I close the door and realise how much time must have elapsed; Eloísa has probably already left. So, with that outcome in mind, once again feeling disconcerted by the contradictory forces of a moment ago, instead of hurrying I move with increasing slowness over the distance separating me from the ground floor. I count to three before I take the next step. All the same, I think, if I go back to get Simón now they’ll think I’m mad. The best plan is to go around the block a couple of times, take about twenty minutes at least. On the pavement, I realise the red car is no longer there and that the heat is more or less the same inside and out.
I begin to walk towards the corner and two short blasts of a horn stop me by the supermarket. They’re on the other side of the street, facing the wrong way against the traffic, lying in wait. Eloísa calls me over, waving her arm through the window. Let’s go, she says, get in. Something quick nearby. Good, I say, nearby, I can’t be long.
I get in the back, the upholstery smells new. Eloísa is in the passenger seat. She twists round, hugging the backrest, and introduces me to Axel, who’s driving, the same guy as last time, I assume. Axel greets me through the rear-view mirror. For a while, until we get out and I can see him face-on, his figure is reduced to a hunched back and portions of face that enter and exit the frame: an eye, the tip of the nose, pieces of ear and cheek. Where are we going? Axel asks. Surprise us, replies Eloísa and vaguely slaps the air with the back of her hand. How did you find me, I find myself saying, just to say something, not really interested. Aaahh, she plays mysterious, hands open. I have informants, she says. I smile. For the few minutes we spend in the car without settling on a destination, we continue to exchange short, worn phrases that don’t reveal much: All good? This is mad, isn’t it? Yes. And you? You’re the same. You cut your hair, I’m going to say and Eloísa’s going to show me the cross tattooed on her neck. To help us, or so he doesn’t have to listen, Axel turns on the radio and skips nervously from one station to another until he is grabbed by the anthem of the summer. That’s what he calls it, and turns up the volume.
After many false turns in search of somewhere in the neighbourhood, Eloísa orders: Park here, I’m starving. We end up in a taxi drivers’ bar a few blocks from the building, next to a funeral parlour. Jaime again. We sit at a table next to the window. The place is a pastiche of styles. Eloísa takes me by the hand and for the third or fourth time comes back to the same: What are you up to, you daft cow? Her nails are bitten, painted black. Well, I say, I’m here. She insists, she wants me to tell her, I have no way out. I try to sum it all up in one phrase, I chew it over but can’t find the words. I got bored of the countryside, I say and she laughs. And the old man? I hesitate, three, four long seconds, as if saying it out loud: He had an accident, He was run over by a truck, He was killed on the road. The problem isn’t the novelty of death so much as the reflection it entails, the obligation to recreate the grief, to put on a sorrowful face, because not even Eloísa, who never held him in high regard, could escape the platitudes. Did you chuck him? I’m succinct: He died. And her: You’re fucking with me. She’s going to say something else, but the waiter appears and saves her. The guy, a small bald man with a squirrel-like face, questions us with his chin, Axel asks for the menu and the man looks at him as if insulted.
Eloísa returns to the subject of Jaime, she squeezes my wrist and winds up the story with a short phrase: Man, what a head-fuck, I’m sorry. Really. She shakes her head as if saying never mind. How long has it been? she asks and answers herself: It’s like three years, that’s mad, she’ll say it a hundred times. She herself has much to tell. Her parents separated, her mum went to live in Misiones and her old man stayed in the house with her and her brother. My eyes are gone, hypnotised by the silvery pearl. I’d like to see it properly, I’d have to ask her to keep her tongue still for a few seconds. She says that one day she got tired of all that horse shit and got the hell out of there. Now everything’s really good, she speaks to her old man occasionally and everything, the bastard hooked up with a girl of twenty-three who works for the council in Luján and they live in a horrible but airy little apartment. After all the mess, they sold the house, did you hear? Yes, I say, although I didn’t hear anything, but I witnessed the demolition which is more or less the same. She explains: They split the cash, fifty-fifty, and gave a little bit to me and my brother, do you remember my brother? I nod although when I try to visualise him a motorbike comes into my head.
There’s no doubt, if the Eloísa of my memory was talkative, the current version is several times more powerfuclass="underline" her age and the city. She barely takes a breath. As I listen to her, or at least pretend to, half of it is swallowed by sheer velocity, I take one of her cigarettes without asking, an old habit, part of the re-encounter. As in the Fénix, smoking is an effort. It’s as though Axel isn’t there; he spends the whole time entertaining himself on his phone. The waiter comes back, this time Axel keeps him there, issuing a series of commands about how he wants his burger, which gradually put the guy in a bad mood. With ham but no cheese, with tomato but no lettuce, a dribble of oil, French bread, good and crusty, mayonnaise on the side. Eloísa orders two Fernet and Cokes and a portion of chips, she decides for me and asks if I’m ok with it when the waiter has already gone. Axel returns to his mobile, Eloísa to the conversation.
From Open Door she moved to a place near La Plata, the name of which she can’t remember; she was there for a few months staying with a boy she met in a bar. Half musician, total dope-head. Until she found out that the guy took part in Umbanda rites. He was a real nutjob. She kept wandering, a long summer in Misiones, a season in Uruguay, too quiet for her, and finally she ended up in Buenos Aires. Lots of nightlife, lots of weirdos. I hooked up with a thousand guys, she says. I smile. What didn’t she do. She repeats twice: What didn’t I do. She worked at just about anything I could imagine: bars, restaurants, telephonist, a motorbike place, a service station, even as a hostess in a high-class brothel. Only a hostess. Legs, you know it? Then she spent about six months working as a promoter for a mobile-phone company in Liniers, a bunch of sharks. And she began sleeping with a forty-something photographer, a cool guy who got her work at events. Parties, presentations, stupid little things. She met Axel at a wedding, she was waitressing, tray-carrying, as she calls it, and started telling him how pissed she was. Then, hearing his name, Axel raises his eyes from the screen for the first time and nods twice in confirmation. He has a strange face, a false square, his eyes not entirely in line, the nose reddish, scaly, covered in blackheads, the mouth large, dry lips. Seeing them together, their features, the clothes they wear, their way of talking or staying quiet, it’s hard to think of two more different people. At first glance, it seems as though a kind of mutual pity must have brought them together.
The Fernet and chips force Eloísa to take a pause but she immediately picks up where she left off. She talks to me about the neighbourhood, my neighbourhood, which she knows well through a very good friend who has a second-hand-clothes shop. I’m distracted by an Uuuhhhh coming from a nearby table. Two old men sitting next to each other, drinking some kind of aperitif with soda, have started pulling at the remote control. The television is right above us on a high wall mount. It’s showing a football match and one of them clearly wants to change channels, the other resists but ends up giving in. Now the screen shows a ship sinking at sea, a group of helicopters hovering over it like flies.