Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

And since I mentioned my bedroom, I should describe it, because it is my great pride and joy. Even before I got married, I decided to do it first class and not spare any expense. I chose mint green for the spreads and curtains; I knitted pillow covers in white and arranged them against the headboard; I bought a double bed with an orthopedic mattress, which was actually a mistake because it did not leave enough space for the two night tables in white wood, or the dresser and the bedside lamps with their bell-shaped fringed amber shades that emitted a warm, intimate light. Over the dresser, there was a wide mirror where I’d apply my makeup in the morning light, because there were no windows in the bathroom and Bolivia had always warned that if you put on your makeup under artificial light you would end up looking like a sad clown. Later, when Greg moved in with me, he put up that crucifix over the headboard. I abhorred it because it was so realistic, so bloody, a nightmarish thing that clashed with the décor. I don’t know if I’m being clear, but that crucifix is some antiquated disagreeable thing that had nothing to do with the mint-green blanket and curtains that I had chosen to brighten my life.

A double-beamed cross on three blue mountain ridges, that’s how Sleepy Joe described the tattoo in the middle of his chest, some Slovakian symbol for something about the native land, and under the cross, in Gothic letters, the legend “Lightning over Tatras.” My Greg had exactly the same tattoo, double-beamed cross on three blue mountain ridges, and the same legend, “Lightning over Tatras.” Just like Sleepy Joe, the tattoo was in the middle of his chest. Neither of them liked to talk about it, but I realized that it had religious and patriotic importance for them. Was it the mark of a legion or some rebel group? Did it have to do with a place of origin, some fraternity, or the mafia? I never knew. Sleepy Joe liked to recount how he had ordered his two lovers to get a tattoo of the same cross on their asses, but smaller, thumb-sized. More bullying from Sleepy Joe, with the touch of a truck driver. If he was a truck driver. He said that his two girlfriends or wives or lovers, whatever they were, worked at night, in bars or other dives, and he showed me pictures of them that he carried around in his wallet. I hated him for that and at the same time was obsessed and demanded details, and asked questions that were tormenting me: Do they know about each other? Do they know about me? Of the three, which one did he like best? And other such nonsense.

“What did they offer that I don’t? Tell me. What did they offer that I don’t?”

“They let me sleep during the day and don’t bug me about it.”

That topic had become a permanent conflict between us, so much so that at times it seemed as if I were more interested in Sleepy Joe’s girlfriends than in Sleepy Joe. I imagine that’s how jealousy works; they set up a blind boxing match against someone you don’t even know, and because of this you’re overcome with the zeal to dominate every minute detail about your rival, to know her by her short hairs. Only then can you realistically calculate the chances of defeating her. As to my brother-in-law, I was slugging it out in a phantom ring not with one contender but two. One was called Maraya, and she was a disco chick. Judging from her picture, she’d have been pretty if not for her wide nose and her protruding front teeth with a gap between them, not to mention the face of not having slept for a few months, and the bags under her eyes that made her look sick. I thought she was a drug addict. But she had a hell of a body, impossible to deny that. She was one of those women granted the miraculous power to remain thin where it is desirable to remain thin and full-fleshed in those areas where it is desirable to remain so. At least that’s what it looked like from the pictures where she was wearing a black spandex top, hot leopard-print pants, platform boots, a sailor’s cap, and huge hoop earrings. She danced at Chikki Charmers, a roadside bar for truckers in the countryside, twelve miles north of Ithaca, New York. According to Joe, Maraya specialized in ballads, because Chikki Charmers would put on themed shows depending on the time of night, and she performed striptease and karaoke with slower songs such as Billy Joel’s “She’s Got a Way,” Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night,” and the Commodores’ “Three Times a Lady.” Because I bugged him so much for details, Joe once told me that in Maraya’s contract there was a clause that said that each night she had to perform dressed according to the era, whether it was the sixties or the Saturday Night Fever period of the seventies, when they danced hard to release the stress of the week. That’s the mood that she had to create for the scene, and to show off that stunning body, she had to wrap it in clothes made out of Lycra and spandex, elastic, satin, silver pants; and she had to wear platform shoes to appear six inches taller than she usually was, and do pirouettes and other moves on the pole, while removing her miniskirt, hot pants, and crochet bikini. I think that was it, the seventies.

Are you surprised, Mr. Rose, that each detail has been engraved in my memory, even the silliest ones? You probably know from your own experience that nothing bores more into memory than jealousy. Sleepy Joe’s second girlfriend went by the name of Wendy Mellons. She spoke Spanish, had children by other men, and was considerably older than Maraya, and older than I was, and taller and fatter, and apparently much older than even Joe himself, although he’d deny it. With a spectacular pair of tits and a formidable ass, according to him, but as far as I’m concerned she was a hammy grandma, a diva past her prime. She worked as a bartender at a place called The Terrible Espinosas in Cañon City, south of Colorado Springs, Colorado, the birthplace of the two Slovak brothers, which is maybe why Sleepy Joe loved her so much. This Wendy Mellons must have been like a second mother to him, for there is no other way to explain why he’d be so in love with that Little Red Riding Hood granny.

“Your two girlfriends are a pair of whores,” I liked to tell him.

“What do you want from me?” he responded. “If honest wives like you don’t give it up for me.”

And we laughed about the situation. What else could we do? In the end, I was married and in no position to demand a fidelity that I could not give in return. Of course, with Joe the laughter did not last long; it was but a brief ray of sunlight in between the thundershowers of the day, because he was just as soon overcome with a rage that poured from him like streams of black vomit.

“Get out of bed,” I said after we made love, “we have to get dressed and pick up this lion’s den; your brother will be here soon.”

And it was as if I had cursed his mother. Did not he, after all have a right to nap a little after a good fuck, or was I some pitiful whore that had to get up right away to wash off what men had dumped between my legs? When it came to offending others, Sleepy Joe had no limits. Rudeness. But not that kind of rudeness that is innocuous but the kind with malicious intent.

“I’m leaving this place!” I screamed at him in the midst of my frustration, and I didn’t know what to fear more, that Joe would stop me with a whack or that Greg would discover the whole scenario.

So I just started to clean, clean like a madwoman, not overlooking one hair or leaving one drool unwiped, one wrinkle unsmoothed, not the smallest bit of his sperm floating around, nor any traces of what had just happened, not even the memory of so much desire and so much sex and so much rage that had transpired in that bed. I opened the windows wide and sprayed air freshener throughout the house and doused myself with perfume behind my ears and deodorant between my legs. At the last minute, I was able to grab Joe’s underwear, hanging from the feet of the Christ, to whom I’d beg, My beautiful sweet Jesus, you who died on the cross, close your eyes, pretend you have seen nothing, forgive my sins and promise me you will keep my secret.