David Unger - The Mastermind

* * *

As if to deny the future and upset his wife, Guillermo buys himself a fifteen-gear Peugeot and Rosa Esther a three-gear Raleigh. If they are going to leave New York, they might as well spend their last months exploring the city.

“This is the most foolish thing you have ever done. I will never ride that bike,” she tells him, more angry with his lack of consultation than the waste of money. She knows that his parents’ deaths have left them without money worries for years.

He simply shrugs. Every weekend or holiday at daybreak he takes his bicycle down the elevator and rides through Riverside Park or Central Park. He makes a habit of biking over the Brooklyn Bridge to Fulton’s Landing, where he eats ice cream and stares at the monumental beauty of the Twin Towers in the distance. He discovers Sahadi’s on Atlantic Avenue and buys dates from Morocco and ma’amoul from Yemen for Chichi, Mercedes, Deseo Vino, and even his wife. On several occasions he rides to the Bronx Zoo, where for the first time he sees a red panda, and thinks back to his many visits to the Aurora Zoo with Juancho.

One day, he bicycles all the way to Brighton Beach, where he eats potato and mushroom knishes and watches the many Russian immigrants sunning themselves on the boardwalk. He does not want to leave New York, though he knows their visas are about to expire. And anyway, Rosa Esther would make good on her threat to leave him.

At least he will return armed with a master’s degree in commercial and international law from Columbia University. And the years in New York have allowed him and Rosa Esther to establish independence from their families, or this is what they tell their New York Latin American friends. But there is no need to justify their actions. Everyone but Ignacio and Deseo Vino has decided to return to their birth countries to reintegrate. As foreign citizens without working papers or green cards, they have no choice but to leave since no one wants to stay illegally.

There are parties every Friday and Saturday night in May and June. Marcelo starts his drinking early and by nine o’clock is snoring in his chair. He’s always the first to pass out, leaving Chichi tantalizingly alone. Rosa Esther finds this spectacle of drunkenness distasteful and she returns alone to their apartment as soon as dinner is over. She nods her head in disbelief when her husband says he will be home by midnight. She acts as if she doesn’t know it, but she is convinced that Guillermo has been making love to Chichi since April.

But she is wrong — it began two months earlier. .

At the beginning of February, Chichi and Marcelo had decided to host a Valentine’s Day party in their ground-floor apartment. All the friends were there, drinking heavily and smoking grass, dancing with their partners. At one point Guillermo went to the bathroom to pee. He didn’t see Chichi sitting on the toilet seat. Closing the door, he finally noticed her and glanced down at her crotch, her thick black bush, and then their eyes locked. Chichi immediately stood up and approached Guillermo, turning the bolt behind him. Her eyes were on fire; she had waited a long time for something like this. And so had he.

He could taste her cigarette breath as she kissed him and put her hands on his jeans. Then she knelt down on the bathroom rug, pulled down his zipper, and put his penis in her mouth. She rubbed his testicles while she consumed him.

Guillermo could hear Jim Morrison singing over and over again: “ When the music’s over, turn out the lights. .” The bathroom door was vibrating. He pulled out of Chichi’s mouth and lifted her up. He thrust himself inside of her and they started making love standing up, tightly clenched. He was trying to hold back his orgasm, but he couldn’t. He was too excited to be inside a woman who truly wanted him. He came as he heard her begin to sing in her poor English: “ Before I sink into the big sleep I want to hear, I want to hear the scream of the butterfly. .”

She clung hard to him. He felt her nails digging into his back through his shirt. He had come, but remained hard, and she used his hardness for her own pleasure. In another couple of minutes she let out a series of soft cries that he tried to cover up with both his hands.

* * *

This was the first of many trysts. In fact, Guillermo visits Chichi every Tuesday and Thursday morning when Marcelo’s Shelley and Wordsworth course meets. After class, Marcelo always goes straight to Butler Library to study. They make love without protection and by May she is pregnant. Chichi doesn’t care who the father is — what she wants most from life right now is a child. And Marcelo, ignorant of everything, is pleased to have an heir.

What neither Chichi nor Rosa Esther realize is that Guillermo and Mercedes are also having a romance. Mario, the sympathetic bachelor, has given each a spare set of keys to his apartment so they can get together every Friday morning.

If making love to Chichi is animalistic, lovemaking with Mercedes is slow and romantic, an instrumental duet, though she insists he use a condom. Mercedes feels she could fall in love with Guillermo and his dark features, and this makes their liaison every bit more dangerous. She tells him not to worry, but he does. They could fall in love and wreck two marriages.

Each week Guillermo’s balancing act becomes more complicated. He is certain that one of his three women will discover the truth. Still, he is cautious in his planning and movements and, surprisingly, feels no guilt pleasuring three women; well, two. He has discovered the true power of sex, and wants to explore it even more.

But the dalliances soon come to an end. The military is overthrown in Argentina after the Falkland Islands debacle and Mercedes and Carlitos are invited to return to Buenos Aires immediately and form part of the new Alfonsín government. Marcelo and Chichi are returning to Chile because Marcelo has been offered a professorship in English literature at Valparaíso University, a position he can’t decline. Neither Mercedes nor Chichi speak with Guillermo about leaving Rosa Esther.

Rosa Esther announces proudly to her husband and to the group of friends in June that she will be giving birth in late November. She has known since March. Guillermo is taken aback by this public announcement, and he wonders if she held back telling him because she was suspicious about his affairs. He doesn’t question her in private, but he is inwardly pleased to know that his wife will have something to distract her from his affairs when they return to Guatemala. This is all having a child means to him right now.

* * *

It looks as if the group will part as friends — until the moment the shit hits the fan. Chichi and Marcelo have passed herpes back and forth for years, and during a flare-up, she passes it on to Guillermo, who passes it on to both Mercedes and Rosa Esther. He has no option but to confess his infidelities.

All three couples are prescribed antiviral medication that will curb the symptoms, though it will never eradicate the disease. Chichi and Marcelo don’t really care; Carlitos doesn’t want to hear the details, but is willing to forgive his wife if she declares (which she does) that she will stay faithful to him from now on. Guillermo tries to fabricate excuses for his behavior: how the death of his parents unhinged him; how the women seduced him; how it all happened because no one wants to go home. But Rosa Esther fumes. She is unwilling to forgive Guillermo for putting their baby in jeopardy. She feels more betrayed than heartbroken, and will punish him for this sin of biblical proportions. She also fears the medication will damage their baby.

Guillermo admires himself for confessing to being the culprit, and actually convinces himself that he is a victim of circumstances, and of seduction by their female friends.