Daniel Sada - Almost Never

Mireya arrived at the rooming house at nine at night. Demetrio was there.

First the confrontation with Doña Rolanda.

No, she couldn’t come in, because she was a stranger, but: I’ll tell Mr. Demetrio that you want to see him. Wait here outside.

Demetrio arrived frightened, confused, and for good reason. They held a long conversation outside.

Problems. Rejection. More problems.

Mireya had no choice other than to tell him about Madam and her bodyguards (those we’ve met), the beating (to be avoided, by any means necessary), and even the Oaxacan police force. Could it be that bad?

In the face of such a staggering description Demetrio had no choice but to speak to Doña Rolanda. He was bursting with fear. The situation was (to tell the truth) one of force majeure. Wait for me out here. I won’t be long.

A discussion with the lady of the rigid notions … useless to try to persuade her. But when he showed her the fluttering bill: a bauble in a light, uplifted hand …

Aah!

And only for a few days …

Ooh!

The lovers lounged in the room whose foremost novelty was the improved odor. It just might have been the first time any two beings had practiced the act of screwing there: within the confines of rented respectability, where there was an abundance of saintly idols made of clay and porcelain, and a picture of The Last Supper. One must, in this respect, mention guilt. For as soon as the two locked themselves in the room, Doña Rolanda knocked on the door. She was carrying a large bag. In it she would place all those figurines who were, to her mind, somehow alive, though she left said picture. It seems that Jesus Christ and his apostles were so thoroughly engaged in their repast and the company they kept that they wouldn’t have time to watch the disgusting things Demetrio and his lover might do. Doña Rolanda’s act was quick and silent. She did ask permission to carry out what she considered “a liturgical and appropriate act,” in her words, and: “Excuse me,” and: “I won’t disturb you again.” The saints: displaced, as to The Last Supper —what can we say?: an act of carelessness and, indeed, partial guilt. Increasing guilt, because at night she heard the lovers’ savage grunts — sex maniacs! Her curiosity to hear somehow connected with her compulsion to count three times a day the incredible sum Demetrio had paid her. Guilt-ridden sex … within … hmm, only in part, for Mireya had turned The Last Supper to face the wall. She had done so as soon as she stripped. Demetrio, for his part, after observing the maneuver, smiled but also crossed himself. And now, finally, without further ado, they went at it; during those days of plenty they enjoyed each other only at night. Let’s imagine the agronomist at his job, from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon, and she locked in the room, getting all tangled up in ideas about how to finagle an almost fantastical felicity. She didn’t want to be seen, either by Doña Rolanda or the other lodgers; and as far as being observed by passersby on the street: well, as few as possible. Even when she went out to get provisions she tried to scurry back, racing at great speed. No breakfasts or dinners in the dining room: well done! They clearly came to a mutually convenient agreement. They clearly shared the dregs of guilt.

We could say that Mireya and Demetrio’s fears were growing by slathers. He knew that he couldn’t keep working in the orchard, that his Oaxacan chapter had come to an end, that he was on the verge of fleeing with his lover to an unknown locale. Life as a couple — guilt ridden! and, bountiful! and, sinuous! and all the rest. This was the mischief happenstance makes, the unexpected arrangement destiny had handed him out of the blue: to live perennial sex to the hilt: screwing in the morning, perhaps at noon, in the evening, and in the middle of the night, and the ever-turning wheel of continual consent: oh, undulating tenderness! the never-washed-nor-aired-out filth, and of course the most plausible theory always obviated: that this was perchance the devil at work, but God in turn was elbowing his way through. He mentioned all these avatars every day to Mireya, who, for her part, declared her mettle three times: I’ll go wherever you take me, and also more than three times added that if they stayed in Oaxaca things would go very badly. Just knowing that they would be looking for her because she’d left her job. Madam knew where her room was and, what was worse, her friend Luz Irene, though Mireya was sure she wouldn’t reveal a speck of information. Hence the most dreadful conjectures: the bodyguards, the police, the supposed furious efforts of the ongoing pursuit. And at any moment — poof! Demetrio told her he would go to the bank to withdraw his money so that they could run away. If only they could leave tomorrow! Money in hand for the down payment on their love nest. A nest far away, of course. They would be left in peace if they lived in some border town, but the crowning effort would be to cross over to the other side, by any means necessary and as soon as possible, and there find a new reality. Why don’t we go to your mother’s? You told me she lives in the south of the United States. You ought to introduce me to her. Demetrio had made a mistake by mentioning that migration, he hadn’t remembered that … When he told her … Who can know!? … And in that (induced) effort to dig up a name of the town where she lived — did you gather as much? — what would he invent to answer Mireya’s insistence? That it was near Laredo, Texas: with a difficult name to pronounce in English: a salad of letters all crammed together like sardines, that starts with an f, and at the end there’s a t and an h: a teensy place located … let’s see … about fifty miles from Laredo, you can get there in the blink of an eye. Demetrio in checkmate or around the bend. Nonetheless, the two of them would go there: the only place possible?! But before that he, right now, to the bank. Not to work. Now to disengage. Now to take the step, now to quit his job, as she had done … The agronomist went out first thing in the morning to buy a suitcase he already knew must be neither too big nor too small but soft, yes, to carry — always risky — the banknotes. Mireya had wanted to go with him, but: You stay here. It’s better that way. I won’t be long. A logical fear arose: she expressed it, keeping to herself the core doubt that had been growing for the last two days: what if Demetrio took off with the money and left her in that genteel environment, like an idiot?

Of some small comfort was: I am also very frightened, maybe two or three times more than you. We don’t have much time left to get out, and he promised and swore to the ensemble flight, placing love above all else. The seal of an excessively tongue-y kiss must have meant a lot to Mireya, who, just in case, turned the picture of The Last Supper back around. Then: intrigue and lassitude for a man who could not set anything straight in his head, decisions ricocheting, running roughshod over ideas about doing what was right: Mireya had won out over Renata because she gave herself without apprehension or restraint. The agronomist did confront an obstacle at the bank: he couldn’t withdraw his money: it was a fixed-term deposit without any kind of flexibility or exception. Banking’s inherent rigidity. Then his emotional theatricality came to the rescue: that his case was extremely urgent, an instance of force majeure, et cetera, and his almost tearful pleadings, almost kneeling, his palms pressed together as if in prayer: evil demons, those bank employees — utterly? and his tortured insistence paid off after forty-odd minutes, when one of them said that they could give him his money if and only if they subtracted the accumulated interest: That’s fine, give me only what I have deposited, but give it to me now, and in cash, please! Next step: the agronomist opened his bag, which looked a bit like a briefcase because it was stiff around the edges, though with an air of something special: a modern object, brown and expensive.