12 Who knows what’s coming next?
12
Who knows what’s coming next?
Miranda
Last night, I should have fucked Tristan. I should have thrown myself onto the hotel bed brazenly and savagely used him as a way to get pleasure. Why? I could tell you some whoppers, but the truth is I’m in Tristan withdrawal, big-time. I’m always staring at him and asking myself stuff…transcendental stuff, like why am I going through this, why me, is this a second chance, maybe I should’ve concentrated on trying to fix things instead of pushing him away, whether I should be learning from this time-space journey…but suddenly he looks at me out of the corner of his eye, shoots me a smile, and says something in that voice of his, so coarse, so ragged…and then whatever I’m thinking magically transforms into an image of me sitting on his face.
I’m the worst.
But I didn’t. We didn’t sleep together.
I took off my heels and my dress, took a deep breath (because I hadn’t been able to in that dress), and put on “seductive” lingerie. And right when I was about to throw myself dramatically on him in bed, he went into the bathroom.
The bed was so comfortable… It had been such an intense day… I’ve been so tired since all this started…that I felt like I was pinned to the pillow. Why are hotel sheets so, so soft?
“Come here. I’m going to blow your mind,” I slurred forcefully when he came out of the bathroom in navy pajama pants, his chest bare and his stupid, trendy glasses on.
I was half-asleep, but I uncovered myself and showed him my red lingerie.
“Incredible,” he said in a sweet kind of way.
“It’s for whores.”
“Ah…” He lay down beside me, covered both of us, and, to my surprise, snuggled right up to me. “It’s great.”
I tried to touch his turnip, but he pulled my hand away gently, brought it to his mouth, kissed my palm, and then turned it over to kiss the back.
“This bed is comfortable, huh?”
With the little strength I had left, because this bed was sucking all my vital energy out of me, I tried to slink closer until my mouth was on his neck. But in a masterful twist, like a wriggle, he shifted me onto his shoulder and then his chest, wrapping his arm around me.
“You’re exhausted,” I hear him say.
Far. It sounded a little far away. He was stroking my back like it was a harp. I realized I was falling asleep when I was scared songs would start playing from his fingers. I was mixing dreams with reality.
“No,” I answered stubbornly.
“You know what I liked the most about today? Being able to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace in an almost-empty Louvre with that beautiful lighting. It was an extraordinary experience. And the Lady of Auxerre. I didn’t know it was called that. Well, actually I didn’t even recognize it, but I snuck off when you went off to talk to those people from the cream brand to google it. It’s from the seventh century BC. You know what? It shows possible signs of polychrome decoration.”
That little bastard…he knew I was about to drift off.
I fell asleep not knowing what colors he thought were painted.
This is going to start affecting my health.
I wake up in bed. In my house, all of a sudden. In a jump. From the innards of Paris to the center of Madrid in a wink. And alone. No idea what day it is or what year, ripped from sleep by the usual alarm clock but disoriented. It’s seven in the morning on October 26 four years ago, and I have no idea why I jumped to today. And why I feel like I can still smell his cologne.
While the coffee maker warms up, I check my planner. Today is a normal work Thursday. At least that’s how it seems from what I have planned. The October issue has already gone out, of course. We’re finalizing the details for the November one, and we’re already working on December and the end of the year. There are no photo shoots today, no events, and there’s nothing urgent this week. Flipping through the next few days, the priority is closing the last issue of the year soon and doing it well.
But I have to get moving, because the thing that stresses me out most is this paranoia that I’m going to hinder the future and then I’ll be stuck in a loop where I can’t move forward. So while I drink my coffee, I turn on the water in the shower and text Ivan to ask him if he has plans for lunch. I glance over at the closet to figure out what to wear, but my past self continues to be very efficient, and it’s all hanging in the bathroom, neatly laid out: mom jeans turned up at the ankle, a Motorhead T-shirt, maroon suede shoes with a low heel, and a black leather jacket.
Ivan answers right when I’m going through the turnstiles of the magazine with a simple “I’ll pick you up at two” that doesn’t clarify whether he remembers our phone call “yesterday,” because if he does, I actually called him from Paris. Yesterday for me. A month ago for him. Thalia did ask him to fasten her bra in the hallway of an event, but the weirdest part is that he only remembered I predicted it when it happened to him.
“Every other day, it seems like this stuff isn’t happening to you and it’s surgically removed from my brain.”
I didn’t fully understand him, but I told him we would talk it all through whenever we could. Jesus Christ…there’s another Miranda out there doing stuff. Okay. She’s from the past, so it’s still me, but it freaks me out. In my imagination, she’s like an Annabelle doll, and she’s going around out there with those eyebrows drawn on with a 0.5 Pilot pen. Chills.
“Good morning!” the few girls who are in their offices call out to me.
“Good morning, girls. Let’s make the world a better place.”
Over time, I’ve accumulated a few phrases and pep talks to motivate the team (and myself) to get our spirits up even on the most somber days. Sometimes we wonder if we’re dedicating our lives to something too frivolous. It’s good to be reminded out loud that we can make the world turn, even just a little.
If I could at least focus a little more…but who could concentrate on their work when they’re going through something that seems so crazy?
I put my bag down in my office, turn on the computer, and go out to “the wall.” The wall is where we hang up the laid-out pages so we can see the order clearly. With everything going down the digital path, it might seem a little anachronistic, but the truth is the result is very visual. In one glance, you can clear up a bunch of doubts at the same time, and that map shows you what part of the process we’re in when it comes to closing. And so I stand there, my hands in my pockets, studying how we’re doing.
“Miri…”
Marta, the digital director, just bustled in, loaded down with a giant bag and a coffee almost as big.
“Good morning.”
“Do you have a gap today where we could look over a few things?”
“Of course.” I struggle to tear my eyes away from an article about “the worst Tinder dates” and turn back to my office. “I don’t think I have anything scheduled, but let me check.”
“It’ll just take a second. If you want, we can look at it now over coffee.”
“SEO positioning?” I guess.
“Just taking a glance at the positioning of our digital content. And I have doubts about our communication strategy on social media.”
I look at my planner. I have a meeting scheduled at noon.
“Okay, come in and sit down. Should I call Diana?” Diana is our community manager.
“No. I’d rather talk about it just between the two of us first,” she says. “I think we need to handle it with kid gloves.”
Marta sits down and spreads a ton of stuff over my desk. I’m kind of a stickler for organization, but I don’t mind because I know that as soon as she leaves, everything will go back to its natural order. I go to close the door, but Rita yells at me from the hallway:
“Miri! We have to decide for once and fucking all what we’re giving as a gift in January.”
“Ask Marisol.” I try to wash my hands of it.
“She says she doesn’t care! I’ll come over, and we’ll talk about it.”
“Right now, I’m dealing with the SEO positioning, and at twelve, I have a meeting to see the pieces for the watch article. Ask Eva.”
“Eva told me all three of us should talk about it. Save half an hour for me, and we’ll talk it over.”
If time travel weren’t bad enough…a typical day at the magazine. And my terrible memory was working overtime to not give me any hints about how to take a shortcut through all this. And I already lived through it, for fuck’s sake. Couldn’t it be condensed to a couple of hours?
Well, no.
The truth is I didn’t have time to think too much about the fact that every time I’ve seen Ivan since this started, there’s been some radical change in his look. The first time, eyelashes that belonged on Drag Race . The second time, he had hair so long a rock star would laugh at it. So I’m not even thinking about it when I go to meet him for lunch, but I run into him out of nowhere, and the sight is stunning.
“What?” he asks.
Is the ground shaking, or is that me?
Ivan doesn’t have the long black hair from last time. Or his super long eyelashes or his usual quiff. I wish he did. I wonder if this is like reincarnations. Whatever it is, I prefer the previous ones.
Ivan has cenicero hair. You don’t know what that is? That means you either grew up somewhere very far from the hood or you’re very young. I’m from the hood, and as Tristan once told me, being from the hood doesn’t matter as much as what you have inside. Under my couture clothes, inside my designer bag, keeping warm under the tongue that speaks English in meetings, the neighborhood is lurking there, but not hidden. Because for me, Carabanchel, my neighborhood, makes me feel proud, not embarrassed.
But cenicero hair is too much. It’s aesthetic terrorism. And what is it? Put it in Google Images, please. I’ll wait.
Ready?
So…what do you think about that circle of hair shellacked straight up, crowning an otherwise shaved head? Is it like a castle’s moat? Is hair like that defending anything other than bad taste? Oh, wait…he’s got a mullet in the back. I’m dead.
To make it even better, he’s wearing some kind of bell-bottom jeans, which are completely passé for any year after 2000. A studded belt. A white polo shirt with blue trim and a popped collar. With the collar popped, did I say that already? Sorry. I’m in shock. On top of this, he’s wearing a tight tracksuit jacket. He has two fat hoops in one ear. And around his neck, a gold chain as thick as my thumb.
“What the fuck?” I exclaim when my voice will finally come out of my throat.
“What?”
“What are you wearing?”
He looks confused by my surprise.
“Are you saying this because of the polo? It’s new. Do you like it?”
I’m going to faint.
“Okay, Ivan…rapid-fire question round.”
“You’re such a weirdo…”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a stylist.”
“And they let you dress like that?”
“What are you talking about? This is my signature, my brand!”
I hope reliving today is worth it, because this is really heavy.
“One more question. Do you remember the super weird conversation we had at your house one afternoon in February? About Thalia.”
He looks at me and furrows his brow. I’m scared I’m going to have to explain everything again, especially when he’s dressed like this, but no. Finally, a spark of recognition shines in his eyes, and he nods.
“Yes. And the one from last month.”
“Okay.” I calm down.
“Can we go get something to eat and sit down while we talk? I had a few tests this morning, and I’m exhausted and starving to death.”
I say yes and head to the bar across the street, but then I think better of it and turn around.
“Where are we going? We’re not going into Dori?”
“No. I can’t go into that place with you looking like that.”
“The truth is the vintage rock tee thing is over, babe.”
I want to shove my bag in his mouth, but it’s a beautiful Coach, and I love it.
We settle on a bar that has a ten-euro set menu and a discreet patio where, more importantly, I had never been before, so we took one of their tables and ordered two beers. I can’t stop looking at him. He’s the guy who always dresses in black. That’s why our group was always nicknamed “the cockroaches”… Why does the universe have such a sick sense of humor?
“Stop looking at me like that,” he requests. “And start talking.”
“Ivan, I don’t want to scare you, okay? But it’s just that…with every time jump…you have a completely different look.”
He puts his beer down on the table.
“Define ‘different look.’”
“Your life is the same. I mean…the basics. You live in your apartment, you work as a stylist, our friends are the same as always…but you… Every day, you’re different. The same features and all that…but there are days when your eyelashes go halfway up your forehead and others you have hair like Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall .”
He arches one eyebrow. I just realized that he even shaved little lines into the end of it. Jesus, take the wheel, this is unhinged.
“And I’m not aware of…”
“No.”
“What about you?”
“If I’m changing, I’m not aware of it. But I could swear that the rest of the world, including me, is staying the same.”
“And I always look good?” he asks coquettishly.
“Have you looked in the fucking mirror, Ivan?”
“Look, girl, this is trendy, okay?”
I snort.
“Then…how does it work that you forget that I’m jumping through time?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “All I remember is the days that you’re…reliving. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“You mean…”
“I mean that when the Thalia thing happened to me, I suddenly remembered what you said that day at my house, but then I didn’t think about it anymore, like it had been erased from my head, until you called me from Paris last month.”
“That was yesterday for me.”
“I know, girl. This year is flying by.”
I have the sudden urge to slap him upside the head with his fanny pack, but I’d rather no one ever see me touch one of those.
“I mean I relived it yesterday, you dry turd.”
“In all your realities and timelines, are you always this rude?”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head, as if giving me up for lost, and stares at the waiter who’s on his way over.
“I want spaghetti and fried chicken.”
“Pretty carb-y,” I answer.
“And give her the same thing. Let’s see if those carbs soak up the terrible fucking bile you have inside you.”
I don’t have time to tell the waiter I don’t want to eat that because he turns to go back inside immediately. Fine, everyone knows that carbs can salvage a bad day. Even if you are eating your feelings. My therapist told me you should avoid emotional hunger. Maybe filling my ass with carbs in a bar on Calle de Luchana wouldn’t be so bad.
“And what are you reliving today?”
“This doesn’t seem weird to you?” I ask him, confused.
“Look, there are two things in life that I believe, even though I have no logical reason to support that belief: the first is that there will never be a better club than Pont Aeri, and the other is that you’re time traveling. You guessed I was going to help Thalia with her bra. It’s not like… I don’t know. It’s not a normal thing you could just throw out there and get lucky.”
“If I told you all the things that are going to happen, you wouldn’t believe them in a million years.”
“Like what?”
“In February 2020, buy toilet paper and nonperishable food. Trust me.”
He gives me a really weird look, but I keep going because I don’t want to freak him out with a postapocalyptic vision of the whole world confined to their houses. I don’t even want to remember it. I lived through it, and it’s behind me now.
“I don’t know why I’m reliving today.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all the other days… I don’t know. They’ve always been pretty symbolic, important. The first was the day I met him. The second, our first date. The third, the first time he dumped me. The fourth, the trip to Paris…our first trip.”
“And nothing important happened today?”
“No. I don’t even have a memory to use as a reference point. End of October… I dunno.”
“Let’s see…what happened later? Maybe we can figure it out that way. Mostly so you don’t just go around improvising.”
I thank God this guy is playing along. Even though I don’t believe in God. And I don’t know if I trust someone with such a terrifying hairstyle.
“We came back from Paris…at the end of September, four years ago. We had been going around in circles with this thing for almost a year. We had gone a few months without seeing each other or talking and then, when we got back together, we didn’t ask too many questions. It was a whole year since we first met before we even tried to put a label on it or assume a little more commitment. October doesn’t ring any bells.”
“This is so weird.” He scratches the nape of his neck, ruffling the locks of long hair that hang like a curtain down the back. “Do you think you’re going to stay here forever?”
“I hope not. And you either because…as handsome as you are, Ivan, Jesus…you look so ugly in this getup.”
After a plate of spaghetti as deep as a bowl and fried chicken with fries that were so good they made you want to scream, we still haven’t figured out why I’m reliving this day. Unless the universe has deemed that I’ve had too many weekends or holidays in a row and wants to make me work one day just because. It’s just… I haven’t even heard anything from Tristan.
“You should write to him,” he says with a poker face.
But I don’t dare. After everything I’ve relived, who knows what’s coming next?