I don’t want to live here anymore. Ramiro says we should do that, just bring a cat in. That if I feel sorry for the mouse like an idiot and refuse to kill it or poison it, then I should at least let nature do its thing, let the cat do its job, and we won’t even see it, we won’t even know, and anyway, says Ramiro, it probably won’t even happen because the mouse probably won’t even come back if it smells cat. That could be. Ramiro reminded me of how when somebody broke into our house, back in Esquel, it was basically the same thing in the sense that back then, too, I kept on saying we should move. I had forgotten, but that’s true, that was a long time ago. Indeed, the sense of intrusion was horrible for me, not because of the things themselves, I don’t even remember what they took, but indeed, it did take me a long time to get over it, the fact that they came into our house while we were sleeping, while we were there, all three of us, because there were still just three of us when that happened, Dad hadn’t gotten married again yet. I not only couldn’t sleep the night after the robbery but also for many, many nights afterwards. It’s not that I wasn’t sleeping, I guess, so much as that I kept waking up at the same time really early every morning. I would go to the VCR in the living room that had the time on it in big green letters, they hadn’t taken that, I guess they’d heard some noise or something that had stopped them before they got to it or whatever, in any case they hadn’t taken it. Anyway, I kept waking up at the same time, like by some internal alarm, always in a kind of panic, and I would get up and go down the hall and into the living room, where we had the TV and the VCR. I would look to see if the green light that the VCR gave off was still the same, if the trajectory of the light of the numbers was the same as before, if I could recognize it or if there was anything obstructing it. If it was okay, then that was a sign that we were going to be okay, at least for that night. If not, if there was something obstructing the light, or if it just wasn’t there, then we’d been hit again. It was like that night after night, while my dad and my brother just went on sleeping, unaware that I was roving around, that there was someone ranging around the house, that there was a person watching over them and looking out for them while they were sleeping. I don’t remember exactly how long that lasted. Obviously I didn’t mention my nocturnal meanderings, I never told them anything, but I did insist for a while that we move. For me at that time that home had reached the end of its cycle: that was where my mom had run away from, that was where she hadn’t wanted to live with us anymore (not there or anywhere else, now I know that, but back then I didn’t quite yet have that clarity), and as if that wasn’t enough we’d started to be vulnerable to the outside, too, to external threats. And that was more than enough for me to deem it cursed. Deem the duplex. The cursed duplex. But Dad’s reasoning was always a lot more levelheaded and concrete than mine: Where the hell did I think we ought to move to? Conclusive. And he reversed the theory on me: our house was actually now safer than any other, than all the other homes we could ever possibly reside in, because the chances we’d get broken into again were one in a thousand, one in a million. I don’t know, this argument didn’t really work on me, but at the time I had no option other than to go along with it. And then, I don’t know when, but at some point I stopped waking up at three in the morning, and then that was it: I was over it. Dad still lives there. My reasons for having to leave were probably the same as his reasons for staying. At the same time I think he really believed in his probabilities argument. And now Ramiro reminds me about that, about that other time that I insisted that we leave, and how then I just got over it, how then it sort of simply fizzled out. It’s true, and besides, there’s not much I can do without him being on board. I can’t live alone. And I can’t live with Manuel. So I’ll probably take your parents up on their invitation. A few days down south might do me good. Meanwhile the cat can do its thing. I personally prefer not to be around.
Before leaving town the bus makes a stop in Liniers. The seat I chose isn’t bad, all things considered. It has a number of pros: it’s upstairs, more or less in the middle. There’s no one next to me. The only little con, which I do detect immediately, is that right exactly where my part of the window is there’s a divider—I mean, the window, the glass, is bisected smack-dab where my face is. This is bad because the view will not be optimal, although I still think I did okay, in terms of safety it’s a good thing because it’s a divider that could absorb a blow, you know, if it ever came to that. It’s a divider that isn’t glass at least. So I reconcile myself to that metal/rubber strip standing between me and the landscape.
Getting out of the city itself is hell, it takes an hour to get from the station in Retiro to the neighborhood of Liniers. Emilia from Retiro to Liniers, that could be the name of another movie. In that hour, Clemente, the attendant charged with making our bus ride more comfortable, busies himself with welcoming us and explaining that they will be serving a hot dinner, followed by coffee with a whiskey option after for the movie they will show, then breakfast on our approach to Bariloche. Clemente is very excited about his job and about his microphone, he’s very excited to be able to tell us everything he tells us and to be able to do it over a microphone. Clemente darts between the rows of seats and insists we not deposit solid waste into the toilet. He repeats this. He says: We repeat, no solid waste. The prohibition alone upsets my stomach. The seat is wide and there’s no one sitting next to me, the bus isn’t that full, they have wine to go with dinner and whiskey for later, but all of this that bodes so well in the beginning quickly turns into nightmare: Clemente feels obliged to entertain his passengers nonstop. Like we can’t just look out the window. When he’s not talking on his microphone, he’s walking around passing out things, taking up things, offering us refills, asking if we’re too warm, if we’re cold, if the AC’s okay. I try to look out the window so that he doesn’t talk to me, and he ends up suggesting I shut the curtains because of the rocks. Rocks? There’s nothing outside but prairie, not even any little towns. There’s not even a landscape to look at anymore. So then I try to get into the movie, which has been on for ages already and has this man with all these arm muscles trying to play nanny to a group of extremely blond children who are having none of it. He has bottles in his belt like grenades. It doesn’t work. I’m not into it and I can’t sleep. Clemente comes and goes. For god’s sake, Clemente, enough already. There are some people who are actually snoring now. I realize that the trip I had pictured and hoped for is not going to happen now. That that thing about looking out the window and letting go and permitting my mind to wander freely is no longer possible. I’m trapped inside a moving box that smells like armpit and has Clemente drifting around all over everywhere. And I’m tired, but I’m not sleepy.
I disobey Clemente and crack the curtains. You can’t see much, but I have to distract myself from the bodybuilding nanny. I want to be able to get some distance from Buenos Aires, let Buenos Aires go, in order to be able to understand my situation there as it actually is. I think about Manuel’s face by the side of the bus at the station, think about his faded jeans, his tennis shoes, his curls, remember how he looked at me, waited until right as we were leaving with his hands in his pockets, the candy—the little umbrella-shaped candy and the chocolates—that he slipped into my pocket when we hugged that final time. I feel like I already miss him, which happens with those relationships where you see the other person so much they become a necessary outgrowth, which is the thing about them that’s not good. It throws me off or at least just throws me for a loop to have his body be in fact so far away from mine. I’ve gotten out of the habit now, that’s what it is, I’m out of the habit. I’m out of the habit of being by myself. Now, on this bus, I begin to be aware of something like Manuel withdrawal. And yet, is he the person I choose, would I choose him now, from scratch? Could I in fact now choose not to choose him? Did I choose him, did I choose all this at some stage? How did it even start? I can barely even remember how it started. Through Ramiro, I guess. That’s right, at some party. After a number of evenings, of course, and afternoons of drinking yerba mate, too. From me taking no notice of him to me not paying much attention to him to me being obsessed with this other guy from school and not seeing Manolo as anything other than one of my brother’s friends. To finding out all of a sudden because my brother tells me, reluctantly, almost in spite of himself, that this guy, this Manolo, really likes me, that this curly