— Excellent, he says. I didn’t know that you worked here, too.
— I don’t work here. I’m the owner. Well, one of the owners. There’s three of us, Virginia says. Him — she points to the waiter, serving a table — his wife, who should be here soon, and me. Do you mind if we wait for her five minutes before we leave?
— Of course, Nula says. I knew from the first time I saw you that you were a business man.
— No, Virginia says. The first time you saw me was a few years ago, at the enology course at the Hotel Iguazú. That’s the secret that I wanted to tell you: that we already knew each other.
— Seriously? he says, laughing. You’re joking. How could I not have noticed you?
— I was a little fatter then. And in some situations it’s better to go unnoticed, Virginia says. I wanted to approach you, I was very attracted to you. But you seemed so serious back then. And besides, a pregnant girl came to see you two or three times. When I saw you the other day I recognized you immediately. You look better.
— I’m sure you do too. I can’t imagine you looking better than you do tonight.
Virginia laughs lightly, but immediately her expression turns serious.
— Thanks, but it’s not necessary for you to keep repeating that nonsense, she says. Here comes my associate.
Nula, who is taking a sip of his Negroni, turns toward the door, through which he sees a girl in a tight, short-sleeved black dress with a tight band around the knees; a low, rectangular neckline begins at her collarbones and falls to the upper edge of her breasts, leaving her neck exposed. She stops at a table occupied by a couple, says a few words, and then, leaning over, gives each of them a conventional kiss on the cheek. Then she walks to the counter and arrives just at the moment when Nula deposits the glass with the rest of his Negroni on the white paper napkin.
— Flaca, Virginia says. This is the friend I told you about. Nula, La Flaca.
La Flaca approaches Nula and kisses him on the cheek. Then she apologizes for making them wait. Her husband arrives from the other side of the room and now it’s his turn to receive the quick kiss from La Flaca on his left cheek. Virginia picks up her purse from somewhere behind the counter, invisible to Nula, walks to the end of the counter, where the register is, turns around, and comes back in the opposite direction, toward them, along the outside edge of the counter. White pants made of a silky cloth hug her legs, her backside, her hips, her flat belly, her groin. Her white shoes click, evenly and firmly, against the reddish tiles. After a general exchange of perfunctory kisses, Virginia and Nula walk out to the street. They turn at the corner, walking under the shadows of the trees, toward the dark green station wagon parked along the curb a few meters ahead. Before pulling out, in the darkness of the car, with the dashboard lights projecting upward at an angle, their faces, looking in the same direction because of the position of their bodies in the seats, as though each of them was unaware of the presence of the other, reflecting the weak light, covered with highlights and shadows, indecisive and expectant, exaggerate their strangeness. A heavy silence surprises them, unexpected considering the casual relationship they’ve settled into since the beginning, submerging them among rapid, contradictory thoughts for a few seconds, as if the fragile cortex of urbanity whose surface retained the overflow of an indifferent, anarchic substance above turbulent, profound depths had split and both of them, exhibiting their openness up till that moment, assaulted by a sudden flood, were trying desperately to contain it. Nula, his voice coming out slightly hoarse, having to cough a couple of times before he can speak naturally, suggests the restaurant at the Hotel Palace, one of the most popular in the city, where they’re sure to run into at least one person they know, according to the rule whereby he carries out his most suspicious behavior where everyone can see it, precisely with the intention of dispelling those suspicions. Virginia accepts with a quick laugh that, Nula thinks, suggests she intuits his rationale. The mood has changed: their casual, quick humor, their worldly cynicism, their erotic double entendres, have lost their use value, and, without meaning to, they’ve moved inside something, a zone or a dimension that they are less than halfway in control of, and where, however much they pretend to move through it openly, they know that trembling, shudders, moaning, and heaviness are waiting for them. The restaurant is very full, and when the waiter offers them a discreet table in the back, Nula says he prefers a more central one, next to the window that faces the street, so that they’ll be seen easily from anywhere in the room, and from the street as well, a preference that once again provokes Virginia’s laughter, about which, in this new phase of their relationship, where they’re forced, for the moment, to intuit the meaning of each others’ words and reactions, to Nula, not the slightest shadow of a doubt, as they say, remains.
— Do you drink wine? Nula says.
— Why not? Virginia says. For me, first a glass of white and then a red.
— Very good, he says. The cellar is good here; we’re partial suppliers.
And, as they wait for the wine to arrive, they start to talk. When she was twenty-nine, Virginia, who studied French at the Alianza, went to France, to Bordeaux, to perfect the language, thinking she’d come back to the city to teach, but when her grant finished the following year she started to take an interest in wine, and as her French improved, her desire to teach it waned. She enrolled in enology courses and eventually found work with a supplier. Everything was going welclass="underline" she’d been in Europe for four years and she was unsure if she would stay forever, but when she got pregnant it seemed, though it was never clear why, that she had to return. She waited for her daughter to be born so she’d be French. The girl’s father, who had another family, offered to recognize her, but Virginia refused; she respected the father, admired him even, but she didn’t love him. Recognizing Muriel would have created enormous complications for him, Virginia was convinced that he was relieved when she said no. For seven years he sent her money every month, until suddenly, one day, the money orders stopped. Eventually she got a letter from a friend in Bordeaux, saying that the man had died in a car accident. At the time, Virginia was giving private French classes, and sometimes the Alianza asked her to fill in, but wine, as a profession, attracted her: in Bordeaux, she’d seen the business side up close, of course, and also a lot of scheming and fraud, but wine itself, the successive transformations of the fruit into a drink and then into madness, sacred or otherwise, fascinated her. She’d promoted a few lesser-known Mendoza wineries around the littoral region, and had taken other courses (like the one where she’d seen Nula for the first time), but she wasn’t that interested in traveling, so when they built the supercenter, she applied to manage the beverage section. And him? Nula hesitates a few seconds before responding. Him? Nothing speciaclass="underline" he started out in medical school and after a while got bored with it and transferred to philosophy. Then, because he was about to be a father, he had to get serious about work, and, well, the chance to work in wine presented itself unexpectedly. It’s not that bad, but since he has two kids now — a boy and a girl, Yussef and Inés, four and two, respectively — it would be impossible to stop working and commit himself to philosophy. (Nula’s interest in philosophy is amusing, and somewhat surprising, to Virginia.) In any case, Nula says, philosophy isn’t strictly speaking a profession; one is a philosopher in any situation, and any object in the world can be of interest to a true philosopher. Furthermore: any object in the world is the cipher for the whole world; if one discovers its essence, the whole world is revealed. And, considered properly, wine could be, after all, an optimal object of study. And, with a theatrical gesture, Nula raises a glass of white wine and makes a silent and delicate toast before taking a sip. When he places the glass back onto the tablecloth, he looks Virginia in the eyes and asks her gently: