“Larry,” says Julieth.
“What?”
“Why are you still standing there? What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Oh, Larry,” she says. “What we had was a long time ago. It was great, but I’m seeing somebo—”
I cut her off. “Let’s find the kitchen. I’m thirsty.”
Downstairs we run into Pedro and La Murciélaga, who look upset. Did you find her?, Pedro asks. Not a trace. You’re shitting me, La Murciélaga says. Where did that chick get off to? Maybe she left. Right, she got tired of waiting for us and left. Thank you to life, which has given me so much, it’s given steps to my weary feet . . . Jesus, what’s up with these people? How long are they going to keep singing the same damn thing? Let’s jet, Pedro, the Swedish chick’s massive, she can take care of herself. With them I’ve walked cities and fields, beaches and deserts, mountains and plains . . .
“Hey, guys.” The woman who first greeted us appears out of nowhere. “Did you find your friend?”
The four of us shake our heads.
“Nobody saw her leave?” Pedro asks her.
“Actually I never even saw her come in,” the woman says.
“Do you people realize the kind of diplomatic shitstorm that’ll kick up if something happens to this Swedish chick?” Pedro asks, his tone menacing.
The woman shrugs and says, smiling, “The meat’s ready. Come on, there’s enough for everybody.”
“The hell with your meat,” Pedro says, furious. “Let’s get out of here.”
He takes off like a bat out of hell. Pedro, Pedro, La Murciélaga calls after him, trying to catch up. Did you call her cell? She doesn’t have a cell phone, he says. O.K., so call the number she called you from, Julieth suggests. Pedro whirls around and says, do you think I’m an idiot, that’s the first thing I did, and this dude answered who said he’d lent her the phone, full stop. That’s super sketchy, says La Murciélaga. And Julieth says, don’t get all worked up over it, she probably went off with some guy. Pedro stops again. Julieth says, don’t look at me like that, you know what she’s like.
Inside the house, the singers seem to have reached the song’s climax. Pedro grabs his head and yells, “In my dictatorship, pansy-ass parties like this will be outlawed!”
La Murciélaga puts her arm around him and leads him to the car. Julieth and I follow behind as the people in the house keep intoning hoarsely, thank you to life, thank you to life, thank you to liiiiiiife.
17
Death brought Charlie and Larry together. For her, it was her father’s, a noble death, that of a prominent, well-respected man. Larry’s father, on the other hand, was a criminal, disappeared, unseemly even in death. She would have a corpse she still remembered, elegant and done up for the funeral. She’d be able to hug it and weep over it. Whereas Larry would find a heap of bones, maybe with a bullet hole in its skull, a grin of false teeth, or a shattered femur.
Charlie slept, and Larry pondered why people attach so much importance to the dead body when the thing that really hurts is the absence.
Is it just so they can be certain the person’s dead? . . .
“I fell asleep,” Charlie said, and he started. “I’m thirsty,” she added.
“I’ll bring you some water,” Larry told her, then realized he hadn’t addressed her by the formal usted.
Before he could get up, she downed the last dregs of gin and melted ice in her glass, gulping as if it were water. Larry took the opportunity to shift in his seat and stretch a bit.
“Did you rest any?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t really know how I feel. Everything hurts, and at the same time I don’t feel anything. I don’t know if this moment is real or if I’m making it up so I can get through the flight. I want it to be over already and at the same time I want it to never end, for us to keep flying till . . .” She fell silent and closed her eyes again. Two fat tears rolled down her cheeks and disappeared somewhere on her neck.
“Rest here if you like,” Larry said, gesturing to his shoulder.
“I’ll get your shirt wet.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Plus I feel guilty falling asleep,” Charlie said.
“Guilty?”
“It feels unfair that he’s dead and I’m sleeping.”
“But . . .” Larry was going to say, but he’s dead. He stopped and said, “You need to rest, you’ve got a hard day ahead of you.”
“I’ve got a hard life ahead of me.”
“It’s tough at first,” Larry murmured. “You think you’re not going to be able to do it, but after a while . . .”
“How long?”
“I don’t know, it depends. Maybe months, maybe years. When you least expect it, you feel like somebody’s tugging on you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Something or somebody. An invisible hand, an unknown force. Suddenly you feel yourself being pulled, and without realizing it, you’re on the other side.”
“Who helped you?” she asked without looking at him, lying on his shoulder, in a voice he wouldn’t have even heard if they hadn’t been so close together.
“Nobody.”
“You?”
“Not even me.”
Larry had to tell her the truth.
Reality itself opened my eyes and reached out its hand to lift me up. Libardo wasn’t the solution—he was the problem. Without him, there wouldn’t be any uncertainty or fear . . .
“The truth,” said Larry. “The truth was what saved me.”
He said it knowing that the truth was such a complicated thing that, at that moment, Charlie wasn’t going to find out more.
“What’s going to save me?” she asked, more to herself than to him. Then she added, “Or who?”
They sat in silence a while, listening to the noise of the engines. They were midway across the ocean—they were a dot in the vastness, the everythingness and nothingness, an abyss between two worlds—a sort of limbo. The two of them up in the sky, traversing the night at an incredible speed inside a metal tube full of fuel. They both were leaving an old era and entering a new one.
“Thank you,” Charlie said.
Something vibrated inside Larry, a shiver wrapping him from head to toe, something like a signal for his heart. Suddenly, a passenger let out a thunderous snore that drowned out the drone of the engines. Charlie laughed loudly, the first time the whole flight. Larry laughed too.