“I’d had it up to here with my great Tuesday romance in Atolaima. Nothing had happened and nothing was going to happen. So I got up very quietly during a particularly absorbing set point, got into the sad Jeep, and turned the ignition, as virginal as the moment I’d arrived. That’s why I’m telling you, Hobbo, that if Duque were given the choice between a Hendrick’s Fever-Tree and a night of love with yours truly, he’d pick the Hendrick’s.”
“Of course. To be desirable you’d need two slices of cucumber.”
“But then again I’ve got an arm line that’s extremely correct. And you? Didn’t you have a translation to finish?” she asks, glancing at her watch.
“Go ahead and go—and rest easy,” I say, thinking of roping her back into the trip. “Don’t worry, Duque adores you.”
“Yes, he adores me, he puts me up on an altar. But I’d rather he took me to bed.”
Malicia and I say our goodbyes, and I walk back to my apartment. On the way, I think about the altar Duque has built for women. An altar carved from wood and gilded with colonial gold, with him enthroned at the center and all the women around him to exalt his presence. All of them there, Malicia in a preferential place, but you can’t leave out the duchess, that is to say Betty, his mother, nor his aunts, his ex-girlfriends, his business partners, his swarm of secretaries. All the women in his life would be perched on that altar of adoration, Alicia first.
I feel bad that I didn’t defend my friend Nobleza; it’s a betrayal. At the same time, it’s a comfort to know the cramp in his pinkie toe is spreading to his crotch.
The cramp in my friend Dux’s right pinkie toe: a drop of debasement, speck of confusion, seed of loneliness, germ of disorder. I think I must be right, though I can’t say for sure: the enemy infiltrating his Achilles heel—the Achilles pinkie—advances in its slow yet inexorable work of destruction.
3
TARABEO (A.K.A. TÁRAZ, TARAS BULBA, DINO-REX, REXONA)
Finally, the poker trip.
The five of us together again. Like when we were kids, only with so much time flown by, and with this long-awaited anniversary subsumed in a prodigious and torrential rain, tons of water whipping and falling at a slant to erase the world and liquefy all athletic options such as hikes in the hills and soccer games, not to mention catching rays by the pool or taking picnics to the river. This downpour of biblical proportions has become our trip’s protagonist, reducing us, the Tuttis, into lowly and disoriented Fruttis.
Duque, Tarabeo, Muñeco, Píldora, and me, Hobbit: damp, frizzy creatures who swig beer and play Monopoly with worn game pieces, waiting for the rain to ease up, which doesn’t seem possible, let alone probable.
Our poker ship has sprung a leak.
This indoor stillness of five humans underscores the way we’ve kept deteriorating over the past year: this or that extra kilo, expanding bald spots, stronger eye prescriptions, pills for heartburn or gout. We’re not the kids we used to be, though we try hard to pretend otherwise.
My mind roves back to a game we used to play in school, called Knights’ Castle. It took place behind the school, near the parking lot, in an ugly corner of the grounds paved with cement. Long benches lay in huge heaps, removed from the dining hall when individual chairs had been brought to replace them. It was a very simple game, but we loved it. We’d throw ourselves into it until we were feverish, sweaty, and exhausted. It involved climbing that mountain of benches with our wooden swords raised high, and once we reached the peak we’d shout that we’d conquered the plaza. Dangers abounded, sword strikes and thwacks, as well as the real risk that the benches could be destabilized by our weight and fall and crush us. It was forbidden to play there, which made it more exciting.
Until one day, in the thick of the siege, Muñeco climbed down without reason or warning and sat in a corner of the yard to watch us from below with an ironic, superior look on his face.
“That’s no castle,” he said. “It’s just a pile of old benches.”
His words echoed, devastating. The moment he said them, the spell broke and the credibility of our great adventure was gone. Heroic battles can only happen when the warriors fight with heart and complete conviction, that’s been common knowledge since the Iliad, and Muñeco had just revealed a hard truth: that was no castle, just useless furniture rotting in the open air. This statement instantly disqualified us as knights, stripped us of honor and courage, and in a single blow returned us to our reality as little boys climbing on a heap of trash. We had no choice but to come down, feeling like idiots. We never played the game again.
Maybe I’m remembering this right now as a kind of warning; something seems to suggest that this year’s annual poker trip may be our last. It’s possible we won’t even play poker together again.
“What’s up with Tarabeo?”
“He’s been in a bad mood since he got here. He’s pissed because he can’t get a signal for his cell. He’s got urgent calls to make.”
“What do you mean he can’t get a signal, look at him over there, with his phone.”
“That’s not his phone, it’s Dux’s. Dux is the only one whose phone works out here. Tarabeo commandeered it and won’t give it back.”
Táraz keeps his distance from us so he won’t be overheard. But we see him gesture. He paces back and forth with sullen, masculine strides, like a superthin model on a runway.
“Looks like he’s in a bad way.”
“Love troubles, as always.”
He gets out of one affair and falls into another. That’s on top of his wife’s anger. María Inés doesn’t like the poker trip, not one bit, she says she hates that he goes off with his buddies and fritters five days away.
“That’s how wives are with their husbands, more jealous of his male friends than of his girlfriends.”
“At least with girlfriends they know it’s temporary.”
“While we, the Tuttis, are forever, right? We stick to each other like gonorrhea to motel sheets.”
“We’re a strain that’s immune to antibiotics, a gonorrhea that won’t stop.”
We laugh over the old jokes.
He’s a strange one, this Táraz, deliberate, twofold. On one hand, he’s successful, a winner, the king of mambo. A divinely good-looking guy, well married, well dressed, rich, a distinguished professional. And yet he’s also as twisted as a corkscrew. Scruples? Tarabeo doesn’t know a thing about them. His lack of scruples is the key to his success.
Look at him over there, still in his red-and-black Cardinals cap, maybe to hide the growing bald spot. Tarabeo the Adonis, with the Apollonian profile, the black-maned ex, and the perfect wife, Tarabeo of the happy life, the ideal marriage, and the many lovers.
“He’s a ladies’ man, that Táraz.”
“Ladies’ man—that’s Don Juan Tenorio. Giacomo Casanova. Tarabeo is just a slut.”
“You, Mr. Hobbo, are a lowlife. None of us are good enough for you, your comments crucify us all.”
“Don’t pay Hobbo any mind, we all know his bad moods.”
They have a point, it’s not a good idea for me to belittle them. I have to admit that Tarabeo is a master of certain codes of seduction, wielding attraction, pressure, and deceit until the goal is achieved, whatever it is: a woman, a high rank, a good business deal, a benefit, a prerogative, a privilege.