6 With a Bottle of Beer in Hand #2
“No, no, I’m sorry,” she stressed politely. “Let’s make one thing clear. You ended up being dragged out from under the bed by my dad, who threw you out of the house with your underwear in your hand.”
“Underwear in your hand, underwear in your hand.”
They were thirty-eight years old, but a few of them acted like they were stuck at fourteen years old. They continued clapping and screaming like children.
No one could surpass that confession. And if in that old classmate reunion there was someone with even bigger revelations, they knew to keep the mystery to themselves, loyal to the unmistakable maxim that once something is known by two people, it stops being a secret.
Biel, who donned a new black Lacoste polo for the occasion, looked for an opportunity to get Gina to himself.
It wasn’t easy. She had become the queen of the party with the confession, and everyone wanted to ask her how she was (trucking along like everyone else), what she did (art history professor at the University of Barcelona), if she had kids (no), if she had gotten married (not that either), if she had a partner (not tonight, she limited her response to), how she managed to still look so good (what genetics can’t do, a Visa can . . .).
Once they left her alone, breathing in the night air, contemplating the city, Biel came up from behind her. Before turning around, Gina ventured to speak.
“Let me kiss your cheek.” She had guessed who it was. “What a scene you caused, little Biel with the big balls.”
Gina noticed that Biel smelled like sweat. Biel thought that Gina had picked the sweetest perfume out of everyone at the party. The man, who was going to be turning forty without a single hair on his head, began the conversation with a special formula to test her.
“I’ll never forget the first time I noticed you.”
“The last time you said that, we ended up fucking. Don’t get too excited today, because you’re not gonna be as lucky this time.”
“I wasn’t hitting on you, but . . .”
“And you won’t fit underneath my bed anymore.” Gina fixed her eyes on his belly. She was going to touch it, but she didn’t dare. She thought about how mad she’d be if someone had the guts to touch hers, however flat her belly might be.
“I’m also not in the mood to play tag with your dad. This much is true, he wouldn’t be able to drag me now.”
They burst out laughing. Gina hugged him again and gave him a kiss on the cheek. A noisy kiss. Biel smoked his cigarette and repeatedly and delicately exhaled the smoke. Gina was thankful that, without asking him, he turned his face to avoid bothering her with the smoke.
“Is he still alive?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father . . .”
“Oh, yes, yes, of course! Man, he has a new family. At my age, I’ve ended up with two cute little brothers.
They’re eight and six years old. They have cosmically bad luck.
They don’t have a father. They have a grandpa who lets them do whatever they want, who spoils them all day.
With those two dictators at home, there’s no one who will step foot in that house.
Altogether, if you look at it from my perspective, it’s pathetic. But if he’s happy . . .”
“Does he look happy to you?”
Gina didn’t know how to respond. Biel wasn’t too interested in his own question either.
“You said you live in London?”
“On the outskirts. About twenty-five minutes on the tube, but I work on Fleet Street in the City. Do you know the newspaper street? It’s by St. Paul’s Cathedral, where Lady Di and Dumbo Ears got married.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve visited. I’m more of a Paris person. Actually, I go quite often to Paris. I have a story, man . . . I’m putting together a ten-thousand-piece puzzle about my mother.”
Gina noticed the surprise on his face.
“A ten-thousand-piece puzzle?” asked Biel.
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“Was your mom a fan of puzzles?”
“No, no, I mean, well, I don’t know. I’m trying to piece together my mother’s life.
Specific episodes. Vital moments. I realized that I knew hardly anything, that I had such few, foggy memories, and that most of all, I had a lack of knowledge about my mother that was keeping me from moving forward.
And that, holy moly, I needed to know her.
It was an obsession. It is. As if I need to know how she was, how she lived, how she thought, to be able to accept myself. Give me a drag.”
“You smoke?”
“I do now.” Noticing the surprise in Biel’s eyes, Gina had to explain.
“What’s wrong? I want to. The night deserves it, and I have to tell this story that is the most .
. . intriguing, impressive, and inspiring story you’ve ever heard.
I still can’t tell if it’s a thriller or a fairy tale.
I can’t believe the things I’ve been discovering about my mother. Do you have time?”
“Well, ma’am, when you sell it to me like that . . .”
“But I have to warn you that I don’t know how it ends and that you might have to help me. That’s why I’m saying that I’m in the middle of a sea of puzzle pieces that I’m trying to reconstruct. There are pieces everywhere.”
“And in Paris, from what you’re saying . . . Should we sit down?”
They returned to the tables destroyed by the dinner.
Mountains of wrinkled napkins, a dying candle, and everywhere dirty coffee cups and half-drunk glasses of wine with lipstick stains.
The classmates had climbed up to the red courtyard, drawn by the open bar, the DJ, and the three loudspeakers that played loudly even for the dead in the cemetery that was in front of the school.
There was hardly anyone left in the courtyard with three pines.
They sat in two lawn chairs. Biel brought an ashtray close, and Gina (“What a relief!”) kicked off her heels.
The tickle of the pine needles among the grass felt refreshing to her.
“My mother had a cousin in Paris . . . well, close to Paris, in Croissy-sur-Seine. The Seine is, just so you know, like the Thames in London.”
“You’re a dumbass . . .”