Iosi Havilio: Open Door

Aída tells me that she doesn’t know why she comes to these parties, that they’re always the same in the end, people crushed up against each other, barely able to move. I didn’t know, I say, that it was a party. When we left the toilets, Aída brushed her fingers over my lips again. She didn’t need to. Come on, let me buy a round and we’ll forget the whole silly incident. The silly drink, she corrects herself and laughs.

Aída repeats three times that she’s a photographer and works freelance for a couple of fashion and decorating magazines.

‘What about you?’

‘I was going to be a vet, but now I just work for one,’ I say and she immediately takes an interest. She tells me that she has a twelve-year-old dog called Diki whose paw had to be amputated last November because it got caught in the spokes of a bike.

‘I’m going to catch a taxi, can I take you anywhere?’ Aída asks after a pause. I tell her no, thanks anyway, I still don’t know where I’m going. She insists.

‘Why don’t you come for a drink at my place while you decide?’

I let her lead me. The rain, which has come back with renewed enthusiasm, convinces me.

Aída’s place was a two-room affair in Calle Montevideo, half a block from Avenida Córdoba. An old building with a very tall door of black iron, two or three stairs covered with a red carpet and a traditional lift with a rectangular mirror at the back.

When she opened the flat door, Diki jumped up at her, pawing at her legs. Aída bent down to cuddle him and Diki responded by licking her cheeks. I had seen many dogs in my time, but never one like this, ugly as well as lame.

‘Do you like anisette?’ Aída asked. ‘I love it,’ she answered herself and filled two small glasses decorated with gold crescent moons. Two Turkish glasses. Anisette seemed like an old-fashioned drink to me, and now that I could see her clearly, under lamplight, it felt appropriate: Aída had something old-fashioned about her too.

She raised her glass, I raised mine and we clinked them. I don’t quite know how Aída ended up massaging my neck, and my back, her hands like pincers. She did it very well, like a professional. She poured me another glass, and, as she unbuttoned my blouse, she asked:

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

We spent a long time on the sofa, listening to music, talking nonsense, initially without touching each other, then later, on her initiative, playfully intertwining our legs. Aída’s were long and slim. Another glass of anisette and Aída leant her head against my shoulder. She asked me to stroke her. To the touch, Aída’s skin confirmed something that had caught my attention when she was near me in the lift. Her cheeks were covered in little transparent flakes, like puff pastry. Aída suggested we lie down on her bed. We’ll be comfier there, she said.

Clothes always lie. Or rather, if they don’t lie, at the very least they conceal. Aída undressed. And if she had seemed a fairly normal girl before, well formed but normal, when I saw her naked, straight on, I was surprised by how small her tits were, like toys, as if they were only there because anatomy demanded it. She sat down on the bed and started rolling a joint. Get in if you want, she told me, and when I saw her from behind, I found her tiny knickers hilarious.

Then she embraced me and I let myself be embraced. She wanted to kiss me on the mouth. Not today, I stopped her, maybe another day. She didn’t protest. And all that time, as we smoked in silence, until I fell asleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about Aída’s skin, which changed every other minute, which she shed like a serpent.

That same week, without giving it too much thought, I moved into her flat.

On Sunday we woke up at half two in the afternoon. Why don’t we go out for a bit of air, said Aída from the bedroom, her voice still not clear from last night’s cigarettes. I was sitting on the toilet, flicking through one of those women’s magazines that published Aída’s photos. By some miracle, I didn’t have a hangover.

OK, I said, let’s go. Aída came into the bathroom, looking wide awake. I’ll make coffee, she said, stroked my forehead and left. I stayed in the bathroom for some time, engrossed in an article about a new equestrian style in women’s fashion which had been all the rage in Europe for years and which, according to the journalist, was going to land here at any moment. One photo, filling a quarter of a page, showed a blonde model, practically albino, her hair pulled tightly back like a ballerina, posing with her mare. I immediately thought of the moribund horse in Open Door and his owner, the two Jaimes, whom I had met the day before. I imagined them together, lying on the straw, keeping each other company right now, while Aída was making me breakfast.

I took the magazine into the kitchen to show Aída. Look, I say to her and she makes a contemptuous gesture with her hand. It was a joke, to piss her off, she didn’t like horses, even in photos. As a girl she’d had dreams, dreams of horses that she’d never tell me about. She called them dreams, but they must have been nightmares. I persisted anyway: I didn’t tell you about the horse from yesterday, I said, the one I went to examine. Poor animal, I think it’s got cancer. Aída pulled a disgusted face. And you know what? I said between sips of coffee, it has the same name as its owner: both of them are called Jaime. Aída laughed, thinking it was a joke.

Afterwards, while Aída showered, I had a second cup of coffee, black, no sugar, to wake me up a bit more.

Shortly before seven, I saw her for the last time. She was wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt, she’d put her hair up in a kind of bun. She seemed happy, normal. Her breath was bitter, from an empty stomach.

We had gone to La Boca. We were bored, the walk had been a failure. Too many people around, too many noises all at once and nothing much to do.

At some point Aída went into a bar. She gestured with her hand, she barely moved her lips, she seemed to say I’ll be right back, or something like it. I lit a cigarette. With my back to the street, I caught my reflection in a long and narrow mirror with traditional painted designs around the edge. People passed to and fro and I disappeared and reappeared between them.

A blond boy stopped in front of me. He had a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He smiled at me and mimed lighting it with an imaginary lighter. I gave him mine. He couldn’t have been skinnier, or dirtier. He was that type of blond whose hair is the only blond thing about him. A tough street kid, tanned skin, full lips, theatrical stare, aged about fourteen or fifteen. He lit his cigarette with the tip of mine and lingered longer than necessary in handing it back. He had a scar snaking between the knuckles of one hand. He didn’t take his eyes off me. He looked at me the way some brats do, unintentional and yet intense.

‘Fancy a smoke?’ he said bringing his face closer, all his teeth on show. I just looked at him, a bit lost.

Do you want to or not, the boy pressed me and, because it was Sunday, because I was bored and because Aída still hadn’t come out, I hunched my shoulders as if to say: Why not? The boy jerked his head for me to follow him.

First I glanced into the bar and amongst the crowd I saw Aída going into the toilets. What had she been doing all this time? It didn’t surprise me, Aída did that sort of thing, disappeared, played hide and seek. The blond boy was waiting for me at the corner.

We took a diagonal lane and came to a yard that doubled as a basketball court, a few parked cars around the edges. The blond boy guided me to an out-of-sight corner where there were two other boys, even rougher looking and much younger. One was rather chubby with the look of an obedient dog, his face camouflaged in the hood of the tracksuit he was wearing. The third boy was much taller than the other two, wearing denim from head to toe, a proper show-off. Did you get it? the blond boy asked the one in denim, who immediately took a long, fat joint out of his pocket, twice the size of a normal joint. The blond boy lit up, took two deep drags and passed it to me. We smoked, each taking our turn, in perfect harmony. They asked me my name and I asked theirs. They told me that they lived round here and that they played in a band. They wanted to know where I was from. From far away, I replied.