Yuri Herrera: The Transmigration of Bodies

Which is why it’s so wondrous, he thought, why it’s so weird, to be this close to her when we’re from such different dirt. As Three Times Blonde spoke the whole house echoed in the absence of noise from outside, and for a minute he felt that now, really, all they had was time, and he got a good kind of creeps and was flooded with a patience he didn’t know he possessed. But then she started talking about her boyfriend, as if he was different from all the others, If only you knew him. And using a new sound as an excuse he said Be right back, and went out into the hall.

He opened the door. There stood the anemic student, hunched, pale, dank hair dripping down his forehead like dirty bathwater. No doubt the guy hadn’t ventured out in days and the smell of quesadillas had gotten to him. For a second he considered saying Come on in, compadre, fix you something right up. If he’d been another class of man or arrived at another class of time he would have, but all he said was Go home, you’ll catch cold. He closed the door and went back to Three Times Blonde. Ha.

Three Times Blonde had put out a couple scented candles and was kicking it in the purple den. He poured her a second mezcal and they toasted, did it right, eyes on the shot glass — none of this staring into one another’s eyes as if already wounded — and he downed it in one. Mezcal, so good so true. Distilled filth to filter his filth inside. He slammed the glass on the table and poured a third. Shots made him a better man: his teeth whitened, his wit quickened, his stiff hair stayed kempt and acted like it gave a shit. She didn’t need it, of course, she was rosy-cheeked and graceful sans hoodwinkery, but she too downed hers in one. I always assumed mezcal was slimy since they make it with dead worms, she said. And him: No, the worm is what gives it life.

Like the nose on a u, she said.

Mmm?

You know how it has those two dots when it really sounds like u?

Dieresis.

The nose on a u. When it’s with a q the u doesn’t breathe, only when it’s far from q, and it doesn’t need a nose there. But I always put one on anyway.

She traced the letter in the air with one finger and dotted it.

Like that.

He poured her one more and this time they did look into each other’s eyes before down-the-hatching. She glistened like a wet street. This might be the last woman I’m ever with in my life, he said to himself. He said that every time because, like all men, he couldn’t get enough, and because, like all men, he was convinced he deserved to get laid one more time before he died.

A flat silence slipped in from outside, the hours on the street withering in abandonment, while those in the house were watered in mezcal. But the mezcal was running low.

He had an emergency bottle at home. But what if the anemic student was there, curled up by the door waiting for them to toss him a tortilla. He was determined to hold out until the bastard had slunk back to his doghouse.

Sometimes I go outside in the middle of the night, said Three Times Blonde. If there’s not much light you can see the stars. No way we can do that now.

He looked up a lot too, nights when he was still on the grind at dawn and the streets were deserted. But he kept that quiet, she’d never buy it.

So you were telling me about Prince Charming, he said; and she said Foo don’t be mean.

He’s very refined, she said. This is my first boyfriend, my first really real one.

Then she started saying she’d met him at a party, fighting to defend the honor of a girl being bothered by two drunks and she fell head over heels just like that; okay, she admitted, he’s a bit cocky, and yeah he sometimes raises his voice, and sure he’s insanely jealous and sometimes drinks a lot and fusses too much over Bronco—

Who’s Bronco?

His car, silly.

He named his car?

Yeah, see he takes such good care of it. But when it’s just the two of us alone together he is so sweet, if you could only see him.

Good grief. Little slickster, alias Angelface.

Something in the air swished a candle, flicking light onto Three Times Blonde’s shoulder and suddenly he envisioned her unwrapped. Without thinking his hand reached out and very gently squeezed.

We went to the beach last week, she said, looking at him like he wasn’t touching her.

With the other hand he turned her slightly and began, ever so softly, to squeeze more as her skin surrendered.

Mmm, that feels nice, she said. Keep doing that.

He kept doing it, inwardly faster and outwardly keener, with a tremble he fought by staring only at his next little crest of flesh. And then he began with his mouth. Just peeling off the wrapper and popping each little crest into his mouth. She cocked her head slightly to glance from the corner of her eye and said You are insane, you know that? He said Nnnf and kept at it.

When he got to her shoulder blade he came upon a scar like a line upturned at the ends, deep. He traced it with one finger.

How’d you get that?

My fucking deranged brother. When we were kids one day he lost his shit and tried to knife me with a spoon.

A spoon?

I’m telling you he’s deranged.

He stopped touching the scar carefully, as tho afraid it might come off, and kissed it. She arched her back. He pulled down one spaghetti strap but before peeling off the rest traced his fingertips along the sierra of her spine. No longer leaning over to squeeze small folds of her, he slid across as if his arms were too short and he had to scoot right up to reach. As he kneaded another knot, almost to the edge of her back, he lowered the other hand to her hip and pulled her to him gently. For the first time she tensed.

You and me don’t even know each other.

He stopped moving his hands but didn’t take them off or release the pressure on her hip.

That’s the best part, he said.

And even before he said what he said next, he could tell the bastard was back. Bastard alias the Romantic.

It’s the best part, because affection is exactly what we need. Can you imagine what it would be like if instead of killing we cuddled? You seen how many people are out there hurting each other without even knowing who they’re shooting at?

He believed that, he really did, and yet he was still a bastard because he’d said it like a man paying off the popo to disappear a ticket. Obviously he couldn’t let this chance slip by. But still: bastard.

Three Times Blonde turned to look at him like he’d said something unforgivable. She stared tremulously a couple of seconds, then pulled him in by the neck and kissed him, sweeping her tongue across his as if surveying a new possession, marking more than kissing him, and he, already overexcited, had no idea what to do, but his left hand, which had twisted with her waist, and his right hand, which had landed on her belly, lent him the will that had wavered. He slipped his hands beneath her top and uncovered her breasts. They weren’t like he’d imagined them, with his hands and his head, so many times: they’re never the way you imagine them, they were smaller and pointier and one was slightly inverted as tho ordering him to suck it out, and as he obeyed he was shocked that Three Times Blonde started taking off his shirt, that she wanted it too.

He frenzied from breast to breast, undone by the inability to tongue them both at the same time. He licked his way down the almost-invisible trail of three-times-blonde peach fuzz that crept into her pants, which he unbuttoned, but before pulling them off he slipped a hand through her thong to finger her curls. He stood, fearful in that half-second she’d be overcome with ambivalence as he took off his own pants, but she was already stroking his stomach with the tip of one toe. He dropped everything but his unsexy underwear, knelt, and as he started to tug her panties aside heard Three Times Blonde ask What’s my name?