John Irving - In One Person

THE DAPPER LITTLE MAN who met me at a restaurant in the Plaza Mayor the following night did not immediately summon to mind a young soldier with his pants down at his ankles, reading Madame Bovary in a storm at sea, while—on his bare bum—he skipped over a row of toilet seats to meet my young father.

Señor Bovary’s hair was neatly trimmed and all white, as were the short bristles of his no-nonsense mustache. He wore a pressed, short-sleeved white shirt with two breast pockets—one for his reading glasses, the other armed with pens. His khaki trousers were sharply creased; perhaps the only contemporary components of the fastidious man’s old-fashioned image were his sandals. They were the kind of sandals that young outdoorsmen wear when they wade in raging rivers and run through fast-flowing streams—those sandals that have the built-up and serious-looking treads of running shoes.

“Bovary,” he said; he extended his hand, palm down, so that I didn’t know if he expected me to shake it or kiss it. (I shook it.)

“I’m so glad you contacted me,” I told him.

“I don’t know what your father has been waiting for, now that your mother— una mujer difícil, ‘a difficult woman’—has been dead for thirty-two years. It is thirty-two, isn’t it?” the little man asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Let me know what your HIV status is; I’ll tell your father,” Bovary said. “He’s dying to hear, but I know him—he’ll never ask you himself. He’ll just worry about it after you’ve gone back home. He’s an impossible procrastinator!” Bovary exclaimed affectionately, giving me a small, twinkling smile.

I told him: I keep testing negative; I don’t have HIV disease.

“No toxic cocktail for you—that’s the ticket!” Señor Bovary exclaimed. “We don’t have the virus, either—if you’re interested. I admit to having had sex only with your father, and—save that truly disastrous dalliance with your mom—your dad has had sex only with me. How boring is that?” the little man asked me, smiling more. “I’ve read your writing —so, of course, has your father. On the evidence of what you’ve written about—well, one can’t blame your dad for worrying about you ! If half of what you write about has happened to you, you must have had sex with everyone !”

“With men and women, yes—with everyone, no,” I said, smiling back at him.

“I’m only asking because he won’t ask. Honestly, you’ll meet your father, and you’ll feel you’ve had interviews that are more in-depth than anything he’ll ask you or even say to you,” Señor Bovary warned me. “It isn’t that he doesn’t care —I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s always worrying about you—but your father is a man who believes your privacy is not to be invaded. Your dad is a very private man. I’ve only ever seen him be public about one thing.”

“And that is?” I asked.

“I’m not going to spoil the show. We should be going, anyway,” Señor Bovary said, looking at his watch.

“ What show?” I asked him.

“Look, I’m not the performer—I just manage the money,” Bovary said. “You’re the writer in the family, but your father does know how to tell a story—even if it’s always the same story.”

I followed him, at a fairly fast pace, from the Plaza Mayor to the Puerta del Sol. Bovary must have had those special sandals because he was a walker; I’ll bet he walked everywhere in Madrid. He was a trim, fit man; he’d had very little to eat for dinner, and nothing to drink but mineral water.

It was probably nine or ten o’clock at night, but there were a lot of people in the streets. As we walked up Montero, we passed some prostitutes—“working girls,” Bovary called them.

I heard one of them say the guapo word.

“She says you’re handsome,” Señor Bovary translated.

“Perhaps she means you, ” I told him; he was very handsome, I thought.

“She doesn’t mean me—she knows me,” was all Bovary said. He was all business—Mr. Money Manager, I was thinking.

Then we crossed the Gran Vía into Chueca, by that towering building—the Telefónica. “We’re still a little early,” Señor Bovary was saying, as he looked again at his watch. He seemed to consider (then he reconsidered) taking a detour. “There’s a bear bar on this street,” he said, pausing at the intersection of Hortaleza and the Calle de las Infantas.

“Yes, Hot—I had a beer there last night,” I told him.

“Bears are all right, if you like bellies, ” Bovary said.

“I have nothing against bears—I just like beer,” I said. “It’s all I drink.”

“I just drink agua con gas, ” Señor Bovary said, giving me his small, twinkling smile.

“Mineral water, with bubbles—right?” I asked him.

“I guess we both like bubbles, ” was all Bovary said; he had continued walking along Hortaleza. I wasn’t paying very close attention to the street, but I recognized that nightclub with the Portuguese name—A Noite.

When Señor Bovary led me inside, I asked, “Oh, is this the club?”

“Mercifully, no, ” the little man replied. “We’re just killing time. If the show were starting here, I wouldn’t have brought you, but the show starts very late here. It’s safe just to have a drink.”

There were some skinny gay boys hanging around the bar. “If you were alone, they’d be all over you,” Bovary told me. It was a black marble bar, or maybe it was polished granite. I had a beer and Señor Bovary had an agua con gas while we waited.

There was a blue-tinted ballroom and a proscenium stage at A Noite; they were playing Sinatra songs backstage. When I quietly used the retro word for the nightclub, all Bovary said was, “To be kind.” He kept checking his watch.

When we went out on Hortaleza again, it was almost 11 P.M.; I had never seen as many people on the street. When Bovary brought me to the club, I realized I’d walked past it and not noticed it—at least twice. It was a very small club with a long line out front—on Hortaleza, between the Calle de las Infantas and San Marcos. The name of the club I saw only now—for the first time. The club was called SEÑOR BOVARY.

“Oh,” I said, as Bovary led me around the line to the stage door.

“We’ll see Franny’s show, then you’ll meet him,” the little man was saying. “If I’m lucky, he won’t see you with me till the end of his routine—or near the end, anyway.”

The same types I’d seen at A Noite, those skinny gay boys, were crowding the bar, but they made room for Señor Bovary and me. Onstage was a transsexual dancer, very passable—nothing retro about her.

“Shameless catering to straight guys,” Bovary whispered in my ear. “Oh, and guys like you, I suppose—is she your type?”

“Yes, definitely,” I told him. (I thought the lime-green strobe pulsing on the dancer was a little tacky.)

It wasn’t exactly a strip show; the dancer had certainly had her boobs done, and she was very proud of them, but she never took off the thong. The crowd gave her a big hand when she exited the stage, passing through the audience—even passing by the bar, still in her thong but carrying the rest of her clothes. Bovary said something to her in Spanish, and she smiled.

“I told her you were a very important guest, and that she was definitely your type,” the little man said mischievously to me. When I started to say something, he put an index finger to his lips and whispered: “I’ll be your translator.”