinder after the meeting, and maybe that’s why he holds my eye contact a little longer than is polite. Plus I know he’s not that comfortable when it comes to fashion matters. “By the way, is this called a turtleneck?”
“Yes, or a roll neck,” Rita helps him, charmed.
I know what she’s thinking. I know she’s thinking she’d love to get a glass of wine with a boy like him, hoping her ex would see her. Back then, she still wasn’t over him, and she hadn’t met the guy who would be her husband yet.
And the thing is Tristan is…well…something about his face is intense. The first thing I noticed about Tristan was his mouth. He has a really juicy mouth. The kind of lips that were born to kiss and be kissed. Once, I told him, in bed; we were in the super-rococo room in a hotel in the mountains, and we had just done it. I say “done it” because I’m not sure what happened, whether we fucked or whether we were getting into something even more intimate than that. He cracked up, and even though I was expecting some super-romantic answer like “Well, I only want to kiss your lips,” he responded:
“Wow, you say some wild shit.”
I land in the conference room again with a bump. I hear people talking, I see the papers they’re handing out and the screen in the room connecting to Marisol’s computer to project some images, but I can’t follow the thread. He’s concentrating on the meeting.
This is a nightmare. The Tim Burton version of my life.
This situation seems slightly different from how I remembered it. Maybe time taints everything, the way a child’s breath fogs a window. Maybe I idealized him, or maybe I don’t even remember clearly how romantic everything was from the beginning with him.
He looks up and catches me staring at him. He smiles discreetly, and I can almost foresee how he’s going to approach me at the end of the meeting and invite me out for a coffee or maybe wine. I can almost sense a kind of impatience in the way he’s moving in his chair, an inner tension between being very professional and letting himself be carried away by the butterflies.
You give me butterflies . He said that to me before the I love you or the I like you a lot. Even before the Why the hell are we paying for two apartments, Miri?
You give me butterflies. And while some people melt when a man tells them he sees stars in their eyes, this seemed like the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to me.
“Well then, let me make sure I’m understanding correctly,” Tristan says as he stops looking at me and turns back to Marisol. “The claimant never communicated at any time her discontent with the statements that appeared in her interview once it was edited.”
“No. On July 6, we sent her the finalized mock-up so that she and her rep could review it…”
I lose the thread again. Reviewing. Is that what I’m doing? What’s happening to me? I don’t get any of it. I don’t get it. Is this a cosmic opportunity for us to try again? So we can rectify our mistakes? Are we going to relive this story from the beginning, already knowing what we’ve been through, figuring out where we stumbled and where we should have spent more time?
I feel a landslide in my chest getting bigger and bigger and threatening to drag me down with it. Yesterday, Tristan dumped me. He broke up with me, with the life we had, all the plans. He didn’t ask me for time. He didn’t say he needed to think or get some space and distance, just that he didn’t want to be with me anymore and that I had to respect that. And today, the day after he left me, leaving no time for the things I like about him to fade away, here he is again. For the first time.
Him, the guy who always knows what to order for me at the bar counter, who never opens a single door for me but sticks his foot in so it won’t slam in my face. I love the way he buttons his pants, like a little kid concentrating really hard on his homework or, sometimes, like a playboy who wants you to know he’s going to take them off again. I can’t resist the way his thick eyebrows arch. His innocent fingers around a rocks glass from the bar below our house. How he’s not silent or noisy or somewhere in the middle: he’s like that song by Los Piratas that I like listening to at any volume.
His everyday shoes. His winter pajamas. The slightly tacky ring he wears on his ring finger now but that I got him to take off three years ago and he would always twist when he was nervous. The hair on his chest, which seems a little unkempt, consistent but not very dense, like a thicket that is quickly dissolved by the shower of kisses I rain over it when I have it in range.
His legs. His feet. The way he moves his hips, like he never learned to do it like this with anyone else…with other women…like I had always been there: up, down, to the side, game.
The way he says certain words: “ay,” “go ahead,” “goodbye,” “speed,” “heat,” “umbrella,” “useless contraptions”… The fact that he still uses the word “contraption.”
When I met him, when I actually met him, I liked that he was weird, just like me. When we met that morning in the middle of this cluttered world, I felt like my weirdness didn’t actually matter. And neither did his. And life is a grab bag of random stuff, and it’s impossible for me to be levelheaded when you come in and ask me about us.