Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

I had my reasons for setting up Joe with someone, and they were pretty important reasons. Maybe later on, I’ll explain. For now, Mr. Rose, be content in knowing this: it’s not easy to have a brother-in-law like that, especially if your husband is thirty years older than you. Cori was very hesitant about the whole thing; first she’d say yes, then no, then this, then that, making one excuse after another, but I’d spur her on and slowly she began to get excited about the whole thing. Because she was always so disheveled, I took her to the beauty parlor to get highlights and a cut. The hairdresser was a Portuguese woman who brandished her scissors asking, “ Scaladinho? Scaladinho?”

And we responded, “Yes, yes, scaladinho.”

So the hairdresser dug in her scissors in with gusto and the locks of Cori’s hair fell to the floor. “Scaladinho?”

“Yes, go, woman, don’t be afraid, scaladinho! Don’t be afraid to give that hair some life. Make it rise!” But after all of this, the cut did not come out as well as expected. This haircut was awful, no style. Her head looked like freshly sucked-on mango seed, the tufts of fiber standing on end, and my poor Cori looked uglier than before. But there wasn’t anything we could do then, aside from laugh about the catastrophe. I told my friend that to make up for it I’d buy her some black pants with a tight stylish cut and very sexy high-heeled sandals, because she was one of those girls who buys her getups in the Salvation Army, and if I left it to her she might show up in a coffee-colored suit, with white nurse’s shoes, and a black purse. She didn’t know a thing about updating her wardrobe, not my Cori, nor about the latest fashion trends, because every fucking dollar she made, she’d send directly to Adelita in Chalatenango.

We chose a Friday for the big date, and that afternoon we left work together for my house and made her undergo a session of “extreme makeover.” Eye shadow on the lids, eyeliner, mascara, rice powder, perfume, lip gloss, the works. I pulled out whatever I had in my kit in the drawer and threw it all on, and to top it off, I lent her a pair of earrings and tried to rearrange as well as I could that nightmare on her head.

“So?” I asked, when I finally let her look at the mirror.

“Unrecognizable” was all she said.

And what was the result of our little conspiracy? Let’s just say Greg was right. Sleepy Joe didn’t make it to the movie theater. He called to get out of it with whatever excuse and to say he’d catch up with us at the restaurant. He made it alright, but he might as well not have, the jerk went off and started talking to Greg in Slovak, because that’s how they were, with everyone else, they spoke English, but between them always Slovak. And rude Greg, instead of calling him out for it, instead of making things easier, began to play along with his little brother, and the two of them got lost in their own private exchange, completely forgetting us. We got even by loading ourselves up with gin on the rocks. Corina made me laugh that night. Because of her awful pronunciation in English, the waiter could not understand her when she asked for a gin, which came out the way she said it as “tzin.”

“Please, one tzin.”

And the waiter: “What?”

“Please, one tzin.”

“What?”

Until Cori got pissed off and ordered in a defeated tone: “One tzin and tonic without tonic.”

I will never get over her absence. I have not turned to any of my friends during this jam I’m in right now, fucked and locked up in this hole, but Corina, I’d have called right away, and I know she’d have done anything to get me out of here even if it meant kicking down these walls. I comfort myself with memories of her, going over the days of our friendship, so playful, so joyful, so true, regretting what happened that night, which was partly my fault. You have to understand, anybody else may not have been affected as much, but Cori was heartbroken. Her soul was shattered, as they say, and bruises appeared over all her body. That Friday in the restaurant, Sleepy Joe and Greg threw back their beers. No interactions with us at all. Think of the Tower of Babel but as a table, the Table of Babel, with the two of them on one end chatting in their hellish language, and the two of us facing them, going at it in Spanish and having a good time at our end, above all because we were using our language, which always makes things easier. Until it grows late and the time comes for everyone to go home, and my rude-ass brother-in-law, who all this time hasn’t even turned to look at Cori or spoken a single word to her, throws his arms over her shoulders and takes her away. They left the restaurant together, Sleepy Joe half shoved her into a car and took her. I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye, or to ask her what she thought about the unexpected turn the blind date had taken at the end. Like I said, she’d had a few drinks, but nothing outrageous. She was a little buzzed, but walking fine, although granted, with that good bit of tzin still in her. Greg and I walked back to the apartment, which was a few blocks away, and that weekend we didn’t hear from Cori and Sleepy Joe again.

“Should I call her?” I wanted Greg’s advice.

“Leave her alone, woman!” he responded. “Let her be, she’s not a child.”

On Monday, Cori didn’t show up to work, so when I got out, I went to her house. She opens the door and makes me come in, but something’s wrong. I don’t know; she’s acting weird, different. Quiet and evasive, she who was always so cheery. It took some effort to get her to tell me what had happened Friday night; actually at that moment, she did not tell me anything, some time had to pass before she told me that Sleepy Joe had raped her.

“The strange thing is that he didn’t have to,” she told me, “because I’d have let him have sex with me anyway, I was ready. I had made up my mind not to let all that makeup and the tight pants be for nothing. It was me who suggested he come to my place. That was the purpose of the date, no? That’s why I put on heels and drank all that gin. That’s what it was about, no? It was all about getting laid, wasn’t it? And yet, your brother-in-law raped me and abused me, not once but various times, very brutal, you know. I begged him to stop, begged him no more, but it was as if he was possessed. There came a point when I thought he was going to kill me.”

That’s what Corina told me, and I have to tell you, Mr. Rose, I didn’t know how much of it to believe. It’s a fact that she was no sex expert, that she didn’t have much experience in the field, and the little that she had had been precisely the rape back in Chalatenango when she was barely fifteen. That’s why I had my doubts. It did seem as if she had been beaten, that’s true: with bruises here and there, but not wounds or anything. The biggest damage seemed to be psychological, and she seemed so hurt, so depressed that I took her to the doctor, and it was there how I found out how Sleepy Joe had violated her, hurting her in the front and tearing her a bit in the back. He penetrated her in whatever hole he could find and left her with her breasts, mouth, and genitals swollen. “But what can you do, that’s the way passionate sex is,” or so I tried to explain to my friend Corina.

“Look, chica,” I said to her. “Sometimes after a good fuck you feel as if you’ve been crucified, barely able to sit down, walking like a duck, your jaw a bit unhinged from so much sucking dick. And maybe your man is in bad shape too, bruised from top to bottom, holding his balls in his hands, his cock turned to compote, his back all scratched, his tongue scalded, his neck with bite marks. That can happen. But sex doesn’t stop being pleasurable because of that. You get what I’m saying, chica? You understand?”