Laura Restrepo - Hot Sur

All that would be later, though, all that was the dream I was building up high as the moon while living down below in the rubble. For the moment I had to give time its due, without becoming desperate or depressed, keeping my priorities in order, surviving as best as I could in the ruins of that apartment, and focusing all my energies on the upcoming trial that was getting closer each day. That’s where my head was that night I returned home late, put the dog on the floor, and began looking for a candle, when I tripped on the mattress, the one I had brought up from the basement and that on top of everything smelled of urine. I tripped on it and asked myself what it was doing out there. I had left it in the bedroom and not where it was now, crossways at the entrance. Very strange, and my first instinct was to grab Hero and get the hell out of there. I should have done it, Mr. Rose, I should have. But I didn’t, just one of those times when I didn’t listen to my instincts. Analyzing it, I can’t quite figure out why I didn’t take off right away, when it was very obvious something was wrong. I guess in the end I didn’t do it because everything seemed so wrong during those days, one more thing seeming wrong just didn’t register; I was immune to things that seemed wrong. I must have thought that the stray cats had broken in looking for food and moved things around. But Hero was also startled and growled. It couldn’t be clearer if a hundred roosters were singing, or more to the point, one dog growling, but I refused to listen to the message. In the end, I think I didn’t run away because I didn’t have anywhere to run to. Better just to stay there and deal with whatever I had to deal with. I kicked the mattress aside, grabbed a candle, and went searching in the darkness for matches to light it, when someone grabbed my arm and pulled me back. Hard. Ugly. A big hand covered my mouth. Someone breathing on the back of my neck, and pressed against my butt, a… a man’s thing. Horrible? Disgusting? Terrifying? Of course, it was a horrifying experience, well, at first a very horrifying and then not so much, not so much and not at all, because soon I recognized that hand, that smell, that breath, that other thing.

Have you guessed? If you bet on Sleepy Joe, then ding-ding, you win. Apparently, he had been there, waiting for me in the dark, crouching quietly in a corner. I don’t know how long he had been there. It’s possible that he came often, and stayed the night once in a while. So I arrived that night, and he jumped me. I almost had a heart attack at first. You have to understand, Mr. Rose, my thing with Sleepy Joe had been a torrid love, and you can’t simply delete those things. You can shove them completely out of sight or bury them under a mountain of forgetfulness, but when you least expect it, they come back full force. That’s just how it happened here, my old flame jumps me from behind, and before I knew it, we were back to the same old thing, embarrassing as it is to admit it. I’m not saying I still loved him or anything like that, the opposite, in fact. I knew better than anybody what an absolute bastard he could be. A do-nothing, an asshole of the worst kind, but he hadn’t done anything to his brother. Sleepy Joe adored his brother, Mr. Rose, and I was sure he hadn’t lifted a finger against Greg. Sleepy Joe was not the murderer. And he was still a hot little papacito, no use denying that, so with all those repressed desires built up from Manninpox, that long dry spell, that abstinence that made me want to explode, starving and with my man right there, like a pie cooling on a windowsill. But not as you may imagine it, because there was a lot to talk about first. It was obvious he only wanted one thing, a little toss in the sheets to get things going, but I needed to talk. I needed to know what had really happened to Greg, what Sleepy Joe knew about the murder and this mess I was in up to my chin. What role had Sleepy Joe played? How deeply was he implicated? Did he know about the arms trafficking? Who had killed his brother? Why the fuck did he not come to visit me in prison? How is it possible that he abandoned me at the lowest point of my existence? What was that whole muddled history of the knife, the one I had wrapped as a present like an idiot? A whole rush of questions brimming with rancor, mistrust, and suspicion… and hatred. Because deep down, I felt a physical hatred for him, a primal hatred thickened with regrets. You would think that even the most feverish lust would cool under these circumstances. You would think. But Sleepy Joe wasn’t your run-of-the-mill character. He wanted me on the bed, or on that filthy mattress, and that’s it. But that’s not what I wanted. Well, maybe a little bit, because Sleepy Joe was no good to the core, but damn, he was fine. “Come here, my little hot ass, don’t waste this present I’ve unwrapped for you,” that’s what he said, the damn flirt, and I could easily confirm that he wasn’t kidding. He goes at me with kisses all over my neck, and I slowly get lost in his smells, a little bit saying no and a little bit saying yes. And right in the middle of all that he blurts out a very strange question, well, strange for someone in the throes of this kind of passion.

“You have that hundred and fifty thousand, right? Tell me you do, my love, tell me you have it.”

“What hundred and fifty thousand?” I said, pushing him away. “Don’t fuck with me, Joe. They almost fucking killed me for that, some hundred and fifty thousand I didn’t know shit about. So you tell me. What hundred and fifty thousand?”

“Whatever you want, my little hot ass.” He backpedaled, trying to calm me down to get back to business, “Take it easy, my love, don’t get all flustered, let’s just stay with this and we’ll talk later.”

I needed to think. Hit pause to take in everything that was happening, bring down the temperature to avoid making a huge mistake. We were still inside in the dark and it was cold, so I was able to convince him to go out in the hallway for a moment to plug in the extension cord. But he kept on coming at me when he came back, determined not to let me interrupt things, so the fever had risen instead of dropping. Although maybe not, maybe that’s not how it happened. I think I’m lying, Mr. Rose. Maybe writing is not a good medium to tell about these intimate things, or maybe I just shouldn’t be telling you in such detail. In any case, I think I’m not being clear. The confusing thing about the feelings we carry inside is that they never are what they seem, always something different. Here I am confessing to you that what I felt for Joe was physical desire, and yes, that’s partly true, but it’s also not true, because in those days what I really wanted was something or someone to return to after a long voyage, and the familiar and once-loved body of Sleepy Joe could very well have been felt as a home, a place where you are received with a hug. I don’t want to get entangled in my psychological ramblings, Mr. Rose. So be that as it may, the scene was sexual. Now another confession, this one a bit stupider. It has to do with female insecurity. The truth was that I was self-conscious about being so thin. The last time we had made love I had been some forty-four pounds heavier, and Sleepy Joe wasn’t at all attracted to the sylph type, and had always said he liked my body because it gave him something to hang on to. Now I’d come back looking like a scarecrow, all bones, and I didn’t want him to see it, to realize that the thing he liked about me was no longer there. I had an idea. I’m not sure if right at that moment or a bit later, but I had an idea. Maybe not such a great idea. “Wait here,” I said to him in a very seductive voice, “I’ll be right back.” Sleepy Joe stayed in the living room while I went into the bedroom and took off my clothes, all my clothes. The mirror in my vanity was broken. They had destroyed it with everything else when they had burst in, but for one jagged piece that still hung there. I caught a glimpse of myself there. Where before there had been a full and delightful body, as someone had once described it, now it was just a skinny thing, too skinny. And that wasn’t the worst of it. When I looked closely, I realized how evident the suffering was on me. Maybe that’s what I should keep Sleepy Joe from seeing, I thought. What I need to hide from him is not so much this thinness, but the pain and weariness I’m carrying inside. That person in the mirror looked like a piece of cow cud or something that had been put through a grinder. Everything that had happened to me had turned my soul into jelly. Something told me that I needed to keep that from Sleepy Joe. I’m not sure why. It just seemed like an anti-aphrodisiac. Who’d want to hook up with someone so beaten down? I didn’t feel very seductive, let’s just say, but at least with my clothes on it wasn’t so noticeable.