Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

“Holy shit!” she burst out in the middle of a restaurant as soon as Leire explained her intention of telling Tomás, the T of the message, that their last encounter had left behind a gift in the shape of an embryo. “What, has pregnancy affected your brain or something? Must be the baby hormones that make people stupid.”

“Don’t be nasty.” Leire finished off the tiramisu, which she’d devoured after a generous plate of spaghetti carbonara. “Are you going to finish the lemon mousse?”

“No! And you shouldn’t either. . You’re like a piranha.” But she pushed the dish toward her. “Listen, I’m serious. What do you gain by telling him?”

Leire held the spoon in mid-air before attacking the mousse. “It’s not what I gain or don’t gain. It’s that he’s the father. I think he has a right to know there’s a child with his genes in the world.”

“So, where is this child now? Who’s carrying it in their womb for nine months? Who is going to give birth to it, screaming like a madwoman? He just dropped four swimmers and went off travelling, for fuck’s sake! And if he hadn’t been left with no plans for the weekend, you’d never have heard from him again.”

Leire smiled.

“Say what you want, but he wrote me a message.” “One second, what do you mean by that? No, don’t blush-

answer me.”

“Nothing.” She put a spoonful of mousse in her mouth. It was delicious. “Leave it. Maybe you’re right. When I see him, I’ll decide.”

“When I see him, I’ll decide,” repeated María in a mocking tone. “Eh, earth calling Leire Castro. Houston, we have a problem. Anyone know where Leire ‘One-Date-Only’ Castro is? Is this the person who always tells me love is a perverse invention of Hollywood’s to subjugate the women of the world?” “All right. Give me a break, please.” Leire snorted. “It’s the first time in my life I’ve been pregnant. Excuse me if I don’t know how to behave.”

María looked at her affectionately.

“Listen, one more thing and we’ll change the subject. I have things to tell you as well.” She stopped before asking, “Are you sure you want to have it?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “No. Well. . I’m sure it’s in there,”

pointing to her stomach, “and that it’s going to be born in less than seven months.” She finished the mousse and licked the spoon. “What about you? What’s happening with Santi?” “We’re going on holiday!” exclaimed María, radiant. “But wasn’t he going to work for an NGO? To build a clinic in Africa?”

“Yes. And I’m going with him.”

Leire could barely suppress a snort. The vision of María building anything, let alone a clinic in an African village, seemed even more ludicrous than her getting baby clothes ready.

“I’m only going for a few days.”

“How many?”

“Twelve,” she lied. “Well, maybe more, I don’t know yet. But it will be nice: we’ll be doing something together. Look, I’m sick of boys who only talk about football, their bosses, and how their last girlfriend hurt them; sick of metrosexuals who steal your moisturizer and sick of separated guys who want you to entertain the kids at the weekend. Santi is different.” “Yeah.” Their taste in men was an inexhaustible source of disagreement, but a fundamental part of their friendship.

They had never liked the same type of man. To Leire, Santi was a boring pedant who needed a good stick of deodorant.

And María, she was sure, would have thought Tomás wascocky, thinking he was George Clooney by wearing a suit with a white shirt and having perfect teeth. She raised her glass of water and said out loud: “A toast to sexual tourist solidarity!” María imitated her with her glass of red wine.

“To sexual tourist solidarity! And to the little swimmers that make their mark!”

“Bitch!”

The sheet was wrinkled from so much tossing and turning. Leire closed her eyes and tried to relax in the darkness. A warm darkness, because there wasn’t the slightest breeze: the open window just inundated the room with the wailings of the cat. She’d only been in that apartment for a few months and during the first few weeks she’d been startled awake by those squeals, which sounded like a baby crying; she’d ventured out on to the tiny terrace in search of the source of the pitiful sob, not able to ascertain where it came from until one night she met the eyes of that insomniac cat, as immobile as a statue, watching her impassively to the beat of the feline yowl. Now she was used to it, although deep down that animal scream still bothered her, that pure instinct demanding sex without the least decency. At this moment, however, she thought closing the window would only muffle the wails and on the other hand increase the heat.

She lit a cigarette, although she’d already consumed her usual five that day, and went out on to the diminutive terrace, barely a metre square, with two window boxes hanging from the railing and a little round wooden table. She looked around for the cat and there she was, suddenly quiet now, watching her like a small buddha with whiskers. The first drags calmed her a little-a false peace, she knew, but peace all the same. As if wishing to remind her of her existence, the animal wailed again from the opposite roof and Leire looked at her with more affection than before. She finished her cigarette and threw it to the ground, reproaching herself but lacking the will to go searching for the ashtray. The cat watched her and cocked her head, with a gesture of frank disapproval. “Hungry?” Leire asked her in a low voice, and for the first time since she’d lived there the idea of putting a little milk in a bowl occurred to her. She did so and returned inside, sure the animal wouldn’t approach if she saw her outside. She waited by the door for a few minutes, with the light on inside, hoping the cat might overcome her fear and jump on to the terrace, but she didn’t make the slightest move. Suddenly Leire felt exhausted and decided to go back to bed: it was twenty past four in the morning, and with a bit of luck she might still sleep for at least two and a half hours. Once in bed, she stretched out her hand and picked up her mobile. Two new messages from Tomás. “Arriving tomorrow, Sants station, express, 17.00. Dying to see you. T.” “Oh, I’ve something to propose to you. Kisses.”

She rested her head against the already cool pillow and closed her eyes, determined to sleep. In that sweet moment before losing consciousness she thought of Tomás’s smile, her pregnancy test, solidarity for sexual tourists and the bowl of milk on the terrace, until abruptly a discordant detail, a note out of place, kept her from falling asleep. Suddenly alert, she sat up in bed and tried to remember. Yes, she was sure. She visualized the attic from which young Marc Castells fell, the window, the sill, the body on the ground. And she knew something didn’t fit, that the sequence of events couldn’t have been as it was reconstructed. Something jarred in that scene, something as simple as an ashtray in the wrong place.

Breakfast was one of Ruth’s favorite times. She had it in the kitchen, sitting on a high stool, and gave it the necessary time. She liked the ritual of preparing the toast and orange juice for herself, the combination of the aroma of coffee and that of warm bread. It was a pleasure she’d never managed to share with either of her partners: Héctor could barely touch a piece of toast in the morning, and it seemed the same was happening with Carol. What’s more, given that they usually looked surprised or incredulous at the attention she paid to every detail, she enjoyed it much more when she was alone.

Sometimes she wondered if this solitary morning pleasure was a sign of what awaited her in the future; ever more frequently she saw herself as a person inclined to independence- strange for someone who had actually never been without company. Her parents, her husband, her son and now Carol. . She frowned, thinking she hadn’t succeeded in giving her a title other than her own: lover sounded vulgar, girlfriend was something she hadn’t yet managed to say, companion seemed false, a prudish euphemism to disguise the truth. While she smeared butter on the toast with exquisite care, and spread a thin layer of homemade apricot jam over it, she asked herself what Carol really was. It was the same question put to her by that same person the night before, after the argument with Héctor, and Ruth hadn’t been able to give a satisfactory answer, so the dinner for two had gone uneaten and Carol, her lover, her girlfriend, her companion or whatever she was, had left for her flat enveloped in a sullen silence without Ruth making the least attempt to stop her. She knew one word would have been enough, a simple squeeze of her hand to dispel her fit of impatience or jealousy, but she simply lacked the will to do so. And although they’d then spoken on the phone for almost an hour-fifty-three long minutes to be exact-and though Carol had a change of heart and apologized for her brusque departure and reiterated her understanding and unconditional love, the feeling of fatigue hadn’t diminished in the slightest. On the contrary, the whole scene had awoken a mad longing in her to escape, to go away for a weekend, this weekend, no hanging around, to somewhere she could be calm: no pressure, no apologies, no promises of love.