Laura Restrepo - Delirium

By the time I returned to the table, Anita was worried, I was just about to come looking for you, she said, Let’s go looking for someone, but let’s make it Midas McAlister, because he owes me an explanation, or rather he owes my wife one, What are you going to do, beat him up? No, I just want him to explain what happened that weekend, then Anita offered to tell me where we might find him on the condition that things not turn violent, That is if we can find him at all, she warned, because he’s vanished, I tell you, the hotel wants to kill him but they can’t find him, people say he’s disappeared from the face of the earth because he heard that the government was going to issue an extradition order for him.

So we ended up at a gym that belonged to him, a gym with an English name in one of the residential neighborhoods on the north side of the city, but it was already closed because it was almost ten, and the tall, dark man who was pulling down the gates and locking up was him, it was Midas McAlister, I recognized him as soon as I set eyes on him, That’s the man who was with her, I said, Yes, that’s him, Anita confirmed, So this is the moment of truth. And yet it wasn’t the moment of truth but a moment of confusion, because there I was challenging this Midas person and he swears to me by the Holy Virgin that he’s Rorro, not Midas, Rorro my ass, I shouted, although now I admit that although I was standing up to the so-called Rorro, I was doing it cautiously, because the bastard was a real athlete, one of those professional muscle men, and then three or four gym members came out on the way to their cars and confirmed that this actually was Rorro, an employee of the gym, the man in charge of weights and stretching, and that Midas, on the other hand, was the owner, but that he hadn’t been seen for days, He hasn’t been back here, That’s right, he hasn’t been back, No one knows where he is, No, no one knows, and you aren’t the first to come looking for him, No, you’re certainly not the first, This place has already been ransacked several times and it’s likely that they’ll close it any day now and seal it off, Yes, extremely likely, says Rorro, and I’m owed three months’ salary.

But I saw you, I accused him, returning to the offensive, I saw you coming out of that hotel room where my wife was, Then you must be her husband, nice to meet you, I’m Rorro, said the Midas McAlister who claimed his name was Rorro, and he offered me his right hand in a way that seemed friendly and even honest; convincing, you might say. I was the one who called to let you know that you should pick her up at the hotel, he told me, And who gave you my number? Your wife did, she gave it to me herself and asked me to call you, She asked you to call me? I demanded, feeling at last that I was myself again, that after so many days and nights of emptiness I had recovered my true self, Are you sure of what you’re saying? Sure as can be, she gave me the number, and if she hadn’t, how would I have gotten it, think for a second, pal, of course it was your wife who asked me to call you, Thank you so much, Rorro, and please forgive me, I said, but now tell me what all this was about, what happened to my wife, why was she at that hotel with you, what were you doing there with her?

Come on, said Anita, who was the only one who seemed to know how things should be done, let’s all go sit at that bar on the corner and we’ll buy a drink for Mr. Rorro and ask him nicely to do us the favor of explaining everything, because we’re all friends here, Don Rorro, Well there isn’t much I can tell you, but yes, thank you, I will take you up on that drink, because the cold gets into your bones, something to warm me up, and once they were at the bar and had downed a few shots, the man who called himself Rorro kept insisting, I wasn’t doing anything, Señor, I wasn’t doing anything, Señorita, I was just taking care of the lady who was so upset, a very pretty lady, if you don’t mind me saying so, but not right in the head, I was taking care of her because I had received instructions to take care of her, Whose instructions, Rorro, have another shot and maybe then you can tell us, Instructions from my boss, I already told you, from my boss Don Midas, who else, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him and to think he left owing me three months’ salary, And where in hell is Don Midas? I asked him, You said it yourself, hell’s as likely as anywhere, because the honest truth is no one knows where he’s gone, and if I knew, don’t you think I’d be there claiming my back pay.

When I was convinced the man didn’t know any more than he was telling, I left the bar with the firm resolution that beginning the next day I’d search high and low for Midas McAlister until I found him, determined to dig him out of whatever hole he was in, even if it took me a lifetime, and how could I have known then that the only person in the universe who would have any idea of where to find him was Agustina herself. As I was about to get into the van, I saw Rorro come out of the bar and run toward me, motioning for me to wait, I forgot to give you this, he said, offering me a little card, your wife had it in her hand until she dropped it at the hotel, I picked it up because it struck me as unusual and I put it in my pocket, and here I am still carrying it around, the only reason I haven’t thrown it away is because I was afraid it might be bad luck to mess with it, what if it turned out to have some kind of strange powers, take it, I’m giving it back to you since it belongs to your wife, she was holding it tight.

As soon as I took the card I recognized my own left hand, shrunken down and laminated in plastic, the back on one side and the palm on the other, it was the Hand That Touches, made from the photocopies that I’d sent Agustina at the beginning of our time together, so when I saw it and I heard that Agustina had been clutching it all through the dark episode, I couldn’t help myself and I shouted, This is a miracle, What’s a miracle? asked Anita, looking at the card and declaring it strange, Very strange, as a girl I spooked myself playing the Hairy Hand game and now I pray to the Miraculous Hand, but I’ve never heard of this Hand That Touches, Come on, Anita, get in the van and I’ll take you to Meissen, I offered, but no sir, Anita expected more, she’d seen me through the hard times and now she was going to demand some good times; Anita hadn’t planned to show off her lovely breasts for nothing, Anita was used to people following through, pretty Anita switched from the casual tú to the formal usted , her voice turning cold when she spoke to me, and she said, No, Señor, not Meissen, now that I’ve helped you find what you were looking for, you have to take me out dancing for a while, and what could I say but, Of course I’ll take you dancing, Anita, it’s the least I can do to thank you for your sweet company in my times of trial.

So that night we ended up at a club in Chapinero where a pair of dwarfs worked the bar, and it was half empty anyway, since it was a weeknight. How infinitely graceful Anita was when she danced, what an effort I had to make not to pull her to me, what a sin it was not to kiss her, what a crime to remove my hands from her hips; smiling, willing, delectable Anita in the dim light of a club in Chapinero with two dwarfs behind the bar, But my heart is elsewhere, Anita, and even my body isn’t entirely present here with yours, Goodbye, Anita from Meissen, I would have liked to say, in another life I’ll come looking for you and marry you and make you happy, Anita, because you deserve it, and it’s something I’ll always owe you; and I would also have liked to say, In another life I’ll take you to bed in the suite of a luxury hotel, Anita, it can even be the Wellington if you want, I deserve it and it’s something you’ll always owe me, but that will all have to be in another life because I’m going home now, pretty Anita, which is where my life is waiting for me, the life I’m living now, I mean, the life that in the end is the only one I’ve got and that’s waiting for me at home, it will be a pleasure to dream of you, Anita, but right now I can’t have things in my real life that aren’t real, because there’s been more than enough of that already.