Friendship, you say? Friendship—heart hammering—is what you call that?
I sought her out and now we’re together, each with our plate of crepes.
“Has Muñeco been waking you up with those creepster calls?” she asks when I start in on my worries.
“Not really,” I say. “It’s been a while since he called. It’s strange, it seems like he’s calmed down. At least according to Píldora. He says Kento hasn’t been going out as much lately, that he shuts himself into his house early on because he’s wilding out on coca.”
“Getting addicted to drugs,” she said.
“Addicted, yes, but not to drugs. I’m not talking about coca as in cocaine, but about coca-coca, Mamita, you know, balero. Boliche. Capirucho. The ball and stick. Balero, girl. Balero.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“You’re illiterate when it comes to male culture. You’ve seen it a thousand times, I’m sure—a heavy ball made of wood, tied to a stick with string? A little juggling game, it might seem dumb, but it’s really a skill; you hold the stick and try to catch the ball with it, and if you don’t know how, you can take an eye out trying. That’s the coca I’m talking about. That’s what Pildo means. He says Muñeco won’t leave home because he’s hooked on playing coca.”
At least once a year, coca fever would spread like wildfire at Quevedo Prep, and everyone went around with that little wooden toy, waving the stick around to try and catch the ball as it knocked—tock, tock, tock—against the handle. You could hear those tocks all over campus, as if each boy were a woodpecker—tock, tock, tock: light taps of wood on wood. Over and over because nothing is as addictive as coca. Even more than Coca-Cola and almost as much as cocaine: coca-balero.
In that game, you could be an amateur and keep to the simple moves like catching the ball—tock!—first spinning it in midair before it lands right on the stick. We called that basic operation a ball-catch, or a loop-de-loop, and it was for beginners.
But over time and with patience and practice, you could become a pro, a real balero magician, and pull off showy moves like the wrist, the bell, the champagne, the slope, the double-stroke. I never got past that level.
Because after that came the initiates. An almost mystical state that only fanatics like Muñeco could achieve. But to get there, you had to lift your art to esoteric heights. Those who reached the heights of extreme skill did never-ending sequences we’d watch in a spellbound state. Feats like the around-the-world, the good and double, the double bell, the double champagne or the triple, and the around-the-world-special-with-eyes-closed.
Muñeco belonged to that race of champions, and Píldora says he hasn’t lost his skills in all these years. Only now, as an adult, he indulges the vice alone. He’ll go several nights without sleep, playing coca, then wander around red eyed and distracted. At least according to Pildo.
“It’s the stillness before the storm,” Malicia declares.
“There you go again with your Plan Sibyl. What if you’re wrong? I like Muñeco better this way, calm and quiet. The other day, in the afternoon, he and Píldora went to a purveyor of Irish whiskey to stock up for our trip. They bought tons of Kilbeggan, your boy Nobleza’s favorite. Very chill. Almost no drugs, Pildo said.”
“What did I tell you? The so-called poker trip is one big drinking binge.”
“It’s more than that. It has its rituals too. Its nostalgia.”
“And my man Nobleza has a lot of brute in him.”
She’s on the brink of a big confession, I can feel it, I glimpse it on the tip of her tongue, I don’t even need to prod her for it, all on her own she’s about to burst, her pupils flash with the urge to get it out. Me, I’m the spiritual counselor. I’ll listen to her complaints with deep attention, ready to maneuver mercilessly and say whatever I have to so she’ll soften up and agree to join the trip.
“Can I cry on your shoulder?” she says, but she doesn’t cry or come any closer; instead she starts mocking my hood. “Take off that hood, Hobbit, you look like a Franciscan. Again you’re going around resembling a crazy monk, when are you going to let that damn look go, you’re too old to be running around in a hoodie, plus I’m onto you, you throw on a hood when you’ve got dirty hair. Your curls are so lovely when you wash them, you look like baby Jesus in the manger. What did I tell you? You can’t be bothered to wash your hair so you stuff it into that hoodie and think no one can tell.”
I put up with her barbs about my appearance. I know she might have a point, so I stay quiet and secretly resist the chance for sweet revenge, holding back from bringing up her own fashion fails, her excesses, too imaginative, too colorful, too eccentric. If she wants to abuse her incredible brown body by dolling it up in tropical threads, that’s on her. So. The way I see it, laissez-faire; she’s beautiful no matter what she does. There’s always Duque to keep her in line; that seems to be his role. His hair stands on end whenever she shows up in the harsh Bogotá cold wearing a ruffled blouse, a flowered miniskirt, and red stiletto Dolce & Gabbana sandals.
“All right, out with the drama, what is it this time?” I say to Malicia, without removing the Franciscan headdress that’s gotten under her skin. “Come on, I’ve got a translation to finish. It’s a tight deadline, and I’ve got a lot left to do.”
I’m lying about the translation. The truth is that I haven’t taken a job in days; I’ve given myself an end-of-year sabbatical devoted to the complete works of Alan Moore. So far I’ve gotten by, spending little and stretching my last payment to the limits of survival. We’ll see what happens later, I’ll reach out to the British Council, something will come.
“Come on, Malicia, let’s hear the tragedy, spit it out.”
“Well, what do you think it is, Duque again. I don’t know what to do about him, I swear, Hobbit, I’ve had it up to here with him.” Malicia laughs. “Actually, I should say the opposite, part of the problem is I don’t have him up to anywhere, he barely gives it to me anymore.”
“He doesn’t want to make love to you? What a moron. What’s the problem, he can’t get it up?”
“Sure, he can get it up, but he’s just too busy all the time . . . he’s always got something else on his mind, your friend Dux.”
“Something else, like what?”
“I don’t really know, it’s not another woman, that much I’m sure of, I think it’s more that he’s fallen in love with himself.”
Malicia tells me all about last Tuesday, when Duque called her at eight in the morning.
“Come over right now, Alicita my love,” he said to her then. “I’m in Atolaima, get the car and come, get away from the Bogotá cold for a while, the weather is gorgeous here, come right now, you can’t imagine how badly I want to see you.”
“You’re crazy, Duque,” she’d replied. “It’s a Tuesday and I’m leaving for the office, and what the hell are you doing out there in the middle of the week?”
“I had to rush out to deal with a little problem that came up here,” Duque had told her. “But it’s beautiful here, honey, you can’t imagine, the weather’s warm and perfect, the pool is deliciously cool, and there’s a divine breeze on the balcony, if you don’t come right now I’m going to throw myself off it and you’ll have to fetch me from the abyss.”