Accidentals by Susan M. Gaines

Author:Susan M. Gaines
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

I spent the week in Montevideo dipping into and out of euphoria and anguish. I would have seen her every day, slept with her every night … but she was too busy. She had friends I’d yet to meet, classes to teach, her bugs to attend. And, apparently, her grandfather was getting seriously senile and there was no one to stay with him after the maid left in the evenings. A whole day would go by when I wouldn’t hear from her, and then I’d worry that I’d dreamt the whole thing, that I was deluding myself. Maybe she was too old for me. Too smart, too self-assured, too mature. She knew what she was doing on this earth, had a real career, a calling. And me? I was at loose ends, as directionless as Angelito zigzagging around the yard. Okay, I’d had a lucrative job in California, and I still had a good bank account. Maybe that counted as a grown-up accomplishment, some form of male authority, if I wanted to play that card, but I didn’t think it interested Alejandra any more than it interested me. I was just a cute, amusing foreigner with a knack for drawing birds. I was a fling, I thought, and for the first time in my life, I did not want to be a fling.

When we were together, however, doubt disappeared in a shimmering sea of shared joy and fascination, leaving as little trace as a cormorant diving for fish. I had never been so aware of the details of a woman, not just when we were making love, but when we were sitting across from each other drinking a beer or walking down the street, as if every move, every look, every word were a sort of long drawn-out foreplay, as if I hadn’t really known how to make love before. We went to dinner, we went to a movie, we strolled hand in hand along the Rambla in the evening, and we stole unnoticed into her grandfather’s house and screwed each other into oblivion in her pink ruffled bed. We spent Sunday at the big Tristán Narvaja market, buying groceries and presents for our respective grandparents, wandering happily through the festive jumble of vegetables and pastas, antique junk and used books, handmade mate gourds and shoes, cheap Brazilian clothes and contraband watches. Rubén tried to get us to go with him to a Frente rally on the Friday before the balotaje, but Alejandra didn’t want to go and we went to a movie instead. Her aunt had come from Buenos Aires for a few days, so she didn’t have to worry about her grandfather, and we stole into the ship’s prow afterwards and spent the night fused together in my narrow bed. I wasn’t quite ready to subject Alejandra to Abuela, but when I went to the kitchen to fetch us coffee in the morning, Abuela and Rubén were sitting at the dining room table, waiting in ambush.

“If the girl

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.