Our Dead World by Liliana Colanzi

Author:Liliana Colanzi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 2017-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

A few hours later it’s stopped raining. I order another gin and tonic from the Peruvian serving drinks in this dark, noisy bar, where I’ve ended up after aimless wandering through town. We’re closing soon, the barman tells me, as the voicemail of Vanessa’s cell phone starts to repeat the same message in French that’s already played ten times. I hang up before hearing the beep of the answering machine, and down the gin and tonic the waiter has left on the table in one gulp. Another, I order. The last customers cling to their glasses and to the music coming from the speakers, songs that keep us suspended in the solitude of drunks. I’m staring at my cell phone screen, at a photo we took on a beach in Ibiza. Just after that, we got into an argument. Vanessa said she loved me but that she also had needs. After all, I’m a woman, she tried to explain, and even she must have realized this was an insult because that night she tried to make up for it, insisting on this trip to Paris. I look for her number again and try to summon the word capable of neutralizing and destroying her. Whore, I write with difficulty on the screen, and see Vanessa at Alain’s party dancing with several men at once. Slut, I write, and think of Vanessa on her knees with moist bangs stuck to her forehead, sucking off one guy while another fucks her from behind. I press send and the message travels through space to wherever Vanessa may be.

This one’s on the house, says the barman, and sets down a glass of gin and tonic filled to the brim. He’s short and dark, and behind his words I can see a wife and kids waiting somewhere for his call. I make a gesture to pay but he waves away the bill, refusing it with a shake of his head. He has a gold hoop in his left ear and his name tattooed in gothic letters on his neck, where small drops of sweat gleam. With a movement of his chin he gestures at my cell phone. Looking for someone? he asks with false complicity, and I want to tell him to shut up. Instead, I nod yes and take a long sip of my gin and tonic. On vacation? he asks. I remain silent, squeezing the frosted glass so hard it seems it will shatter between my fingers. In a minute I’ll close and we can talk, says the barman and he smiles like there’s a secret between us now. Before he turns around I notice the gold ring on his small dark hand for the first time, an enormous ring fitted tight around the thick flesh, and then I remember the Chinese student, his hand rotting in the box the cannibal sent to a school in Canada, his swollen foot waiting at the post office. I see the legs of my grandmother stretched on the wooden block, the varicose veins that flare up like islands.

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