This Is How You Lose Her(17)

—

HERE THERE ARE CALAMITIES without end — but sometimes I can clearly see us in the future, and it is good. We will live in his house and I will cook for him and when he leaves food out on the counter I will call him a zángano. I can see myself watching him shave every morning. And at other times I see us in that house and see how one bright day (or a day like this, so cold your mind shifts every time the wind does) he will wake up and decide it’s all wrong. He will wash his face and then turn to me. I’m sorry, he’ll say. I have to leave now.

Samantha comes in sick with the flu; I feel like I’m dying, she says. She drags herself from task to task, she leans against the wall to rest, she doesn’t eat anything, and the day after I have it, too. I pass it to Ramón; he calls me a fool for doing so. You think I can take a day off from work? he demands.

I say nothing; it will only irritate him.

He never stays angry for long. He has too many other things on his mind.

On Friday he comes by to update me on the house. The old man wants to sell to us, he says. He shows me some paperwork that I do not understand. He is excited but he is also scared. This is something I know, a place I’ve been.

What do you think I should do? His eyes are not watching me, they’re looking out the window.

I think you should buy yourself a home. You deserve it.

He nods. I need to break him down on the price though. He takes out his cigarettes. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? To own a house in this country is to begin to live.

I try to bring up Virta but he kills it, like always.

I already told you it’s over, he snaps. What else do you want? A maldito corpse? You women never know how to leave things alone. You never know how to let go.

That night Ana Iris and I go to a movie. We cannot understand the English but we both like the new theater’s clean rugs. Blue and pink neon stripes zag across the walls like lightning. We buy a popcorn to share and smuggle in cans of tamarind juice from the bodega. The people around us talk; we talk as well.

You’re lucky to be getting out, she says. Those cueros are going to drive me crazy.

It’s a little early for this but I say: I’m going to miss you, and she laughs.

You are on your way to another life. You won’t have time to miss me.

Yes, I will. I’ll probably be over to visit you every day.

You won’t have the time.

I will if I make time. Are you trying to get rid of me?

Of course not, Yasmin. Don’t be stupid.

It won’t be for a while anyway. I remember what Ramón had said over and over again. Anything can happen.

We sit quietly for the rest of the movie. I have not asked her what she thinks of my move and she has not offered her opinion. We respect each other’s silence about certain things, the way I never ask if she intends to send for her children someday. I cannot tell what she will do. She has had men and they, too, have slept in our room, but she never kept any for long.

We walk back from the theater close together, careful of the shiny ice that scars the snow. The neighborhood is not safe. Boys who know only enough Spanish to curse stand together at the street corners and scowl. They cross into traffic without looking and when we pass them a fat one says, I eat pussy better than anybody in the world. Cochino, Ana Iris hisses, putting her hand on me. We pass the old apartment where I used to live, the one over the bar, and I stare up at it, trying to remember which window I used to stare out of. Come on, Ana Iris says. It’s freezing.

—

RAMÓN MUST HAVE TOLD Virta something, because the letters stop. I guess it’s true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.

As for the house, it takes longer than even I could have imagined. He almost walks away a half dozen times, slams phones, throws his drink against a wall and I expect it to fall away, not to happen. But then like a miracle it does.

Look, he says, holding up the paperwork. Look. He is almost pleading.

I’m truly happy for him. You did it, mi amor.

We did it, he says quietly. Now we can begin.

Then he puts his head down on the table and cries.

In December we move into the house. It’s a half-ruin and only two rooms are habitable. It resembles the first place I lived when I arrived in this country. We don’t have heat for the entire winter, and for a month we have to bathe from a bucket. Casa de Campo, I call the place in jest, but he doesn’t take kindly to any criticism of his “niño.” Not everyone can own a home, he reminds me. I saved eight years for this. He works on the house ceaselessly, raiding the abandoned properties on the block for materials. Every floorboard he reclaims, he boasts, is money saved. Despite all the trees, the neighborhood is not easy and we have to make sure to keep everything locked all the time.