Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

“I’ve done something terrible. Let’s go home or I’ll die.”

As you can see, I’ve gained a fair bit of experience with scenes and hysterical episodes — I know how to recognize when a brain is seriously overheating. I said good-bye to the girls for both of us, regretting I wouldn’t be there to help them through the difficult period of growing up that lay in wait for them. I assumed he would think it was a good idea to go to my place, since it was closer.

“I’m afraid of your apartment, John.”

We didn’t have cash, and the machine spat our debit cards back out (his demagnetized; mine without enough credit for a ticket), so we jumped the turnstiles. I cut myself, I have no idea how, from my fingernail to the bone that sticks out at the wrist.

Pedro was having trouble breathing and I had to unbutton his shirt; the cloth was soaked in the sweat that seeps out when your pores open wide like buttonholes. I tried to help by fanning him with a free paper we found on the seat, but to be honest I don’t really think those blasts of suffocating air did him any good. I couldn’t get him to sit still, and at every toss of the metro — you really can’t beat the L5 in that respect — he slid from one end of the seat to the other. I was out of tissues and the blood was still gushing from my wounded hand.

He was so white that the train’s fluorescent light gave him a greenish hue, and he started shaking like an abductee. His eyeballs turned milky like a blind man’s; it was pretty revolting, but I couldn’t just get up and leave, it could have been an epileptic fit, or a brain fungus, who knows? I don’t have the imagination to turn symptoms into a diagnosis. Really, I only gave him those two slaps to let off my frustration, but they worked. Now he was gasping and motionless, like a fish pulled from the water.

“Get me out of here.”

I tried to deter him, but he opened his shirt more, as if the oxygen were burning his lungs. I managed to get us back to the street (and it’s laughable that a process involving such a tangle of arms and legs can fit into such a short phrase). Our new challenge was to cross La Meridiana; it seemed more important to stop a taxi on the opposite side of the street than to reach the pedestrian crossing fifteen meters away, and the cars swerved around us, leaving a wake of blaring horns in the air. From a certain distance (Pedro dragging his feet — the bastard made no effort at all) we looked like a kind of suicide commando unit: our shirts open, hair all over the place, in the unmistakable style of best friends.

“You hit me.”

“You were dying.”

“I’m not dying. Look at me, I’m alive.”

The next test consisted of convincing the taxi driver that giving us a free ride would make him feel better than ten shitty euros that wouldn’t even cover lunch. I tried to focus on a strategy, but my thoughts skidded on a stream of adrenaline. I had determined to open the door and dash for the sidewalk when finally Saw came up with a blue bill.

“OK, gouge us all you like.”

It was a joke from back when we used to find it amusing to challenge adult authority. It didn’t matter that the joke was wearing thin by now — it opened a crack in the present and we let ourselves follow teenage rules. We shot out of the cab toward the front door, without waiting for our change or the receipt we had demanded so we’d seem important. My calves tensed, my heart couldn’t pump enough blood to my thighs so I could speed up, and Pedro-María with his flamingo stride pulled half a length in front of me; I let him go. He waited for me in the doorway with his fingers brushing the wood and a smile on his lips.

“Sprint, wall, return.”

I touched the wall a second after him, enough to give him an advantage. It was the phrase we’d heard every time we went onto the court after classes ended, our warm-up exercise, only now it entailed crossing Córcega in the dark, wasted, dodging taxis and motorcycles. I suppose we were lucky, although it’s also true that the years between us and the agile boys we used to be were imperceptible to the metallic sky above and the stars spinning slowly around their inconceivable axes. He beat me again. I think he was spurred on by fear — I was always the braver one. He fell to the ground in celebration of his victory, and I threw myself on top of him.

“We used to be twice as fast.”

“Twice, the man says. More, much more!”

The roots of my teeth hurt from the effort, the lactic acid flowed as if my hypothalamus had gone crazy: crystals in my veins, micro-tears in the muscles; I had a week of aches ahead of me. It was true — and what an incredible truth it was — that the juvenile vigor I’d longed for so impatiently as a boy, when the older kids caught the rebound, touched the basket, fought for position at the post, had come to pass: it had entered my body, and then it had left.

Pedro-María was doubled over in laughter, but I didn’t want any advantage. I let him calm down, regain his competitive composure.

“That was the warm-up. Now comes the grand finale, the deciding race.”

“For the World Crown.”

“Sprint, wall, return.”

This time I made sure to get up before him (my hand holding on to his ankle), and I moved a good few meters ahead. When a motorcycle wouldn’t let me cross, I had to stop short. Pedro-María passed me, but he lost his lead when a bus came barreling down in front of him; the driver leaned on his horn and I managed to catch up. He had a slight advantage that under normal conditions would have been decisive, but the thing is I’d taken a lot of beatings recently, I was sick of my shitty losing streak, so I grabbed him by his coattails and I more or less threw him to the pavement. He managed to stand up, crane that he was, before a car could run him over, but now nothing on earth could stop me. I even let myself take the last steps imitating the Pink Panther (though I don’t think he got the reference).

“I won! I won!”

“You cheated A LOT.”

“How?”

“You grabbed me, stepped on me, pushed me.”

“All that counts, it was for the World Crown, no holds barred. I won and you lost.”

What came next was a lecherous surge of adrenaline from my gonads to my chest. The old feeling of competing and winning was burning in my veins, a medulla breathing at full capacity; our bodies give us so much. I expected Pedro to be offended, but here was an intoxicated and smiling boy who moved toward me with open arms. It was as if, after that exertion, our fiftyish skins were turning transparent, and peeking through were the generous youths we had once been, overflowing with vitality and burgeoning energy, who had accidentally fallen into middle age. As we hugged, I swore I could hear the pounding of our hearts.

We took turns trying to get the door open, and when we finally managed it we were greeted by a blast of reheated dust. I was about to make a comment about how the past was angry at being kept locked up in there — surely it would rather mix with the present and be subject to changing styles and depreciation — but I’d hardly gotten his coat off before he collapsed on the sofa.

Since he wasn’t going to die of drunkenness anymore (I took his pulse), and when it came to sleeping and blowing saliva bubbles with his thick lips I thought he could manage on his own, I promised I’d be right back and I started nosing around.

Before I reached the kitchen, I was drawn to the laptop’s shining bluish light. Of course I had some qualms, what do you take me for? It’s just that the only discipline I’ve seen in Pedro-María during my brief vacation at his apartment is his practice of turning off the machine before leaving the room. It couldn’t be a mistake — it was a plea for me to visit his spiritual cyber storeroom. Wasn’t he already throwing enough money down the drain with that shrink? I lived with him, I was his friend. If I let the opportunity pass to collect information on his other habits, I’d be acting irresponsibly. I’d be a real traitor.