21 “Even when you’re slippery, I’ll try to catch you in your dreams.”
21
“Even when you’re slippery, I’ll try to catch you in your dreams.”
Moving is the worst. I don’t know why this cosmic and temporal wheel is punishing me by making me live through our move again. I don’t have very fond memories of it, to be honest. And the truth is Tristan didn’t have much stuff to move, but he did have a lot of his own habits. But I’m not going to get ahead of myself. Maybe today will set the huge butterfly effect in motion that I’ve been waiting for for so long, and the little changes I’ve been making will collapse into a substantial change in our history…like, for example, transforming this adjustment period into a honeymoon period instead of a shitmoon.
But Ivan will probably be the only one who’ll suffer collateral damage. He might wake up tomorrow and decide to wear a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume. Or get the urge to give himself a perm.
Fine. It wasn’t that bad. Let’s not exaggerate. I’ll find the good part of all this in no time. It’s just about not being as nitpicky as I was that day.
When I wake up, Tristan isn’t in bed. For a few seconds, I’m not sure whether it’s winter or summer. So you can imagine when it comes to the year…I can’t even go there. The problem is he must have turned on the AC before he left, and now there’s a penguin walking into the bathroom. Any doubt about the details of the day disappear when I grab my phone and check it. It’s Friday, and I have a message from him:
Tristan:
I was going to bring you coffee in bed, but since you took the day off for the move, I thought it would be better to let you sleep. Yes, sleep, that elusive thing that doesn’t seem to be one of your physiological needs.
I’ll be back soon. There’s just a few boxes and some suitcases. I’ll be all moved in before you even know it.
Great.
Moving is the worst, but the universe, karma, Vishnu, or who knows what other cosmic force wants me to relive it.
I open my laptop almost immediately. I took the day off, but I remember that we’re in the middle of closing, and the girls are going to have questions. I like to be on top of things, so I try to get ahead of the worst by firing off a few “just in case, girls” emails.
When Tristan opens the door (I gave him a set of keys with great ceremony on a very lovely night that, of course, I’m not going to relive), completely loaded down with stuff, I’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I’m checking a few pieces.
“Don’t work. They’re going to count it as a vacation day anyway.”
I get up to help him right away… I will neither confirm nor deny whether “right away” means that I take a little longer than strictly necessary to stand up and tear my eyes away from the screen.
“Come on. The sooner we start defiling this temple, the sooner we’ll be done,” I joke.
“So sweet. To me, the guy who brought you a gift.”
He holds out the white vase from Abe the Ape with the bouquet of flowers I forgot at his first apartment in Madrid, which he lovingly dried.
“Welcome home.”
Tristan isn’t messy; that’s the truth. I’ve said it before, he’s a neat guy, which doesn’t mean he has any fondness for housework. In the first move (this same one, but the first time around), I gave him a “house tour” of the few rooms in the house, explaining certain rules, as if I was welcoming a tenant whom I was going to share a bed with. It didn’t sit very well with him. It wasn’t that bad though. I think he just got a little sullen because he thought: “What the hell have I gotten myself into, for Christ’s sake!”
And I don’t blame him. I’m not going to make that mistake today.
I shove the hangers in my closet to one side. My past self was always meticulous about decluttering my clothes, and there are far, far fewer (I remember it took me all weekend and ten huge garbage bags), but there are still plenty. My apartment is cute but very small. A kitchen, the living room, just one bedroom, and an en suite bathroom. What makes it special is that it had been recently renovated when I rented it, it’s not crazy expensive, and it has a lot of light thanks to the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and the bedroom. In the kitchen, there’s a window that lets in good light, even though it overlooks the inner courtyard. So tons of light, but closets…that’s a different story.
I carefully fold the T-shirts and sweaters in the drawers I emptied for him while I lovingly explain to him that winter clothes will have to be stored in special vacuum bags under the bed. He’s hanging shirts up randomly (color-coordinate them for the love of the universe, can’t you see the chromatic harmony of my closet?) and furrows his brow.
“But they’ll be all wrinkled when they come out.”
“They don’t come out. You have to take them out.” I bite my lip, trying not to be so blunt, but I just caught a glimpse of the box of research books he uses when he works from home, and they’re going to hog a good portion of the shelves in the living room, and it’s making me grumpy.
“I guess home automation hasn’t gotten that far.”
“They do get pretty wrinkled,” I admit. “But it’s the best solution for the space. Anyway, we don’t have to iron it all ourselves. Don’t worry.”
“If we don’t iron it, then who does?”
I’d forgotten this. I hid that someone cleaned my house and did the ironing. Why did I do that? Who knows? I think I wanted to project the image of being a superwoman capable of having it all. A mythological being. Who knows why it would be a problem for someone to work in your house doing things that you can’t manage yourself? Why are we disappointed in ourselves if we can’t do everything single-handedly?
“Well, I don’t know why this has never come up before, but I have a cleaner. She comes once a week, for four hours on Thursday mornings.”
“For such a small house?” He raises an eyebrow.
“I spend a lot of time out, at work.” I shrug. “It’s the best. She’s really sweet. Sometimes, if there’s not much to iron and I’ve kept the house more or less tidy and she has time left over, she makes me cookies. Because I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it…but I have an oven.”
I’m very proud of my oven. When you see a lot of places to rent in central Madrid, you realize it’s a real luxury.
“So basically, you’re paying her to make you cookies,” he points out.
“That’s a straw man argument.”
“Miri, there are two of us now. You spend a lot of time at work, but we can handle it ourselves. We have four hands. The weekend…”
I stand across from him, my hands on my hips.
“No, Tristan, I want to spend the weekend resting and having fun, not cleaning and ironing. It’s a preplanned expense, and it’s included in my budget. If you don’t want to contribute to the payment, that’s fine, but I’m not going to fire Yolanda.”
“Yolanda.”
“Yes. Yolanda.”
He nods slowly.
“If that’s the house rule…I’ll comply. How much does she charge?”
“We’ll talk about expenses later.”
I’m not going to argue about it. I did that last time, and all that happened was I flipped out, and the end result was the same: Yolanda stays.
“You have a lot of clothes,” he mumbles.
“Not really.” Yes, I do have a lot of clothes.
“You do. Look.”
I look at the wardrobe-dresser in my bedroom, where I have it all categorized by garment type and color; skirts, pants, dresses, blouses, and shoes.
“I work in fashion.”
He mimes zipping his mouth shut, and I sigh. Memory is an incredible thing: it hoovers over the friction and the gray parts like an industrial vacuum cleaner and then strokes the good moments like someone holding a puppy.
Since I’ve been stuck in this time-traveling thing, I haven’t had a chance to go shopping; when I do, sometimes I’ll have to hide the bags and cut the tags off quickly so Tristan doesn’t give me a lecture about hoarding clothes. I’ll lose count of the number of times I’ll lie and say no when he asks, “Is that new?”
“It’s true I have a lot of clothes, but think about—”
“Yeah, yeah. I was just surprised because I remember how excited you were when you published that article about capsule wardrobes and the need to buy versatile garments.”
He’s a lawyer. Of course. He’ll defend his argument to the death.
“Yes, you’re right, but as I was saying”—I try to speak very calmly as I show him the empty drawer I left for his boxers—“I have a lot of events where I can’t repeat the same outfit…”
“That’s where the versatility part comes in.” He smiles.
“Okay. You’re just trying to rile me up, so I’m going to ignore you. What do you think about putting your books on the bottom shelf?”
“All the way on the bottom? They’re research books. I’m going to break my back.”
“I mean, look, if you do squats when you take them out, you can save on a gym membership.”
I couldn’t quite make out what he muttered as I headed out toward the living room, but whatever it was seems to make it clear I’m not making this move much more fun than the first time around.
“Universe, what have I done to deserve this?” I say from the living room, trying to get a rise out of him.
“You should’ve fallen in love with a Saudi prince, darling. When you put two people and all their stuff in a fifty-square-meter apartment, this is the result.”
“Don’t complain. There are people in Madrid living in thirty-square-meter apartments.”
Oy, oy, oy. Let’s not go there, because it’s a very touchy subject for me. My apartment is the best. Was he this tedious the last time?
“I’m not complaining, but we have to be meticulous and prioritize the things we use the most to make the space more workable. My research books…”
I stick my head into the bedroom.
“Tristan…”
“Talk to me.”
“Tristan, my love…”
“Talk to me, Miranda, my sweetie…” He smiles.
Ay. Fuck. That smile.
“I love this apartment. It’s comfortable. It’s updated. It’s practical, and on top of that, I’ve made it beautiful. And you are wonderful, and even my liver is in love with you, which, just so you know, is the organ that holds your rage. You’re smart, fun, good-looking. You’re hot, and we both like our meat very rare, the beach, and drinking martinis on Sunday, which is just gilding the lily…”
“Don’t forget the part about my cock.”
“The most beautiful cock in the northern hemisphere.”
“And the Yucatán Peninsula.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“The Yucatán Peninsula? But what…? Look, it doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t know where you’re going with this.” He leans against the wardrobe and crosses his arms over his chest.
Holy mother of God, what a man… I could even get over his research books. But I can’t give in.
“This is where I’m going: the research books belonging to the lawyer I’m in love with are going on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf in the living room until 2020.”
“Why until 2020?”
“Something tells me you’re going to need to use them more often.”
“Ay, Miranda…”
By nighttime, everything is unpacked in its place, and I’ve held up pretty well, even when he wanted to know the use of every little bottle I keep in the bathroom. On the actual “day,” I felt like he was trying to point out that I didn’t need them so I would get rid of them to open up more space, but I’ve learned that Tristan has a curious soul, especially with what he appreciates, with the people he loves. And today, he loves me a lot. You can see it in how he looks at me.
I really enjoy the way he’s looking at me today. Maybe, in the rush to understand what was happening to me, with my thirst for revenge, with the successive days of blind love and Cupid’s arrow, I haven’t been paying attention to that look. Because those two eyes somewhere between brown, green, and gray follow me through what is now their living room with a kind of admiration, teasing, surprised. These two people who are opening take-out containers at the coffee table in the living room, sitting on the floor, can still surprise each other. They haven’t resigned themselves, they want to make an effort, and they haven’t yet settled into their comfort zone as a couple. Hopefully they never will. Maybe they can make it.
“Cooking is going to happen way more in this house starting now,” he announces, bounding nimbly toward the kitchen.
“You assume I don’t cook.”
“I just peeled the protective plastic off one of the buttons on the stove.”
He hands me a plate and sits down across from me again. I like that he likes the TV just the right amount. He doesn’t ask me to turn it on while we’re eating dinner; he wants us to tell each other things. I think it was the pandemic that brought that into our lives.
“Well…it’s just that if I examine my consciousness, I don’t have the patience to cook.”
“Patience is important in cooking,” he says seriously. “And cohabitating.”
Our eyes meet, and we smile.
“We’re gonna have a great time,” I assure him.
“Another exercise in prediction? You haven’t done that in a while.”
“Because it comes in phases. My powers are fickle… They come and go.”
“Phew, thank God. I was about to ask you for the winning lottery numbers.”
In this world, we’re obsessed with material things… I’m tempted to tell him that we could lose much more than we could win in the lottery if we don’t get it right this time, but I’d have to explain too much to him. Explanations he wouldn’t understand.
“Are there rules?” he asks, handing me a little bowl for soy sauce.
“For sushi?” I find it strange.
“For your house.”
“Yes. The first one is to stop saying ‘your house’ because it’s ‘our house’ now.”
I arm myself with chopsticks and pinch them at him before I grab a little wasabi and dilute it in my soy sauce. It’s time to break out the big guns.
“Second rule: being empathetic about each other’s preferences and pet peeves.”
“Seems easy enough.”
“It’s not gonna be that easy. I like lighting scented candles, buying novels when I still have some I haven’t read yet, and blasting music on Saturday mornings while I tidy up the house. I never get rid of books, so I calculate that in approximately three years, they’ll be in every corner of the house, including the floor and the windowsills.”
He makes a face.
“I lay my clothes out the night before and put them on a hanger on the back of the bathroom door, and you’re always going to be tempted to hang your towel there. Either there or on top of mine…making it damp. I put so much moisturizer on every night I end up as slippery as a bar of soap in the bathroom of a prison movie. And sometimes that’s going to piss you off.”
“Okay.”
“But you’ll have to remember that you eat like the world is ending and that on top of that, when you cook, because you have to eat a homemade meal no matter what, the kitchen will look like Chernobyl. Every time you put towels in the washing machine, you ‘forget’”—I make air quotes—“to put in softener. You have enough hair to fill IKEA cushions, and it grows fast, so there will always be a reminder of your hair in the bathroom. Let’s not even talk about the bathroom, okay? I want the evening to stay pleasant.”
He lets out a chuckle that makes him choke on the maki he was eating. When he recovers, he nods.
“Understood. We’ll both be annoyed by stuff about each other, and we have to be empathetic for cohabitating to work.”
“Exactly. Third rule…”
“There’s more?” He sounds surprised.
“Of course there are more. Way more. Make a mental note.”
“Go on then…” He chooses a nigiri with seared salmon and looks at it suspiciously. He’s more into classic flavors. I don’t know how I convinced him to order sushi.
“We’ll never go to bed angry without kissing each other. Sundays will be our special day. We’re not going to spend all day rotting on the couch in pajamas or sweatpants. We’ll make nice plans. Sunday is date day, no matter what.”
“A date!” He laughs.
“We have to keep surprising each other. It doesn’t matter how. A song, a note on the fridge, a coffee, a visit, sneaking into the shower when the other one is soaping up…”
“Phew, for a second, I thought you weren’t going to mention sex.” He laughs.
“It’s important that we don’t stop touching each other.”
“That would never happen. And we’ll hug each other every day,” he adds.
“Yes.” I put a maki into my mouth and then say with my mouth full: “Do you want to keep going?”
“No, no, you’re the one who can predict the future here, so…”
“Ay, so funny.” I grimace. “Well, I’ll tell you these rules are important.”
“Yeah? Do we have to pay a fine if we don’t follow them?” He raises an eyebrow.
“I know you want me to say something about your mouth being busy between my thighs, but I’m serious. What happens if we don’t follow the rules is that we’re gonna take it up the ass.”
“Fuck…” He opens his eyes wide.
I sigh.
“Miri…” He strokes my arm tenderly. “It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”
“My father always says love is a full-time job, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, twenty-four hours a day, but I think it’s more like a newborn that needs attention and care. It’s not just about feeding it, protecting it from the cold or the heat, and keeping it safe… You have to rock it, pamper it, play with it, teach it to laugh, and console it when it cries.”
Tristan has stopped chewing and dropped his chopsticks, which he can usually handle pretty well…and he’s staring at me, like he’s looking right through me.
“What?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. He stands up again and heads into the kitchen, where I hear him rummaging through one of the drawers. He comes back looking serious, with something hidden in his closed fist, and heads over to the record player.
“You’re not going to tell me…?”
He shoots me a look over his shoulder as he picks out a record; there’s something complicit in his expression, but his silence is so confusing. It could be anything. He moves the needle on the record player, looking for a specific song. He misses a few times, but finally he finds the one he wants: “You and Me” by The Cranberries. Then he comes back to the table, sits down, and clears the center, pushing the sushi containers to either side. In the middle, he puts a tiny candle and lights it.
“Ooh, so romantic,” and I say it with surprise, not sarcasm, because I really wasn’t expecting it.
“For a while now, I’ve been wondering if you’re the type who wants to get married. To tell the truth, my mother even asked me that: ‘But, Tristan, doesn’t she want to get married?’ I still have no clue. It’s part of the magic between us, that there are mysteries that can only be discovered over time. And listen, I’m not the type who thinks marriage is the natural progression of love, but to these vows, I say I do.”
I raise one eyebrow at the same time as a huge grin spreads across my face.
“Slather yourself in all the cream you want, Miranda. Even when you’re slippery, I’ll try to catch you in your dreams.”