Antonio Hill - The Good Suicides

The alarm clock, set for a quarter to six, announces the beginning of the day for Manel Caballero. He’s always found it hard to get up; as a child he’d have given anything to put off the moment of returning to the real world. He hated classes with the same intensity with which he now hates the research lab where he works, not because of the job itself, but because it forces him to come into contact with people. If he had the choice, he’d work from home or, at most, surrounded by a select few. Intelligent, clean, quiet. The type that don’t interfere in the lives of others. That is to say, practically no one.

Just as he does every day, he grabs a clean towel to dry himself and then immediately drops it in the laundry basket. He proceeds to dress himself with the clothes he left out ready the night before, and when he finishes he goes to the kitchen to make breakfast. Just coffee: at that time his stomach can’t take anything solid. Before leaving the kitchen, he washes the cup and teaspoon, dries them carefully and puts them where they belong. He returns to the bathroom and brushes his teeth for three minutes exactly. He glances around and although not a single drop of water fell to the floor as he showered, he mops it meticulously. He likes to go knowing he has left the apartment unpolluted, the bed made, the kitchen tidy. It gives him the strength to endure the worst part of the day: the journey on public transport to Alemany Cosmetics. Noisy people he has to share space with for almost forty minutes. He would have changed jobs just because of it: he had very seriously considered it, but the current situation doesn’t allow for whims. Moreover, his job prospects have become much improved since the summer and he decided months ago that it is worth putting up with minor inconveniences like this. So every day he endures the journey like someone subjecting himself to a terrible ordeal. Isolated from everyone by headphones or a book; standing, because those plastic seats revolt him and because this way he can move if someone stands a little too close. He leaves home early for this reason, because he knows for a fact that the next bus is much fuller. He hasn’t been able to breathe on the few occasions he’s had to take it.

Today for some inexplicable reason the bus is half empty, so he doesn’t have to pretend to read. If someone looked at him, they would never guess that this neat, clean-cut boy, dressed in unstylish but exquisitely ironed clothes, is thinking about his two colleagues who have died in a matter of months. His face reveals no sorrow or surprise. Rather an intense concentration, as if he were trying to solve an equation too complex for his abilities.

Manel doesn’t see the email with the photo attached or the one that Brais sent in the middle of the night until he switches on the computer at work. His habit of being the first to arrive gives him a few minutes to evaluate the situation and weigh up the options. It doesn’t take him long to decide: with a rapid click he deletes both emails and then empties the bin. His bin is once again clean like his apartment. Free from the least hint of dirt.

Amanda Bonet, on the other hand, does look at her email at home, her personal and work accounts. In fact, it’s the first thing she does every morning and the last before going to bed. Always in the hope of receiving a special message, one of those emails that fill her with excitement and make the night and waking up better. She’s spent months like this, overcome with suppressed emotion, hooked on these messages and passionate weekly encounters. Happier than she’s ever been, although perhaps “happiness” is too simple a word to describe her feelings.

So, this Wednesday, Amanda follows her usual routine and her eyes acquire a special shine on seeing that there are four new messages in her personal account. Not because of the quantity, but because of one in particular. She looks at the senders of the other three: one is from a friend and another from Brais Arjona, and she tells herself she will answer them later, while the third is from an unknown address, with no subject. She deletes it without opening it for fear of a virus and concentrates on the only one that interests her. After the night she’s had, plagued by atrocious nightmares she can’t fully remember, she needs to communicate with him, and she can do so only through email. A cold medium, perhaps, but in any case better than nothing. She opens the message and smiles at the first line, an affectionate, encircling, protective greeting. She imagines him writing it in the middle of the night, thinking of her from his bed, composing this text while he evokes her in his memory.

She continues reading and, as always, she is succumbing to the effect these words arouse in her. It still astonishes her that he brings about this response from her body with words alone. Sometimes, very rarely, she thinks that these moments satisfy her almost as much as the Sunday-evening encounters. In any case, she knows the reality would have no meaning without this part of the game, in the same way that emails and text messages would lack emotion if there were no moments of skin, touch, rewards and punishments.

She reads the message to the end, savoring every term, every bit of praise, every remonstrance and, above all, every order. He gives her precise instructions on how she should dress, comb her hair, smell. The underwear she has to wear. She sometimes disobeys him-it’s an unwritten rule-although never too overtly. She appears to follow his orders to the letter and it arouses her to put on the skirt he has chosen for that day, dab on the perfume he wants to smell, or be aware that her lingerie, difficult for him to see at work, is not the required color. The fact that they work at the same company adds the charm of disguise to the situation, the risk of illicit romance he accentuates on occasion with controlled daring. What’s more, no one has noticed their games … No one knows about them, especially now Sara is dead.

She doesn’t want to think about Sara. Suddenly she remembers the nightmare that terrified her tonight. The image of Sara running through the long metro tunnel, pursued by a pack of dogs. And her, Amanda, watching the scene like someone watching a horror film, suffering for Sara, trying to warn her that the worst is not behind her, but at the end of that damned tunnel. But it’s useless: the woman fleeing without looking back didn’t hear her no matter how much she shouted. “Stop, Sara. No one is going to hurt you. It’s not dogs, it’s us.” Then she saw herself, with the others, running in vain through the same tunnel to reach Sara. She wasn’t sure if they were following her to save her from her terrible fate or to see her die run over by a train.

She had been waiting for fifteen minutes and was beginning to get impatient, not because she had so many things to do, but because deep down she was afraid Carolina Mestre wouldn’t turn up. She consulted her cell phone to see if there was any message apologizing for a delay. Nothing. Dejected, she contemplated the herbal tea she had in front of her, and for something to do she took a small sip and made a disgusted face. The most insipid brew, matching the place.

She glanced around her, more and more convinced that Carol wouldn’t come to the meeting. She had phoned her on Tuesday morning and, after a kind of monologue on her part, rehearsed to give the right impression, the other woman had hung up with a terse “I’ve nothing to say to you.” Leire had marshaled all her patience and tried again a little later. That time no one answered the phone and she left a long voicemail. Almost a whole day passed with no response from Carol, but when she had already given up, a short, unfriendly text message arrived, asking her to meet in this café, on Wednesday at six. And there she was, in this city center café with white walls and blackboards announcing things like brunch and blackberry muffins, her only company a languid, blond waitress who seemed to think of her job as a necessary step before achieving fame, and another customer, a young tourist plundering the Wi-Fi connection for the price of a black coffee.