6 With a Bottle of Beer in Hand
With a Bottle of Beer in Hand
“Hi, I’m Sara. I left after second grade at BUP. I’m single, and at the moment, I’m happy to stay this way. I own a stationery store that my parents opened right near the El Putxet market. I don’t know, what else can I say? I sing in a neighborhood choir three times a week, and we have a fun time?”
“Alfred Sicilia. I’m realizing as I see all of you that all these years have passed, and you have done so many things, but I remain the same.
I still have a dog, although it’s not the same one of course.
I’m still an RCD Espanyol fan, what’s wrong with that?
I still live in Riera de Sant Miquel, and I still vacation in Blanes. ”
“And your secret, Sicilia?”
“Secret?” He mulled it over for a second. “I’m not sure if I should admit it, but my older son plays in the Barca kids’ league.”
School reunions. At first, they’re more annoying than anything. Afterward too. But once you’re actually there, your drowsiness tends to evaporate.
“Not much going on for me.” Mia, the chattiest girl in class, needed no introduction.
“I got married in Lloret de Mar to Toni, who is a lifelong friend. We have two kids—they’re nine and six—who go to school here because, even though it’s not very popular to say it, I have fond memories of this school.
I mean, every day I get stuck in rush-hour traffic.
Back in the day, things like the Dalt beltway, traffic jams, finding parking, or having to double-park in the mornings or evenings didn’t exist.”
“Or the tow truck guys making a killing off us,” someone yelled out from under the proudest of the pines. The other two had given up.
“Between traffic jams, I work at an agency. Like I said, nothing special.”
No one discussed their small, insignificant successes.
Aside from the forty-euros-per-person charge (there would be a meal and an open bar), the payment instructions, and suggested dress code, the invitation email contained a postscript that, at first, sounded like a real riot.
After updating each other on how life had turned out, everyone would have to introduce themselves and confess a secret.
Now that the moment had come, hardly anyone did it, and hardly anyone found it funny.
“I got married at twenty-nine. That morning, before putting on my suit coat and the whole getup, I decided to weigh myself. Better said, in order to be accurate since it’s a night for confessions, I jacked off for the last time as a single man and then I got on the scale, in that order.
” Everyone laughed and applauded. “I wanted to be able sometime in the future to say, ‘When I got married I weighed . . .’ So anyway I weighed 230 pounds. Five years later I got divorced at 260 pounds. Happy to be single again and eat fast food, frozen pizzas, and microwavable pasta, I ended up at 295 pounds. And then, once I was warned that I had all the risk factors—smoking, high cholesterol, obesity, and erectile dysfunction—I did the one thing none of you should ever do under any circumstances: get a gastric bypass. Sure, I’ve lost weight without any effort, but look at me, I have extra skin everywhere, and this is no way to live. ”
Oscar sat down at the table, and all his old classmates applauded again.
“Let’s do guy, girl. It’ll be fun.”
“One after the other.”
“Whose turn is it?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll all get a chance to talk,” said Gina, who, at thirty-eight, looked a lot like the pictures she had seen of her mother in her thirties.
It had been a while since they had seen each other.
They were celebrating twenty years since their graduation, and Maria and Axel, who had kept in touch and were the type born to organize events, had put the whole thing together.
They had talked to the school, organized the catering for the dinner, found tables, chairs, and tablecloths from who knows where, and set everything up in the three pines courtyard like it was a wedding with around ninety guests.
With their sleeves already rolled up, they put in an order for a lovely evening, serene and mild, so that the girls in their spaghetti-straps wouldn’t catch a June cold, which is always the most traitorous.
Egged on by his tablemates, Driki stood up with a bottle of beer in his hand.
“You can say that I’ve stayed ahead of my time. I started a travel agency just as people started to buy plane tickets and reserve hotel rooms online. Feel free to respond: Bravo, campione.”
“Bravo, campione!”
“Then I came across a bargain: A photography shop was being sold on the Eixample. It was a good location, a good turnover. The owners were retiring, and I bought it. Six months later, digital cameras appeared on the scene, and no one returned to develop photos, not even their mistress’s dirty pics. Respond . . .”
“Bravo, campione!” everyone yelled wholeheartedly.
“I thought I’d use this dinner as an opportunity in case anyone wants to team up with me, because I have a business idea and I’m sure it could be a good investment.”
Everyone burst out with laughter about Driki’s misadventures. He was the same as always, without an iota of self-pity, and always the first to laugh at his bad luck. When he sat down, all his friends at the table hugged him, squeezing his shoulder and throwing napkins at him.
“Gina, now it’s your . . .”
“No, first Maite. Let Maite talk first, because if she keeps drinking like that, soon she won’t be able to say anything.”
“Thank you so much, dearly missed imbeciles,” Maite shot at whoever had paid her the compliment, and then, she looked up at the tables beyond the courtyard.
“First of all, let me say that, in these twenty years, the men here have generally been on the decline but the women, we’ve only gotten better.
Olé to us! We’ve taken care of ourselves and look better than you all, who, honestly, after twenty years, there’s not a single one of you that’s cute or worth a damn.
As for me . . . I can’t complain about work.
Dental assistant: Put in the hours, open doors, fill the little cup so you rinse your mouth, and a few cleanings a week.
But if we have to reveal a secret . . .” No one expected for someone to throw a bucket of cold water in their faces at a celebratory dinner.
“Hmm, in these last few years . . . I’ve lost two babies.
I’ve had two abortions, one provoked, the other not.
Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten rid of the first .
. . Perhaps the second was a punishment of sorts: You didn’t want the first, well, we’re taking away the second.
The second child was a girl, and was eight months along.
But now, doctors don’t think we can have children.
That said, now that I see I’ve brought down the mood, I have two questions.
One: Does anyone believe in the existence of such a macabre God who does these kinds of things, who gives and takes, who rewards us and punishes us?
And second, and most importantly: Has anyone here adopted a child from Armenia and can explain to me how the whole process functions once you get there? ”
The people at her table were the first to get up and applaud Maite.
The eighty-something other classmates chanted her name, waving their linen napkins like scarves.
She plopped down in her chair and could not stop the tears that, in a stream, fell on the damned pine needles that got into shoes of all the classmates.
“Now it’s my turn.” Slowly, Biel, using his hands like an amateur orchestra conductor, made everyone sit and quiet down, knowing that he would have to disrupt the dramatic, even tragic, mood that was in danger of overtaking the nostalgic dinner.
“I’ve lived in London for the last seven years. I work as a lawyer at a firm where there are fifty of us suits, not a single woman. And yes, I came back just for this dinner.”
They applauded him. Even though he had managed to turn things around, he still needed to keep the crowd going.
“I’ve come because I was excited to see you all. All the boys and girls. But especially one person. A classmate of yours, who twenty years ago was a girl, and who I see is now a beautiful woman, and read my lips, a girl who had the honor of taking my virginity in her bed at her house.”
“Wow!” Soler was the first to react.
“Who is it?” Edu cried out.
“It must be . . .” And here Mec spouted off a list of girls he saw at the party, trying to guess the riddle.
“It’s Gina. It has to be Gina . . .” Driki, who knew a thing or two, riled up the crowd.
“I won’t name her if she doesn’t want me to.” Biel, ever the modest one, wanted them to beg.
“Let’s see, with all the hints.” Gina stood up amid the uproar.
Once they all calmed down, after a minute of commotion, laughter, and standing ovations, she continued to speak.
“Let’s admit that back then Biel was the ugliest in the class.
I wanted to do him a solid because if I hadn’t, given how dumb he is, he still wouldn’t have lost it to this day. Let’s just say it was . . .”
“A favor!”
“Shut up, Driki.”
“Charity work,” Gina shot back, who had to go on the offensive, not embarrassed in the least.
“Charity, charity, charity.” All the classmates started to clap to the beat.
Biel, who had not improved with the years, had remained standing. He looked at Gina smiling, challenging her with calculated risks. No one wanted to back down from this duel that brought so much entertainment to their classmates from a school named after a saint.
“If you’re gonna tell it that way, like you did me a favor, let’s just tell the whole story.”
“Tell the whole story, tell the whole story.” The enthusiastic audience continued to clap to the beat of the syllables.
“I ended up butt naked under the bed, because her dad came home by surprise.” The old friends writhed on the floor with laughter. Gina was also giggling.