Carlos Fuentes - The Crystal Frontier

He sat down, and a handsome blond young man, dressed like a waiter from the 1890s, offered him a menu. Dionisio had chosen a secluded corner with a view of a skating rink, but shortly two cross bald men bent with age though still energetic, wearing seersucker caps, white cardigan sweaters, and blue pants, took the table next to his. They sat down noisily, shuffling their Nikes.

“Let’s see. To start off…” Dionisio read over the menu.

“Show me the proof,” said one of the bristling old men.

“I don’t have to. You know it isn’t true,” said his companion.

“A shrimp cocktail.”

“You didn’t make a dime on that deal.”

“I don’t know why I go on arguing with you, George.”

“No sauce. Just some lemon.”

“I told you you’d lose your shirt.”

“I told you, I told you, I’ll tell you — don’t you know any other songs?”

“What is the soup of the day?”

“You don’t know a thing.”

“I could see it coming a long way off, Nathan. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Vichyssoise.”

“I’m telling you, you don’t know anything.”

“I don’t know anything? Do you know that half the merchant ships in World War Two were lost?”

“Prove it. You just made that up.”

“A steak, but right away.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Sure. I always win when I bet against you. You’re ignorant, George.”

“Medium.”

“Do you know what gravity is?”

“No, and neither do you.”

“It’s a magnetic force.”

“No, skip the green stuff. Just the steak.”

“Let’s see now. Is there gravity right at the edge of the ocean?”

“No, it’s zero there.”

“Whoa! That’s real learning. No one’s going to pull a fast one on you.”

“Put up or shut up.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take the bet.”

“No, son, I don’t like baked potatoes, with or without sour cream.”

“We still have to charge you for it.”

“Charge me, but don’t put it on the same plate with the steak.”

“Look, they’re going to fire me if I don’t. It’s the rule.”

“Okay, okay, put it on the same plate.”

“They were going to charge you for it anyway. The steak costs twenty-two-ninety with or without potato.”

“Fine.”

“George, you know a little about a lot, but you don’t know anything important.”

“I know a bad deal when I see one, a deal that’ll end in failure, Nathan. You can’t deny I know that.”

“Well, I don’t know anything, but I’m an educated man.”

“Facts, Nathan, facts.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“With the patience of a saint.”

“I don’t know why we keep talking to each other.”

“A green salad.”

“After everything else?”

“Yes, my boy, salad comes at the end.”

“Are you a foreigner?”

“Yes, I’m a really strange foreigner with really strange quirks — like having salad after everything else.”

“In America, we eat it first. That’s the normal way.”

“Are you listening to me, George?”

“Give me facts, Nathan.”

“Do you know that the annual earnings of the publishing industry in America are the same as the earnings of the hot dog industry? Did you know that?”

“Where did you get that? Are you trying to insult me?”

“Since when have you become a book publisher?”

“I’m not. I make hot dogs, as you know perfectly well, Nathan. Are you listening to me?”

“And lemon meringue pie. That’s all.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Give me proof.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“I don’t know why we’re still eating together.”

“Bet.”

“I’ll make a bet. Is there gravity on the moon?”

“Facts, facts.”

“I told you that deal was headed for failure. No doubt about it. You’re broke, George.”

The one named George gave out a hoarse, tumultuous sob that didn’t seem possible coming from that impassive face.

There is no fascination that doesn’t also contain its pinch of repulsion. We scold ourselves when we allow ourselves to be seduced by the eye of Medusa, but in the case of this pair of dried-out, bald, long-nosed, arthritic, argumentative old codgers armed with unlit phallic cigars — No smoking, please — repulsion overcame fascination. Dionisio impatiently began to play with a bottle of sauce, rubbing it more and more nervously as the endless debate between George and Nathan went on and on, like insomnia, utterly engrossing for the two old men, unbearable for Dionisio. To save himself from them, the Mexican gastronome began to think about women as he rubbed the bottle, and as he rubbed it, he noticed what it was: Mexican sauce, jalapeño chile sauce. Suddenly, magically, something was unleashed from within, a volcano bursting the ancient crust over its crater and vomiting lava the more the man named after Bacchus rubbed it.

Except that it wasn’t chile sauce that came out of the bottle but a man, diminutive but recognizable by his charro suit, his mariachi hat, and his Zapata-style moustache.

“Patrón” he said, revealing his hairy head, “you’ve saved me from a yearlong imprisonment. No gringo would open me up. Thank you! Your wish is my command!” concluded the tiny charro, caressing the pistol he was carrying on his hip.

For a moment, Dionisio “Baco” Rangel remembered the joke about the shipwrecked man who’s spent ten years on a desert island and one day sets free the genie in a bottle. When the genie asks him what he wants, the man asks for a really great mama. And what he gets is Mother Teresa.

Dionisio decided to be frank with the little charro from the bottle, who looked just like a character in Abel Quezada’s cartoons.

“A woman. No — several women.”

“How many?” asked the little charro, ready, it seemed, to populate a harem if necessary.

“No,” explained Dionisio. “One for each course I ordered.”

“Served with each course, master, or instead of each?”

“That I leave to you,” said Dionisio “Baco” Rangel, the universal Mexican who is, was, and shall be our protagonist. He said it indifferently, accustomed as always to the unusual. “Like the dish being served, with the dish being served …”

The little charro made a magician’s wave, shot into the air, and disappeared. In his place, there appeared, simultaneously, the waiter and a thin woman with dark, lank hair and bangs, starved-looking, bony as Popeye’s girlfriend or Modigliani’s models, the total opposite of the fatties Dionisio had so perversely dreamed of. She was armed with a Diet Coke, which she drank by the teaspoonful as she gazed at Dionisio with eyes at once bored, ironic, and tired. The same eyes, with infinite weariness, explored the American Grill as she wondered out loud, in a drawl as long as the Mississippi, what she was doing there and whom she was with. He said he’d asked the genie in the bottle for a woman. He didn’t manage to surprise her. Suppressing a yawn, the anorexic gringa answered that she’d asked for the same thing. There’s no luck worse than sharing luck with someone else. She’d asked for a man — she smiled with immense fatigue, infinite hunger — leaving everything to chance because every choice she’d made in the past was a poor one. She’d let someone else choose for her. She was available, completely available.

“I’m a terrible lover,” she said, almost with pride. “I’m just warning you. But I never take any blame. The man is always the one to blame.”

“That’s true,” said Dionisio. “There are no frigid women. There are only impotent men.”