At Night We Walk in Circles. Daniel Alarcon

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СКАЧАТЬ the dead heart of winter. Ghoulish clouds, a fine, gray mist. It was entirely his doing—he wanted freedom, he said. She scoffed, “What am I, your jailer?” and in response, selfish but authentic tears bubbled in his eyes. He was going to the United States and couldn’t be beholden to her or anyone in pursuit of his future. They didn’t speak for three months, during which time he made no plans and took no steps toward this supposedly brave and life-changing move.

      In early October, Nelson and Ixta met for a coffee, a tense affair which led, nonetheless, to another meeting, a few weeks later. Quite unexpectedly, midway through this second encounter, he found himself laughing. And Ixta laughing too. It wasn’t tentative, or self-conscious, or polite. And this shook him, the realization that, had he more nerve, he could reach across the narrow table that separated them, and—in front of all these strangers—casually lay his hand upon hers. No one would notice or think it odd. They might even smile at the sight, or say to themselves something like:

       Oh, what a handsome young couple!

      He didn’t, of course—not that day—but he did make some progress. Slowly. Patiently. At the steady rate of an ant gathering food, or a bird building a nest. And it paid off: by the start of the Christmas season, they were sleeping together again. It happened almost by accident at first, but the second time filled him with hope. They began meeting every two weeks or so, more if Mindo, Ixta’s new boyfriend, was working nights. These encounters were the source of both happiness and torment for Nelson, but he was, in any case, unable or unwilling to push things any further. In their nakedness, they talked about everything except what they were doing together, the future, and somehow the vagueness of their new relationship was why it felt so very adult. Ixta never asked if he still intended to leave for the United States, nor did he mention it. He would—someday soon, he felt certain—tell her he loved her, that he missed her, that he was sorry for everything, and that they should be together, if not forever, then at least for now. Afterward, things would be clearer. He hadn’t written the scene out—he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore—but he had projected himself into it, rehearsed a speech or two in his head. As it turns out, Ixta was expecting this as well. She didn’t know how she’d respond, but she was waiting. There was only the small issue of his not having said anything.

      In March, when he heard the news about Diciembre, Nelson considered all they’d been through, what surely lay ahead, and decided it was correct to call her first. Her place in line was a nod to their past, to their imagined future. The phone rang twice, a curt hello. Ixta let him talk, and congratulated him, drily. He listened: it was the voice she used when Mindo was in the room.

      Nelson and Ixta were both actors, though, so this fact hardly precluded conversation; in fact, it was more important than ever to behave naturally. Just two friends talking. The subterfuge was part of the attraction, one imagines. Ixta played her part: the news was grand, she told him. “How long will you be gone?”

      “A couple of months, maybe three.”

      There was a certain sadism to his announcement. “I felt abandoned,” Ixta said to me later. “Again.”

      She kept this confession to herself, and instead offered: “You always did want to travel.”

      “It could even go for longer, if we’re well received.”

      “One hopes.”

      Nelson waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. She’d gifted him these two words, but they were impossible to interpret. One hopes for what?

      In the background: “Who’s that, baby?”

      Nelson flinched, but refused to back down. Later, he’d wonder if he’d been reckless. But really: what if they were caught? Shouldn’t he want that to happen?

      “Shall we celebrate?” he asked.

      In his mind, the fact that they were lovers—and only lovers, for now—was a relief to Ixta. He imagined her grateful that he placed no pressure on their future, did not demand a label for this new iteration of their relationship. He imagined her impressed by his maturity, by his willingness to share her with another man. But this formulation was partial. It did not take into account the fact that she’d loved him, or that he’d broken her heart. It did not consider that her heart might be broken still, or that every time they slept together, it broke a little more.

      “I don’t know,” Ixta said. “I’m busy this week.”

      “I thought you’d be happy for me,” Nelson said, and immediately regretted it. He sounded so plaintive, so self-involved. There were certain traits he’d been careful not to manifest since their reconciliation, but here they were, slipping out into the open, naked. He wanted to be a better person; and if that were not possible, at least to seem like one.

      “I am happy for you,” she said. “Thrilled.”

      He doubled down: “I’d like to see you.”

      Ixta sighed: talking to herself now, in a rapid clip that tumbled the conversation to a close. “Sure. Yeah. Okay. Great. Talk soon.” He could almost hear the man lying next to her, eyes half-closed, wrapping Ixta’s brown hair casually around his finger.

      Nelson held the phone a little while longer, for no good reason.

      THE SECOND PERSON to hear the good news was his mother, Mónica, who’d been widowed three years prior, and whose capacity for joy had been greatly diminished ever since. That phrase is hers: “capacity for joy,” she said to me, as one might describe the potential speed of a four-cylinder engine, or the memory inside a new computer. When this was brought to her attention, Mónica laughed. “Too many years as a bureaucrat,” she said. “Imagine the life I could have had!”

      But the truth is she’d liked her life just fine until her husband died. The house she and her younger son shared was strange to them now; and both spent as little time there as possible. The first year, Nelson often heard his mother crying very late at night. Francisco would sometimes call from California, and stay on the phone with her for long spells. The melancholy chatter emerging from the other room lulled him to sleep. He slept quite a bit in those days. Mónica was better now. She still kept her husband’s pajamas under his old pillow, and respected the notion that one side of the bed was his. It was only right she feel her husband’s absence like a wound.

      Mónica went to the movies a great deal, American mostly. She’d developed a taste for action films and thrillers. The more explosions and special effects, the better; if the movie involved aliens or submarines, she privately rejoiced. She even tried to explain this new interest to her sons, separately, with varying results. Predictably, Nelson (for whom the storytelling aesthetic was not a matter of taste but a deeply held conviction) was less than supportive. Francisco, on the other hand, regarded it as comical, and somehow in keeping with his mother’s other eccentricities; she made origami swans from tea bag wrappers, flocks of them appearing in the house’s odd corners: in a little-used kitchen cupboard, behind the fine china; in the dining room, seated at the head of the table; or perched on windowsills, facing the street. She never threw away a magazine without cutting a pretty picture or two out of it first, their refrigerator door becoming the de facto gallery space for these images, a collage of faces which had made Nelson and Francisco feel, as children, that they were part of an eclectic and impossibly large family. And since Sebastián had passed, Mónica had picked up one of his old habits: writing letters to the newspapers, for example, complaining about potholes, traffic jams, rising crime, the lack of green space. These she wrote in Sebastián’s name, under his signature, faithful to her husband’s acid and erudite style. Whenever one was published, Mónica felt a pang, a sense СКАЧАТЬ