We’ve been crossing the line ever since those creepster-phone-call nights: him out there, under the influence of a sickly moon, and me here inside, sheltered by my routines and sheets.
God, life’s a bitch. My heart hurts and I don’t know why.
Muñeco’s gotten tired of ordinary pleasures, they’re too weak for him, he’s looking for new and more intense sensations with some crazy gang of insomniacs. Meanwhile, I’m in here, curled up in my shell, safe and sound. So why? Why does it feel like an ominous wind from the streets is sliding under my door?
I can’t stop wondering whether, deep down, Muñeco is just the forceful sum of us all. The creepsters are two, and the smaller one looks like you. It looks like you, and you, and you, and under the surface it’s identical to me. Muñeco lets us look at ourselves, as if in a mirror, the carnival kind that distorts you and makes you monstrous while still reflecting who you really are.
I’m doing what I can. The whole confused string of bad omens, full of uncertainties and anxieties—am I dreaming, or remembering? Am I living a premonition? Or am I repeating what I’ve seen, casting actual events in the colors of what hasn’t yet happened and is about to go down. Out of the blur come random phrases, unanswered questions, unquestioned answers. Shapes in a mosaic that synthesize for an instant, then immediately dissolve. I’m chasing our histories like someone trying to catch fish with his hands.
2
EL DUQUE (A.K.A. NOBLEZA, DUX, KILBEGGAN)
Last night the hours went by calmly. I watched V for Vendetta for the fifth or sixth time, and felt as blandly euphoric as the first time. I ordered a three-cheese Domino’s pizza with anchovies, washed it down with beer while listening to Arcade Fire, and went to sleep. The creepsters didn’t wake me with any sudden phone calls, but they did fly through my mind as I slept, winged and blind, like bats.
Today I woke up hungover by a thought, one I should maybe run by Malicia. What if the creepsters aren’t so much dark heralds, as she suspects, but some type of angels, insisting on showing us a less obvious, more stimulating path than the one we’re on? I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about that scene of Muñeco’s, when he kept the whole school on tenterhooks as he threw the baton higher and higher. How far was he trying to go, or how far will he want to go, when that’s how he pushes the limit?
It’s time for the poker trip, and I’m worried that Malicia won’t want to go; she says she’s got qualms this year. The plan is for us to head out this coming Saturday, and since Tuesday is a holiday, we’re going to take Monday off and stay through Wednesday. Five days of dolce far niente, the pleasure of doing nothing. Like every year, we’re going to Duque’s country house in Atolaima. But Malicia says she doesn’t have it in her, doesn’t feel like it.
“Are you coming or not?” I demand on the phone.
What if she insists on saying no? It won’t be the same. For one thing, she’s got the most experience with poker.
“Don’t pressure me, Hobbo,” she says. “I was at the country house last week, with Duque. And I had a tough time. I’m not dealing with that again.”
She and I have agreed to meet up and talk about it. She’ll want to tell me what’s got her so pissed off, and I’ll want to convince her to come anyway.
This is our annual gathering, which the Tutti Fruttis take every year to commemorate the good old days and renew our loyalty oath. That’s it, basically. Basically? It’s really about having a good time. Duque’s country house is the perfect setting.
I’m not talking about just any country house. I don’t mean some cozy, pleasant, take-what-you-can-get cottage in a hot climate, what we middle-class folks call a “finquita,” with a swing on the porch, standing fans, amoeba-shaped greenish pools, mosquito nets over every cot, and a little garden with mango trees. Nope, not that.
I’m talking about Duque’s country house in Atolaima, his hot-climate birthright, what you might call a regal playground. A rich prince who lives the high life thanks to Daddy’s dollars, Duque is the true heir of several other homes in cold places, the productive ones where the cattle are, and dairies, and fields of wheat, barley, all that stuff. But those are beside the point. What I’m talking about is the Atolaima property. A real monument. An ode to life.
Rolling acres of paradise on earth in the heat of the tropics, but with no mosquitoes, no leaves that make you break out in a rash, no suffocating humidity, no Macondo rain. I’m talking about perfectly balanced weather: not hot, not cold, but right in the middle. Sun on your skin, pure joy. Cool nights. And a stunning view in all directions of foothills, mountains, one after another as far as the eye can see. Plus a huge pool out in the open and a river running in the distance. Land shaded by generous chicalá trees. Wax palms and trumpet trees turning silver under the moon. A tennis court and plenty of space for Ping-Pong and pool tables. Every guest has their own room and private bathroom—it’s practically a Four Seasons.
It’s the fucking good life, the lap of luxury, you couldn’t ask for more anywhere else in the world.
The poker trip is a watered-down, gentrified tribute to what our trips used to be back in our prep school days, when they formed the highlight of our school year. Those were wild adventures; the whole class would travel to the Amazon or the Orinoquía, the Sierra Nevada, the beaches of Tayrona, or the Llanos Orientales. Thirty kids let loose on the world, gone feral, plus a couple of teacher chaperones who left us to our own devices. All of us, students and teachers, roamed those godforsaken places without a care, avoiding the safer trails and sleeping under the stars, defying the dangers of that blood-soaked land and cooking in communal pots over open fires. Fifteen days of damp clothes and the smell of feet. Plus falls, scratches, diarrhea, bug bites, booze, partying, and plenty of pranks—we soared over mountains, eagles spreading our wings and living life to the max.
Never—not before, not since—have we been so happy as in those annual trips with Quevedo Prep.
Those were trips. The one we’re taking now isn’t bad, but it’s a faded remake of the old days, a calmer one that fits with our current status as free citizens pushing forty and free of blame.
A paradise on earth, Duque’s place in Atolaima. But a strange one, where you’re struck by the sense of an impeccable yet soulless place. Why? Is it because there aren’t any animals there? No dogs, not even a cow. Nor a chicken, nothing dirty, nothing that makes a sound. It’s chilling, the thought of a country house with no animals. Duque’s perfectionism, his compulsive need for cleanliness and order, leaves no room for dog hairs, cat spit, chicken poop, or cow shit. Let alone screaming or crying children. Animals, children, madmen, the sick, the old: no room for any of them in Dux’s serene royal world.
Nothing off-kilter, no weaknesses to devalue a universe in tune with His Majesty.
Sometimes, when he’s barefoot, I look at the smaller toes of his right foot. At his pool, for example. Or when he steps to the edge of the soccer field in the middle of a game and discreetly removes his cleat and sock. I glance over: his two smallest toes are cramping. They go stiff with pain, sudden, electric, then gone. He’s had this for years. He tries to hide it, but I know. The cramp starts in those toes—the pinkie and the one beside it—and sometimes spreads to the whole foot, which tenses into convex, fleeting foot hysterics. Down at the very end of his extremities: the tip of his right foot.