13 Even on some random day
13
Even on some random day
I spent the afternoon fighting (but the good kind, there are very few bad fights here) with the fashion and lifestyle teams to make them change the focus of two articles we’re going to publish. One of them was very criticized, with good reason. If you’re a publication that supports women in all their versions, you can’t take up half the fashion section with a “how to dress best for your age” article.
“It’s gonna be pretty short, Rita: dress however the fuck you want in your twenties, your thirties, or your eighties.”
“Come on, you’re so rude,” she complained. “You all thought it sounded fine in the planning meeting.”
“Well, in the planning meeting, I must have been overdosing on coffee or something. Rework it with your girls. This is offensive and horrible. Eva agrees. If the deputy editor and the editor in chief suggest a change… I don’t know, Rita. Think about it…”
She cursed at me bitterly. She also told me that when I’m seventy, I won’t be able to wear what I’m wearing today. I bite down the urge to tell her that in four years, she’ll still be rocking the same schoolgirl haircut, and nobody’s going to throw it in her face. But I take a deep breath and bite my tongue. I bite my tongue, and I wonder why I still haven’t heard from Tristan and why I’m not messaging him myself.
I think I’m not because I’m scared all the things I’ve done in the past, in the days I’ve been reliving, have rewritten our history, and right now, he’s with some other girl or…he’s decided to fully embrace the bachelor life.
Maybe that’s why I wasn’t expecting to find him as soon as I left, right on the sidewalk outside the magazine, leaning on a sign saying parking prohibited. He looks handsome, but he seems tired and a little bored. I wonder if he’s been waiting long.
“Hi,” I murmur when I’m closer to him.
He hasn’t looked at me yet, he’s fiddling with his phone, but he doesn’t startle, he just answers in a muted voice.
“Hi.”
He puts his phone in his pocket and gives me a kind of hug. This is how we greeted each other in the beginning…with a hug. It’s always like that, right? The hug is the most useful greeting because it’s not a formal handshake, a polite kiss on both cheeks, or an intimate kiss on the mouth. A hug implies affection but enough distance so that no passersby would think we’re a couple. A hug in public is a friendly greeting; it’s a safe zone.
“Am I late?” I ask cautiously.
“A little.” He wrinkles his nose and shrugs, like he’s saying it doesn’t matter. “We’ll still get there on time.”
“On time?”
“The play,” he points out.
“What play?”
“ Oleanna ,” he reminds me. “You were dying to see it. I snagged two tickets and…”
“Ah, yes. Sorry. I’m still kind of…” I move my hand in circles in front of my face. “In magazine world. I haven’t acclimatized yet.”
He nods, like he wasn’t really listening.
“Hey…are you okay?” I ask him.
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know. You look like you’re pissed off with something, and it’s possible that something is me, so I’m asking.”
Seriously…the freedom not caring gives you.
“No, shit.” He rubs his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s work. Come on. Do you want to get a cab or the subway?”
A beam of light, a sudden flash has illuminated my memory of this afternoon. It’s true I was really looking forward to seeing that play. I was even pretty annoying about it; I was hoping he would show me who knows what by getting two tickets…and he did. I remember feeling a little empowered. I enjoyed the play. I don’t remember anything else. Not that he was tired or that it was a special night.
“What if we don’t go?”
His forehead wrinkles.
“What?”
“What if we don’t go? I don’t know. I don’t feel like it.”
“Seriously?” He looks stunned.
“You don’t seem like you want to.”
I don’t know if I’m screwing this up on purpose so he will leave without looking back and takes away this pain from inside me or because I really don’t want to see the play again.
“Miranda…” he says very seriously, “you said over and over that it had to be today because your calendar will be crazy from now on because the December issue will be closing. And I got the tickets.”
“I know. And I appreciate it. But…”
“But what?”
I think I can glimpse a slight smile behind the question, but I’m not sure. It’s probably more like that face you make when you want to rip someone’s head off.
“You look like you’d rather get fucked in the ass than go to the theater right now.”
“Pretty much, but I feel the same way about not going and wasting the fucking tickets. They cost me fifty bucks.”
That raspy, husky voice, which seems like anything but a lawyer’s voice…and he curses like a sailor. Fuck. I’m resisting it, by the way. But…what if I take him home and use him like a blow-up doll? He looks so hot in that blue suit.
“Miranda, you seem so spaced out. What’s going on with you today?”
“Nothing. I’m weird, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know, girl. I know.” He rubs his eyes again with a sigh he seems to use to muster up some patience.
“It’s just that you can’t say both options suck. Then what do we do? Do we kill ourselves in a collective suicide pact like a cult from the seventies?”
“Calm down, Peoples Temple.”
I smile. I’ve always liked that he gets my weird, freaky references. Is that why I fell in love with him? No. Don’t think about that. Do stuff to make things worse between you. Focus. You want to get away from him, my conscience’s voice says.
“I don’t want to go to the theater. I’m really sorry the tickets cost you so much.”
“So you’re flaky now?” he asks seriously.
“I mean, yeah. Listen. I’m a shitty flake, but I’m tired, and I don’t want to go see any plays. I’m sorry.”
“And what do you want to do now, if I may ask?”
“Well, I want…to go to my house, and we can order some greasy Chinese food or a kebab.” I’m throwing out the least glamorous thing I can think of. I don’t fart because I don’t need to. But I’m not exactly trying to make a good impression. “We could watch a war movie or a kung fu movie or one of those romance movies that are sickeningly cheesy. And then we can go to bed and fuck like rats in heat.”
“Does it have to be rats? Can’t we be some other animal?”
And he says it so seriously, you wouldn’t believe.
“I said rats. Ah…and you’re going to go down on me. For at least half an hour.”
Tristan opens his mouth, takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. Here it comes. He’s going to tell me to fuck off.
“What?” I prod him. “Is there something about the plan you’re not into?”
“Let’s see.” He crams his hands into his pockets, probably so he doesn’t strangle me. “I’m sick of everything today. And everything is putting it lightly. A client gave me a lot of shit because she wanted her dog to inherit everything, and there was no convincing her that that’s not legal . One of the partners is a fucking psychopath about the rules, and he told me I’m not putting in very many hours . The fourteen I spent there yesterday aren’t enough apparently. One of my colleagues spent the whole lunch break talking my ear off about the difference between loafers with tassels and without. And now you’re telling me you don’t want to go to the theater? And you want Chinese food and a movie and…”
I prepare myself for an explosion. He rubs his face.
“Fuck. And you couldn’t have told me earlier?”
“Well, I’m telling you now. I’ve been really busy all day.”
“Come the fuck on.”
Tristan’s chest swells. That slender but sinewy chest created by swimming every free second he gets. That chest that looks so good in cotton shirts. That chest that has a thin smattering of hair, like it’s scatterbrained. That chest…
“Jesus, Miranda, you’re gonna drive me insane.” He rubs his eyes.
Here it comes, here it comes.
I can already hear it: The last thing I need right now is a girl who drags me around on a wild-goose chase, Miranda. The rest of us have a life too, beyond your whims. I’m sick of you. You stay here.
“Let’s go to my house first. I need to take off this suit. And get a change of clothes. And my contact lenses. This nomadic life is the fucking worst, you know that.”
When he starts walking, I can’t believe it. Either he can handle more than I thought, or I don’t know this dude at all, or the universe is a real bastard son of a bitch.
“Are you coming or what?” he asks from ten meters away.
I have to speed up and almost run to match his pace.
Two spring rolls; an order of combo fried rice, another of shrimp noodles because he doesn’t like rice, the texture makes him cringe; a lemon chicken; and a prawn toast. Plus, two sodas; mine is diet, as if not adding sugar to the drink could stop the torrent of bad fats, salt, and carbs. What a day I’ve had. I hope the time jumps burn a lot of calories or something; otherwise with this surplus…
Wait, since when do I lose sleep over calorie surpluses? It’s not like I’m walking on a runway next month. We have to fight so hard against the ideas that society has ingrained in our heads.
“Do you ever worry about your weight?” I burst out.
He’s stuffing himself with noodles, so I guess the answer is no. But I still wait for him to answer while the war movie we chose plays on the TV.
“Mmm, I dunno.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve been thin my whole life. I never worried about it too much. Well…I’m lying. I worry a little about looking like a sack of bones. Stress makes me a mess. And so does eating badly. And not exercising.”
“Do you get thinner if you don’t exercise?”
He nods while he crams in another huge mouthful of noodles.
“Do you worry about it?” he sputters.
“Your weight? Not at all.”
“Yours, you idiot.”
I waggle my head.
“Yes and no. For me personally, it’s never driven me crazy. If someone doesn’t like me because of my size, good riddance, but then…there’s a kind of social pressure, you know? Society as a mass. There’s a lot of hidden fatphobia. Like the stupid person in movies is always fat. Or associating the word ‘fat’ with concepts like ‘insane’ or ‘ugly.’ There’s a hostile climate toward being overweight in general. If you go to a Zara to buy pants that are on trend, they won’t have your size…so you go home all annoyed and thinking you’re the problem because everyone else can wear them, but you can’t. I guess the same thing happens to really thin girls. The problem is that they want to impose a mold on us, whatever it may be. The imposition. You know what I mean?”
Tristan is looking at me curiously.
“I get it. But…you look in the mirror and you like what you see, right?”
“I look in the mirror, and I see me, which is what matters. There are days I like it and days I don’t even want to look at myself, but there are also days when I don’t even want to see you, and you have the torso of a Greek ephebus.”
“I play sports to unwind, Miranda, not to have the torso of a Greek ephebus.”
“Well, you could unwind by slamming me against the headboard too.”
“If it were up to you, I’d be slamming you against the headboard twenty-four seven.”
“Does that mean we’re gonna fuck?”
“No.”
He dishes a little more food onto his plate and focuses on the film like he didn’t just reject me. I lost track of the plot a long time ago, more or less since the first tank came out. I get up from the living room floor, where we were sitting to eat, and take my plate to the kitchen.
When I come back, I realize Tristan is staring at me.
“What?”
“Are you mad?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I study law, but I’m not good with words. I probably stuck my foot in it.”
I pout and shake my head.
“Something’s going on,” he insists. “Is this about the weight thing?”
“Oh no. I couldn’t care less about the weight thing.”
“So?”
“I don’t know.”
He puts his fork down, wipes his mouth with the piece of paper towel I hand him, and turns off the TV.
“I’m listening.”
“I said nothing’s going on.”
“And I said I hear you. You tell me whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be because something’s going on.”
I furrow my brow. This is new. I stay silent. He does too. Ah, I do know this tactic. He gets quiet to make me nervous; he knows that I can’t handle these kinds of silences and that I’ll end up saying something, even if it’s just to break the ice. But I’m not falling for it.
“I’m not falling for it.”
“Falling for what?”
“The old trick of seeing who’ll talk first.”
“Okay.” He raises his eyebrows and smiles.
That smile. Fuck. I’ve been with some hot guys in my life. It’s not something that’s particularly important to me because I usually end up sprung on the way they smile, their quickness or intelligence, if they awaken something special in me, a spark of something inexplicable… Still, they’ve almost always been good-looking. Not just to me. My friends say: “So-and-so is hot. Whatshisname is really fine. You always go out with such hotties.” I’m not especially pretty, I’m not fine, I’m not trying to be, and I’m not hoping for the guy by my side to have those prerequisites.
Tristan is, however, the best-looking among the good-looking. Or maybe he’s not and I just think so because I’m in love with him, I don’t know. But he always seemed like one of those boys who I (I repeat, I) couldn’t stop looking at for years. And that feeling, the one that I would keep looking at him forever, fills me with sadness now that I know that this thing we have, or had, is going to end.
“Maybe it doesn’t make sense to keep going with this.” The words escape from my mouth.
“I knew it.” He sighs. “Keep going with this… What are you talking about?”
“Us. Keep seeing each other.”
“What we have is good,” he says very confidently.
“Maybe. But it’s going to end. What sense does it make to keep going if it’s going to end?”
“What sense does it make to live if we’re going to die?”
I suck my teeth and concentrate on going around closing the Chinese food cartons. They’re all dripping with grease.
“Do you want to stop seeing me?” he asks.
“No.”
“So?”
How can I explain that he’s going to be the one who dumps me in four years?
“I don’t know. I already told you I don’t know. You’re the one who’s forcing me to talk.”
“Miri…look at me for a second.”
I stop messing with the containers. I stacked them into a tower without even noticing.
“You think too much.” He smiles. “There are days when you flow like you invented the current, but others…” He makes a face. “It’s like you know too much and you don’t like what you found out.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe you’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing ?”
“Messing around with predictions. And I don’t like you imagining what decisions I’m going to make because it feels like you think I’m predictable or simple or…incapable.”
“Don’t be stupid. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“What is clear”—he widens his eyes—“is that I’m not going to listen to a fucking word of this brainwashing. That and, for whatever reason, you don’t want me to keep eating.”
He waves at the half-empty containers.
“I can’t believe you’re still hungry after all that,” I say.
“I’m gonna finish it all. And then we’re going to bed.”
“To fuck?”
He lets out a laugh at the same time as he grabs the take-out containers and starts opening them again.
“Let’s see…pre- and postcoital chats are so underrated. I’d like to have a few words with the people who started the rumor that men have more sexual appetite than women. That or bring them to meet you. And study you.”
“And why would you do that? Am I a rare specimen?”
“Pure fire.” He winks. “Pure fire.”
After dinner, we stopped trying to follow the plot of the movie. It seemed good, but we’re just not very lucid today. We brush our teeth together and, well, that’s good, that’s normal. Buuuuuutt…then he started pissing with me in the bathroom, even though that doesn’t surprise me anymore. We’ve been together so many years, but I don’t know if in this timeline, I should have pretended to be falsely uncomfortable or, at least, surprised by this gesture of intimacy. So the only thing I said to him as he held it so calmly while he talked to me was:
“Intimacy is gross.”
I don’t care that he pisses in front of me. Or showers. Or that he puts his contact lenses in while I’m in the shower. It always felt to me like those chats we have in the bathroom are part of the DNA of who we are as a couple. Or who we were. Or who we will be. And he seems to agree.
We get into bed and turn out the lights, but the streetlights still fill the room with a soft glow, even with the blinds down, so we can see each other’s faces. And here we are, opposite each other, talking about super random stuff. It’s been like this all day. Nothing seems to have a meaning or a concrete purpose.
“Wait, you like rap? You’re kidding,” he teases.
“I swear. I love rap.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of course it is!”
“You don’t look like a rap fan.”
“And what do rap fans look like? Do I have to wear a baseball cap sideways or something?”
Tristan bursts out laughing.
“Okay…tell me your favorite rapper.”
“Natos y Waor.”
“Who are they?” He’s giving me shit.
“In a few years, you’re going to like them.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I promise.”
“Let’s see…sing me one of their songs.”
I think about it for a bit. It would have to be earlier than the year we were in…
“You don’t sing rap,” I say to buy some time. “You rap it.”
“Well, then rap to me.”
I start rapping one of their hits. This makes Tristan crack up. Me too. I dig my fingers into his ribs.
“Stop laughing at me!”
“It’s not at you.” He’s still laughing. “It’s with you, chica.”
We play wrestle, jostling each other only to end up much more snuggled together than we had been before. One leg between his and the other over his hip. My hands split between his neck and his hair. I see the thin chain around his neck glinting dully.
“That chain is straight out of communion,” I tease him.
“What? You never got so used to wearing something that if you forget to put it on, you feel naked?”
I nod. Yes. Him. Especially him on top, in my imagination, inside, with his cock trying to reach the point of no return, down below, when he looks at me and I know he feels proud, by my side, always…
“Your face changed. What are you thinking about?”
“How I don’t want this.”
“You don’t want what?”
“To get used to having you around my neck and then feeling naked if you leave.”
“And why am I going to leave?”
“Because you do leave.”
“What about if you leave?”
I sigh gently.
“Listen, Miranda…”
I’m scared I got too intense…although…why is it too much when it’s what you feel? Why this fear that we won’t be able to handle the things we need to say?
“What? You want me to shut up, right?” I cut him off.
“No. Listen…what if tomorrow, we play hooky from work and we both say we’re sick.”
“Why?”
“So we can stay in bed.”
Umm…
“Or even better,” he goes on, “we could book a weekend somewhere and sneak off tomorrow. Tell everyone we’re sick and get out of Madrid for a few days.”
“But…why? When we can just stay home and…”
“To do things.” He smiles. “To have a life outside work.”
A stab of guilt travels through my intestines.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s go to…El Escorial!”
“El Escorial?”
“I don’t know that area. It must be beautiful. And it’s nearby. We’ll rent a car and go walk around, eat, and fuck.”
I smile. I can’t help it.
“Ah!” He laughs. “You’re starting to like this plan more, eh?”
“Let’s stay home. We’ll call work early, say we’re both sick, and then we’ll go back to sleep. And then…we’ll spend the weekend watching shitty movies, fucking, and eating food that arrives on a motorcycle.”
“Or cooking,” he suggests. “And going to the movies. Or walking around downtown and drinking martinis on Sunday. I want to get out of bed at some point. I know you too well.”
“What if someone from work sees us?”
“We’ll tell them we feel better. You don’t have to be dying to miss work.”
I do.
Tristan grabs my face with both hands and pulls me to his mouth. He kisses me. He kisses me beautifully. It’s one of those kisses you would give anywhere but tastes better somewhere intimate, in bed, in the arms of another. It’s a kiss that doesn’t mean anything; it’s not a sorry or a hello or an I missed you or a goodbye. It’s a kiss that is given because it’s wanted, because we’re craving it. It’s a soft, smooth, stunning kiss…and it doesn’t last as long as I’d like. Then he looks at me and smiles.
“We’re not gonna blow off work tomorrow, are we?” he says sadly.
“I think we’re too responsible to do that.”
“Fine. It’s Friday anyway.”
I want to tell him we’ll see each other when we get out of work, that we’ll make plans and we’ll follow them through, but it’s futile, because tomorrow, I’ll wake up on another day, and I won’t carry them out. It won’t even work to get him away from me. How long did I stay angry? One day? Even though I’m thinking it, I don’t have the ovaries to just bluntly say: “Tristan, you’re going to put me through horrible pain, and to prevent that, I want you to get out of my life. Now .” And since I’m not capable of saying it, since I’m weak, here I am, doing this.
“Will you fuck me?” I ask.
The laugh that escapes him first like a fart between his lips spreads to me. I’ve always been like this. I’ve never known how to get out of tense situations with flying colors.
“What?” I whimper.
“You’re the shit.”
He kisses me on the forehead and then on the nose. Then he hugs me.
“Why don’t you want to?” I ask worriedly. “Yesterday” in Paris, he didn’t want to either.
“I do want to. But you wore me out yesterday.”
“Is that a joke?”
“No. Let’s leave it for tomorrow. We can fuck like two crazy people when we get back from work. That’ll give me motivation to be able to deal with the douchebags who are my colleagues without murdering anyone with a stapler. Why don’t I reserve a table at Ostras Pedrín?”
“Great…” I sigh sadly.
“Fine. It’s going to be a good weekend.”
He snuggles in like a boa constrictor around me and gets ready to sleep. Knowing him, in two or three seconds, he’ll be letting out his classic rounds of snores, but a minute passes. Two… And even though I still haven’t dared to move a muscle, he doesn’t seem to be sleeping either. I twist around as much as I can with his left arm still wrapped around my waist. His right searches for my hand under the pillow.
“Good night,” I say to him.
“Miranda…”
“What?”
“I’m not going to leave,” he insists.
“Okay.”
“Never.”
He kisses my shoulder and then my neck. A few seconds later, he’s asleep. And I don’t know why the fuck I lived through this day that has been so horrifically painful. Because this time with him has been incredible. Because we’ve always been the best on the humdrum days. Because I don’t know if I want him out of my life anymore. I don’t know if I can make him leave anymore. And because…what the fuck, I still love him…even on some random day.