The Best Short Stories 2023 by The Best Short Stories 2023- The O Henry Prize Winners (epub)

Author:The Best Short Stories 2023- The O Henry Prize Winners (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

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Both Fuensanta and Álvaro had forgotten his inexplicable disappearance for two whole days when, by chance, he remembered the event. It was at one of those gatherings of good friends where familiarity and red wine lead inexorably to the discussion of a controversial topic: gender inequality.

“And what would you do if you were men?” the men asked the women in a provocative tone, trying to put them between a rock and a hard place.

One of them, the wife of Álvaro’s best friend, said frankly:

“I would be more attentive to the emotional needs of my wife.” The subtext made more than one of them blush, and put others in a bad mood.

Immediately there were giggles.

“Well, if I were a woman,” said the husband in question, “I would put on sexy nightgowns and make passionate love every night.”

“Well, if I were a man,” insisted the same woman, “I would make a superhuman effort to learn how to listen.”

As the volume of the matrimonial dialogue increased, the hosts moved around the table offering cigarettes and wine.

“And if you were a woman, Álvaro?” asked Fuensanta, more to silence the couple who were on the verge of an argument than to find out what her husband thought.

Álvaro let out a nervous laugh, reached for his wineglass, and to the surprise and disapproval of his wife, accepted a cigarette. Then he kept quiet.

“So?” asked Sergio, the host, expecting a reply.

“I would wear sky blue, and forgetting would be easy for me.” The silence around the table was as profound as his own astonishment.

Álvaro had just remembered Irena.

“And what in God’s name does that mean?” asked the interrogated husband, trying to provoke something similar to his own conjugal quarrel.

“I don’t know.” Álvaro refused to say anything more.

He smiled at him, raised the cigarette to his lips, and, a second later, exhaled the smoke with singular satisfaction. He had decided to go to the Nevado de Toluca one more time. Suddenly, he felt like running in the cold and telling stupid jokes.

“Well, if I were a man, I would be exactly as I am,” Fuensanta informed the gathering, considering the matter closed.

Little by little, people left. The angry couple went away with remorseful expressions, and in the end only the hosts, as well as Álvaro and Fuensanta, remained, sitting in chairs on opposite sides of the living room.

“They seem to have problems,” said Nélida, the hostess, resuming the thread of the conversation. “But who doesn’t?”

“Discreet individuals,” replied Álvaro with an ironic note in his voice, while he observed Fuensanta from the corner of his eye.

“Or otherworldly beings,” added Sergio.

It was in this way that they eventually came to the subject of sirens. They spoke of Ulysses and the Mediterranean, and ears filled with wax; they made comments about firm-breasted mermaids that appeared on lottery tickets, discussed the one described by Hans Christian Andersen; and then, by chance, they ended up in the Toluca Valley.

“But there isn’t enough water there,” commented Álvaro, with genuine interest.

“There used to

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