Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

“Learn to serve,” Curly continued. “Learn to differentiate.” And stressing the two words, he concluded: “I am a gentleman. ”

He said it with an insufferable arrogance that mortified Guy and José Luis, whose glances, one directed at Curly and the other at the waiter, were both filled with someone else’s excuses and sorrow. The boy bowed gravely to Curly and withdrew to continue his work.

“They’re our only aristocrats,” José Luis commented when the waters had calmed.

“Who?” asked a red-faced Curly.

José Luis did not respond, and in Curly’s eyes, this registered as a serious offense.

“Did you realize?” said José Luis, holding a New Yorker when they were back home. “Since he couldn’t punish you for seeing him turned into an imbecile with his mouth hanging open, he turned on the weak one, the waiter.”

Guy buttoned his pajamas and said nothing.

“He’s a shameful coward” was José Luis’s judgment. “I don’t know if it’s worthwhile to keep cultivating him.”

“Yes,” Guy said with a yawn. “Probably he’s already served his purpose.”

“Which was?” suggested José Luis, setting aside the magazine.

Guy shrugged. “Frankly, it’s all the same to me if we see him or not.”

“Ah,” exclaimed José Luis, accustomed to less ambiguous or contradictory answers from his companion. “Then you think it’s a matter of one of those surmountable incidents.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

The conversation was following brand-new paths. Generally, Guy and José Luis were in agreement because they knew they were united against a world that would have liked to be hostile if they themselves did not make it habitable. The couple’s agreement in the face of society translated into an affirmation of the couple in their intimacy. One thing, as they knew very well, defended and empowered the other.

Now something was happening that obliged Guy to say sarcastically, “Do you know what they call us in secret?”

“No,” José Luis said with a smile.

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the twins Alice meets who say the same thing at the same time.”

“But they never make stupid remarks.” José Luis escalated the dialogue.

“Don’t torture me.” Guy smiled again.

Then they went to sleep without speaking or even touching each other. The next morning, while they were shaving side by side in the art nouveau bathroom, Guy broke the ice.

“If you prefer, we won’t see him anymore.”

“Who?” José Luis said from behind the lather.

“Please, José Luis.”

“I couldn’t care less.”

“That’s not true.”

“I give you my word. In any case, I’m not going to let that flan with legs ruin our life. We don’t owe him anything.”

“Nothing,” Guy said without conviction. “Nothing at all.”

Curly did not fail to appear that same morning with a bouquet of roses and a handwritten note: “My dear friends. Why are you indifferent to me? Like the Brazilians, I watch over your absences. With love, C.V.”

They decided to invite him to dinner the next day. Good manners demanded it. Not appearing to be offended demanded it even more. And denying power to Curly demanded it most of all.

As required, they wore tuxedos.

“Out of nostalgia,” said Guy.

“Out of habit,” added José Luis.

“Out of laziness,” laughed Curly, dressed in red velvet with a ruffled shirt. “Do you two know? I know you know that boy turned me down, and I’ve come to ask you not to tell anyone about it.”

Guy said nothing. José Luis became indignant at so vulgar a provocation. He dropped his silverware with a clatter.

“I expected better taste or at least better irony from you,” he said to Curly.

“I’m in no mood for irony tonight,” Curly said with a sigh. “I’m suffering from lovesickness.”

The chubby man turned toward Guy.

“But you know about that, don’t you, darling?”

José Luis couldn’t believe it. Guy blushed. José Luis weighed in to the defense.

“We know only what it’s important for us to know. You’re putting in the banderillas and we won’t tolerate it.”

“No?” The young man smiled. “Well, look, José Luis, you can stick me with banderillas, lances, and swords, and I won’t be irritated. Talk it over with your little friend and see if he tolerates it from you.”

“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” José Luis asked Curly, though he was looking at Guy.

“For God’s sake,” Guy replied. “Don’t make a tempest in a teapot.”

Curly laughed out loud.

“I don’t believe it! Please stop presenting me with such glorious opportunities. Gang up on me, I beg you. Defend yourselves against your little spy Curly Villarino, the busybody who knows everything and divulges everything. Isn’t that right? Oh, discretion isn’t my forte!”

Suddenly, he changed his tone.

“What do you want me to tell you. That only novelty excites me? That I’m desperate because the night before last I didn’t seduce the busboy? That I don’t need witnesses to my amatory failures? That I’ve come on my knees to beg you to remain silent? That I’ll find the way to fuck you over if you betray me to other people?”

Then José Luis told me that “other people” was too vast to refer to a circle growing smaller and smaller. The fact is that on the day Curly came for dinner, he initiated a lament to my friends. Both of them, united in their old custom of remaining on the margins of other people’s passions, of being a discreet couple, one that was solitary if necessary but never condemned to participate in what would be called a radio soap opera yesterday, a TV soap opera today, and a melodrama always. And melodrama, as you know, is comedy without humor.

“That I’ve always been an outsider?” Curly continued. “Always marginalized? That I’ll leave the closet and no one will follow me?” Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, imitating the click of castanets. “Or be the life of the party?” He laughed artlessly. “And sometimes the death of the party.”

He put on a funereal air and stood up. “I know. You want me to leave. You don’t want me to foul your sweet little love nest. Fine, my dear fags. I won’t beg. You think you’ve conquered me. Fine. We’ll see.” He made a ridiculous pirouette, sometimes lifting off the ground despite his large bodily mass, revealed in that act as a balloon filled only with self-satisfaction. “Fine. I’ll go. But my box of surprises isn’t empty yet. Wait a little. A bee stings harder the longer he retains the venom.”

Guy’s unusual spiritual distance during the days that followed was understood by José Luis as uneasiness rather than irritation due to the scenes provoked by Curly. Still, in his more intelligent moments, José Luis decided to treat what seemed serious as if it were frivolous, what seemed profound as if it were superficial. He didn’t change his behavior, the rhythm of his daily actions, the usual chatter of lives that were too intimate and too old not to understand that the times of the most level normalcy did not exclude but underscored the moments filled with physical love as well as intelligent discourse between two human beings.

José Luis, somewhat pensive, asked silent questions of Guy. What is our relationship made of? Desire and jealousy? Or innocence and disdain? Will you always love me in the natural way you have until now? Or are you going to make me feel that you’re indulging me? Isn’t indulgence the most deceptive form of tolerance?

(“We’ve never tolerated each other, you and I. We wouldn’t have lived together for so long if we only tolerated each other.”)