Fish Soup. Margarita García Robayo

      On the third day of rain, I put on a raincoat and went to visit Gustavo, but it was Olga’s head that poked out of the door to the shack. Where’s Gustavo? And she said: he’s gone fishing. The sky was falling in sheets of water. I didn’t move. Olga emerged to stand in the doorway, revealing her naked body, dark and glossy, her magic button a tangled mat of hair.

      I left.

      I called my parents’ house, it felt like years since I’d heard from them. As soon as my mother started talking, I realised that everything was the same: she had fallen out with one of my aunts, because my aunt was a manipulator who liked to bleed my grandmother dry. Me: bleed her dry of what? Her: what do you think? My father had hired a new driver, because the last one had stolen from him. He’d taken three hundred thousand pesos and the spare tyre. Did you report it? No, what would be the point? It never does any good. Right. What about my brother? Out and about.

      The block of flats where I lived with Milagros was near the sea. When it rained, an eerie-sounding wind blew. Tony called me occasionally. I told him I didn’t want to see him. On one of those rainy nights, it was me who called him.

      Do you want to go and see a film? I don’t know, I don’t think so. Are you with someone? No. You’re with someone.

      Tony lived far from me, it would have taken almost an hour on the bus, but he took a taxi and arrived in twenty minutes. I was in the shower. He must have spent all his money for the week. Tony turned on a film on the TV in the living room, and Milagros shut herself away in her bedroom. See you tomorrow, she said. I came out in pyjamas, smelling of soap. Before I sat down, I went to the kitchen to get the Guatemalan rum that Milagros had brought home. I took a swig from the bottle and then poured a glass for Tony, who barely wet his lips with it. I sat down and immediately climbed on top of him. I had no idea what film he’d put on. The first time, I came. The second, he did. When we had finished, Tony said: marry me.

      I can’t. Why? Because of work. What’s that got to do with it? I’d leave you on your own all the time, and I’d get so jealous imagining that when I’m not there, you’d replace me with someone else. You’re irreplaceable. I am now, but when I leave you alone, you’ll realise I’m not. Let’s go to Canada. Canada is full of old people. Quit your job. Never. But why not? Never in a million years.

      He left.

      It was still raining. Out of the window, the lights in the street looked distorted. Across the street, there was a huge illuminated sign for a fried chicken restaurant, but that night it was a shapeless blur. I went over to the window, wiped it and looked down. Tony was there, standing on the corner, looking around the street, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened.

      I thought about opening the window and shouting to him to come back up. I thought about opening the window and shouting, Yes! But what I actually did was light a cigarette, and still watching him, I imagined my life with him. It went like this:

      It is raining. I leave the airport, heading for a tiny apartment in a neighbourhood miles away, overlooking a rotten swamp. I have plastic bags in my handbag to put on my feet when I get off the bus, so my heels don’t get stuck in the mud when I’m walking home. On the way to the building, I have to dodge kids screaming and splashing around on the pavements. I am deafened by the vallenato music booming out of the low, cramped houses, from which a sickly-yellow light seeps. It smells of fried food, it smells of rum, it smells of rotten swamp, it smells of poverty. Hi, sweetheart, Tony says, opening the door. In his arms is a small child, slurping at its own snot. Soon, that baby will be slurping at my tits. Then we eat a watery lentil stew, we go to bed and turn off the light. Tony would cling to my back like a limpet, his arm around my waist, and whisper in my ear: one day we’ll get out of here. Me: we’ll always be here, waiting for a hurricane to come.

      By the time I finished my cigarette, Tony was still there, but I wasn’t.

      8

      Johnny knew a guy. As simple as that. That’s how Johnny was, you’d say to him: I’d love to multiply my savings by a thousand. Him: I know a guy. I’d love to travel to Cuba, to buy some cigars and come back. What for? To sell them. I know a guy. I’d love to get a tattoo. Where? On the back of my neck. I know a guy. I’d love to stay here forever. And that’s when Johnny didn’t know anyone. He said: this is a very hard country. But he lived like a tycoon, he got a new car every six months and went on paying the same lease. He received unemployment benefit that nobody checked up on, and that was what paid for the motels where we fucked, or the lobster we ate at Key West, or the VIP passes for the salsa bars he took me to in Little Havana. Johnny lived off money from his wife – half gringa, half Ecuadorian – and he even bought designer underpants. He zealously fed his little American dream in fear that if he forgot to feed it one day, it would keel over in front of him like a starving baby bird.

      Maybe I should stop seeing you and find a gringo to marry, I’d say to him. And Johnny would lunge at me, push me against the wall and shove his hand up my skirt: come here, beibi. Because Johnny was a whore, he wanted to resolve everything in the bedroom. Let go of me, you bastard. I’d push him off me and leave.

      I was always in a bad mood on the way back and the Captain began to notice. Did you quarrel with your boyfriend? The Captain always spoke to me very formally. No, sir, I don’t have a boyfriend. What a waste. On that flight there were four air hostesses, two old ones and Susana and me. Susana insisted that the Captain was in love with me. I knew which part of me the Captain was in love with: he could barely tear his eyes off my ass. But he had nothing to offer me in return.

      Then, my brother struck gold. He wrote me an email telling me he was getting married: her name was Odina and she was Puerto Rican, but she lived in Los Angeles. He had met her online; as he didn’t have a visa, she had come to see him, and Bob’s your uncle, they sealed their love. He didn’t introduce me to her because I was flying, or so my mother had told him. He described her as beautiful, brown-skinned and slim, and she came with the right dowry: the green card. I called the airline, told them I was really ill and then shut myself away for three days to cry: 88, 87, 86… And that’s how I fell asleep, obsessing over my brother. I was sure the whole thing about pushing me to become an air hostess had been his strategy to get me away from the only computer in the house, where he chatted all day long, year after year, looking for a wife, until he stumbled upon that Puerto Rican bitch.

      They had a church wedding here, and a civil ceremony there. My brother, in his correspondence with her, had made out that he was incredibly religious. On Odina’s side, there was a large party of friends and relatives. Common as muck, the lot of them. On our side, we had some second cousins from a village. Also common as muck. They all had children, and they all dressed the same. In the church, a girl sat next to me and told me that when she grew up she was going to come to the city and work for a company. Her hair was combed in segments, hard and crispy with hair spray. I imagined her in the city, a few years older, working from sun-up to sun-down in a little stuffy office that she would travel to and from on the minibus. She would bring her lunch in a Tupperware box, and dye her hair with cheap blond dye that would turn orange in the sun, so she’d switch to a copper mahogany tone.

      The priest gave a sermon about good love, intended for procreation, and bad love, intended for enjoyment. Then an emaciated nun sang the Ave Maria.

      The celebration took place in a large, ramshackle old house in the city centre. Odina’s family paid for it, because in line with tradition, the bride paid for the party and the groom paid for the honeymoon. There would not be a honeymoon right away because Odina had to go back to work. Odina was a nurse. Odina was far from “slim”. She was fat. Odina’s parents were classic “wannabe” types. So were mine, though they didn’t even know what it meant to be “wannabes”. That night, there were so many white fairy lights strung up around the terrace it was like being part of some Caribbean royalty. The L-shaped buffet table was overflowing with hundreds of hot and cold dishes: mainly seafood. Gustavo was the supplier, although my father hadn’t bought fish from him for years because his prices had gone up so much. They had invited Gustavo to the party, but he excused himself. I don’t go to parties, he said. Nobody insisted. It would have been