Nací sola. Moriré sola.
— Naciste con la ayuda de tu madre, un médico, y dos enfermeras. Vamos a ver si vas a tener tanto amor cuando te mueras. Debes amar lo que tienes en lugar de añorar lo que perdiste.
— No añoro. Amo.
— Recuerdas lo que amaste.
— Sí, pero no añoro. La nostalgia es la decadencia.
— Pues déjate de hablar del pasado. A nadie le interesa tu biografía personal.
— Déjame escribir mi novela. Tengo que hacer un recuento de mis días y mis años para saber si han perdido sueños mis añoranzas, o si todavía siguen soñando.
— Your past, as if it were something to be nostalgic about. When we would take our long trips up Madison Avenue to Sant Ambrose, que era mi Meca and mi meta, where we would slurp gelato cones, you would stop in front of the pastry shops and plan the parties you always dreamed of hosting with parfaits, truffles, cream puffs, and the Sant Ambrose cake decorated with Starry, Starry Night, and for Christmas, you wanted the potbellied Santa Claus stuffed with mousse and pannetoni.
— Maybe we can take Santa Claus to Puerto Rico as a Christmas present for my mother. It’s made of marzipan. Will it melt?
My thirst would grow when after the gelato we would visit the Met, and there you would stand in front of Rembrandt and say out loud:
— You were really a buffoon like me. You had Hendriecka and Tito to save you. If only I could have a Tito helping me. I used to have a Jabalí.
It always baffled me how, instead of revering his profounds of mind, you would jot down the dates the portraits were restored. Then you would spend the rest of our visit admiring the museum’s tracklighting and giftshops. And it always struck me that wherever we went the most minuscule objects caught your fancy in display windows — sunglasses, whistles, pens. Once a tennis racquet made of chocolate. You thought of sending it to your mother in Puerto Rico. And you browsed for clothes and shoes at the most conservative boutiques, and you would tell me over and over again the story about the only gift Jabalí ever gave you, apart from the Pan Am peanuts he would bring from his MLA trips to Indiana and Mississippi.
— He said he wanted to buy me a sweater, the most beautiful sweater in New York. Time went by and I never received my sweater, so I found it myself in Ferragamo. It was the most beautiful sweater in New York.
You took him to Ferragamo, and he said:
— But that’s half my paycheck!
— I never get anything except peanuts. You promised.
Then you told him how your grandmother used to take you shopping.
— What do you want?
— Nothing.
— Don’t be shy. Take whatever you want.
— These.
— That’s all? And these? You want them? Take them all.
How you used to carry the whole store in your arms, and when the cashier would ring it up, Mamá would say to her:
— She thinks she is rich—and then coldly to you—No eres rica.
And how you used to feel humiliated each time.
— But if it weren’t for Mamá, all I would have is peanuts.
And with that peanut zinger, you finally got him to buy you the most beautiful sweater in New York. And he always took you to The Right Bank. When we passed the peach stucco facade, we would crouch and peer through the window.
— He really knew how to dine a lady. The Right Bank. There’s a garden in the back where we would have our wine under the open skies. We used to come here when I lived on Madison Avenue.
I used to imagine you and Jabalí in the narrow darkness, drinking wine among the red and white checkered tables, and I’d thirst for a chilled glass of white. My stomach was growling.
— Let’s go to The Right Bank.
I figured if Jabalí brought her here, for once she won’t complain. We took a garden table, sat on cold metal chairs, and sipped our wine.
— White?
— Sour.
— And the salad?
— Limp.
— Well, why did you order a salad? Jabalí would have never ordered a salad.
By this time I had realized he was as common as peanuts, and that’s why you didn’t know how to dress yourself, buying old maid sweaters from Ferragamo. Penélope did the same thing with her Dalmatians. After Xochi died she bought a puppy with identical spotting, and convinced he was the reincarnation of Xochi, she named him Xochi Too. But she was in for a big surprise. Whenever she called him Xochi Too, he walked away and ignored her. She was piqued because Xochi never did that before. Xochi was her passion. He was a loner like her husband. If she’d treat him to a snack, he’d curl up in a corner and eat it alone. But no, Xochi Too has no sense of privacy, he wants her to hold the biscuit while he gnaws it, and then watch him licking in between his toes and fingers, and then he expects her to spread her fingers so he can give her a manicure. Yuck—she says—Xochi never did that! Once a vet asked her if she traveled with her dog. The whole world over—she bragged, but then she realized she was confusing him with Xochi and since Xochi had traveled the whole world, she left Xochi Too at the kennel because she felt he was too old to travel, even though he was a healthy pup, eager to experience jet lag and foreign foods. The vet said:
— Maybe it’s true that Xochi is Xochi Too, but you can’t expect to have the same relationship you had with him in his first life. You’ve both changed so much over the years.
From then on, she began to take Xochi Too on every expedition. The point is you have to learn not to compare. A pig is a pig. And a dog is a dog. The other day you were berserk when I brough home the wrong flowers.
— Because you promised me you would. Why did you promise. You should not promise. Always, unfulfilled promises. Jabalí promised me he would get my first book of poetry published.
— I want Visor—I said.
— Visor it will be.
And then he published his own book, not mine, and never told me.
— My mother always said two artists cannot live together. Infectious rivalry.
— I told him:
— Just remember that I am the poet. People should know what they are so they don’t take the places of the people who they are not.
— As if you were the only one.
— That’s exactly what he said.
— No compares las mentiras de Jabalí con mi falta de dinero. Ingrata. I did the best I could.
— You promised me $60 roses. I received $5 roses almost dead from the Korean grocer.
— A rose is a rose. Ingrata. Me armaste una pelea en frente de Makiko. Y en balde, Yoko brought you long-stemmed beauties, thorns and all.
— If you don’t promise, I won’t expect. He stole my publisher. I’m sure he didn’t even take it to Visor. The same with my dissertation. He promised he’d get it published when I finished it, but he didn’t take it anywhere. Did he or didn’t he deserve a beating like the one Repolido gave Cariharta. He was losing in a card game, and he needed thirty reales to win. But she sent him only twenty-four reales. And because she did not send him what he expected, he beat her senseless.