Daniel Sada - One Out of Two

Along those same lines: let the suitor’s true intentions come to light over time. Considering her age and considering her other baggage, she shouldn’t go losing her head over some momentary fling.

So, hands were not held or fondled, except while dancing with the music swirling around them … And the dialogue flowed, two silhouettes and an affectionate mood, a future pointing who knows where.

For a moment, let us imagine — we must — the atmosphere and the rhythm framing the action, the magnetism between them: flirtatious Constitución dimly illuminated and wearing a lovely dress with a definite girlish touch. Let us imagine the man when his eyes lit upon her, dumbstruck at the sight of such a marvel, then, instinctively, with no introduction save a fixed stare, the culminating moment, the propitious sensation shared from afar, and the pull to connect.

Their faces said yes: ardor.

Everything necessary to start the ball rolling.

That tall man with pointy sideburns — and clearly descended from heaven — is thirty-five years old. A little younger than she, manageable: especially: because of the unpleasant tension of enduring a long and rocky bachelorhood. An exceedingly agreeable man who wears cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat, a country saint who smiles at the ladies while smoothing down his mustache to give himself airs. By no means, though, is he a popinjay. Just talk to him, and you’ll see. He uses stratagems to make conquests, like any man at a dance. So much for his bearing, and as for what he does for a living: he buys and sells animals on credit or with cash. Only goats and pigs, because he doesn’t yet own even a jalopy, so he transports his beasts strapped to the gratings on the roofs of the run-down trucks of strangers. Even so: he’s doing just fine, thank you very much, and one day in the not-too-distant future he hopes to be the proud owner of a stakebed truck that he can use to transport his own livestock.

She dotted every i and crossed every t that had anything to do with her suitor, whose name was Oscar Segura. His likes, his dislikes, she was frank to a fault. Constitución even found out his real address — Calle Gómez Farías, number twenty-five, Colonia Zaragoza, Ciudad Frontera — which she corroborated with Soledad, as well as his marital status, just in case. In spite of his age, he lives with his parents and all his siblings. He is the eldest, and really as wonderful as they come, a paragon of good behavior, according to their aunt’s account, with a warm heart and no attachments, so a great help to his parents in many important ways. A man of deep feeling without streaks of knavery or traces of cynicism. Quite the opposite: moral and generous, a fighting angel.

The winning twin gave a too-smug description of his upright figure, replete with details that were mostly beside the point. Carried away, she even said it would be her privilege to sketch him, especially his face, and she promptly picked up a nearby pencil and piece of paper. Though now an objection was raised:

“There’s really no need, I can picture him just fine from your words,” says the loser.

Then, to avoid any more of her sister’s braggadocio, she stands up, like a spoiled child, or something of the sort: setting aside the tasks at hand, she walks over to the shop door. How puzzling.

There, sullen and fuming, she stands with her arms crossed. Staring off into the distance, or pretending to.

There is bitterness, there is pain, there is displeasure and probably injustice, for one was the spitting image of the other and now because of the toss of a coin, they no longer are. The so-called silent one never could have imagined that the Fates of love would show up after they’d been separated for only a few days. Herein, then, lies the catch, for an identical destiny would have been hers had that coin landed after one more turn.

Constitución watched her with surprise and, yes, at the same time placed a pencil behind her ear, like a carpenter … What had come over her equal? She finally understood that it might indeed have been a mistake to go on and on for so long and in so much boring detail simply because she was happy to have been noticed by a man, that is, any man, who was looking for a woman in order to … Because until then — and here’s the truth — not even a horse had allowed his gaze to linger longingly on either of them, and it was for this very reason that Gloria could not be her accomplice either in this or in any other idyll. But the chatterbox refused to emulate her sister’s angry attitude, and instead turned back to her work, telling herself: “I understand her anger, but I know she’ll get over it. Anyway, she should be happy for me.”

In the meantime, their customers came pouring in. As a rule, the twins didn’t talk to anybody: they didn’t like wasting time; they even put up a sign that read: WE ARE BUSY PROFESSIONALS. RESTRICT YOUR CONVERSATION TO THE BUSINESS AT HAND. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB US FOR NO REASON. SINCERELY: THE GAMAL SISTERS. They did not want, of course, to be rude. For although the twins knew from experience that people take advantage of the least sign of friendliness to engage in endless gossip, they couldn’t dispense with the politeness they had always shown between them. They had never shouted at each other like Furies, and they weren’t about to start now.

Hence, in front of others, all that turbulence and subconscious delight got redirected back into their hearts, or their backbones, for they were women of integrity, even in the toughest of times, and they had to feign at least tainted harmony and elegance in front of others, show those who patronized their shop the concrete courtesies they deserved. Their success was — and they knew this — in large part built upon such a foundation.

Quick, even if nervous, dispatchers, with the requisite professional grins, because otherwise … Let’s not forget that the competition is always lying in wait.

But, alas, this time wasn’t like other times. The man from the wedding turned out to be a thunderbolt sundering them apart. The mere fact that he existed led to a still indecipherable double entendre. As soon as the customers left, they sulkily returned to their former positions: Gloria, by the door: stubborn; and the other hard at work, having forgotten, on top of everything else, to take the pencil out from behind her ear.

For a few brief moments, they looked like two withered chestnuts, the comings and goings of their customers preventing further developments. During one of these intervals, when they’d been left on their own, Gloria offered a solution:

“I’m going home, because I feel like it and because I think I’ve earned it, and I’m leaving the rest for you. Anyway, I don’t need to ask your permission. While you were at the wedding, I worked myself to the bone, till midnight. I sewed more than twice as much. Now it’s your turn … I’ll see you there at lunchtime. I feel like making a delicious salad for the two of us.”

There was a tug on her voice at the end: that “for the two of us,” weighed down with surly sarcasm. The quiet one was finally and ardently showing her mettle. Constitución felt the hatchet fall gently, calmly, but also effectively.

And the loser, the one with right on her side, the one who wanted to complain without going too far, just far enough so that the other didn’t dare reproach her, fled, because: a single nasty comment could be catastrophic. Let her go, what harm could it do? she wouldn’t go far. Home, lunch. An understandable outrage: good grief!

Then came the moment when they were both sitting at the table sharing the culinary masterpiece that Gloria had prepared with incomparable care: a sumptuous salad of fresh produce, and myrtle juice, and some local ham bought who knows where. Lip-smacking! all this to stop the other from daring to question her attitude: those crossed arms and that knitted brow in the shop. She probably intuited that questions would carry more poison than salve; but, in spite of it all, what was extraordinary was not the clever gimmicks the winning twin used to make her case, but rather the diligence, the scrupulous and obvious artistry the loser had employed when laying out the meal.