Clemente wakes us up in the morning, not without violence, putting on a DVD of Latin music videos. I open my eyes, and besides Patagonia I see Ricardo Montaner in white on some Greek terrace, which is very white, singing to this dark-haired girl in a flowy dress attempting to look attractive, on some beach somewhere. Ricardo sings on boats, at sunset, in interiors with terracotta vases. Clemente comes and goes, ever diligent. His hair is styled, he’s put some effort into it. He sets a tray on my lap while I try to get rid of the groove the window frame left on my cheek. My forehead is moist and my hair is all squashed. My forehead is damp from the condensation on the window. Outside, the mountains. In about an hour we’ll be in Bariloche. I had a strange dream, which I can’t quite remember, but something, lurking. Some familiar sensation, something recovered.
When I get off the bus in Bariloche, the wind from Nahuel Huapi Lake rustles my bangs, and the icy air unstops my nose, fills it with the smell of people. I feel the cold in my teeth, open my mouth, drink it in. Breathe in a mouthful of southern air. I’m starting to feel good. Now, from here, from this station, while I wait to get my bag back, Manuel, with his pants and his curls, seems far away/removed.
Monday. I’m not quite sure how to settle in/be in your house, I’m not exactly sure what to do. I try to stay in motion to regain a sense of familiarity, I make the rounds. Your cat doesn’t recognize me, she keeps her distance, and if I go up to try and pet her she bites me. She sleeps with her back to me. She insists on this. I guess I deserve it for having left her behind, for having cruelly stopped coming, as though Ali’d only ever been an extension of you. I empty a couple of ashtrays; your mom told me to make myself at home, of course, and that I could do whatever I felt like, and to make myself comfortable. But obviously it’s not my home, and I can’t even be sure now that it was ever really yours. Your dad even lets me use the computer, just imagine how sensitive he’s feeling right now in order to leave me the password on a little yellow paper, one of those with the sticky strips across the top, for reminders, with his imperative that I memorize it and destroy the evidence at once. I don’t really know what to do, I appreciate his generosity and I appreciate—knowing him—the magnitude of his gesture, but for now I’d rather write by hand. It’s such a big deal, that computer, that I’m afraid something might happen to it. Your dad, that maniac, put a sweatshirt on the monitor, can you imagine? One with UCLA written on it, absurd, it must have belonged to one of you guys, they put it over the screen so the cat wouldn’t scratch it.
Today I snooped around in your stuff, but like, just because, like demelancholized, like my eyes were dry, as I was snooping, just checking things out, taking a look. I came across that drawer you keep filled with scraps of paper and things, the one that has all sorts of movie tickets and little invites and little notes, a million of my little notes, pure nonsense on them, so much nonsense written down, the reconstruction of a history of stupidity, basically, of silliness, of whatever. Plus notebooks, all begun but none completed, with just a few things written down, just a couple, in frantic handwriting. Thoughts jotted down frenetically, that’s what it looked like, things written in moments of duress, fits of rage, based on the penmanship, because it was yours but different, not like yours at school, not like yours in letters, which had so many things crossed out, so many mistakes and things you changed your mind about, retracing your steps, your words. Here it was all nonstop, no going back, like you hadn’t even reread it, not caring about errors. You were writing feelings or dreams, I don’t know, just different things. But that wasn’t it, it wasn’t what you were writing that surprised me, I actually even remembered some of those situations, I guess you must have told me some of those dreams. The weird thing is the tone, the way. That’s the weird thing. That’s not the way you talked. It’s also not the way you wrote, not when you were writing to someone, to me, for example. Lines brimming over with anger and despair, hatred, almost, very severe, with yourself, with everything, but above all with yourself. So hard on yourself, my goodness, what force of personality. And yet, it was actually a happy discovery for me, I mean, it was good. I mean, I should say that at first it made me feel insanely strange and deeply sad to think I hadn’t really known you, but of course that isn’t true, of course that would also be ridiculous, because let us just agree I did know you, because, I mean, if not me, who? And then that ended up being what I liked about it, that there would still be things about you that I had not yet had the chance to find out. I liked that, the fact that you would not have shown me everything, or revealed it all to me, that there would still have been some things that you had kept to yourself. Look at what a little mystery you turned out to be.
Yesterday I had another dream about the people from Six Feet Under, but just Nate, David, and Ruth. Ruth reminds me a lot of your mom, and I guess now my unconscious must have conflated them, because in my dream Ruth was Ruth but she was also your mom and the guys were kind of like your cousins. At any rate we were at your place in the country and the sprinklers were on, and I was getting wet, I was kind of showering under one of them in a dress with this pattern of green leaves, kind of like the outfits that Fräulein Maria made for the Von Trapps out of their old curtains. I was rinsing off under the sprinkler, and I was really happy. Nate and David were around and Ruth/your mom was too, but she was inside the house, I knew she was in there, and I felt a deep affection for all involved. Then someone, it might have been you, was asking me if I had a crush on anyone, and Nate was taken, because Brenda was there in my dream as well, your mom was talking about her and saying that she had hooked up with who knows how many other dudes, and I think it was you who was asking me if I had a little crush on David. We both knew he was gay, but it didn’t matter, I liked him so much that I did kind of have a crush on him, and Nate too. So stupid, the characters, because it wasn’t even the actors in this case, just these characters who end up somehow being a part of your life, you know? But in any case the Fishers reminded me of your family from the moment I first saw them, nothing I can do about that.
I haven’t stopped sleeping since I got here. I can’t, I just can’t stop sleeping. It’s a little bit embarrassing, because of your parents, who knows what they’ll think, that I’m depressed, maybe, I don’t know. Maybe not. Your mom leaves me a breakfast plate on the table with a little note whenever she goes off to work. She’s incredible, your mom. And I have the most bizarre dreams because I just don’t stop, I cross over from dreams into something else, I get into something else, into this very bizarre state. I mean, it’s your bed, it’s your house, your room, it’s all super strange, very weird. Even though it doesn’t really look like it did before. It’s been sort of neutralized, you know? I feel like, between the fact that your sister kind of lived in here for a while and the fact that it seems like it’s being used as a guest room now, it’s just become sort of transient. I always liked it that your parents kept your room going, like that they kept it up to date, so that way it’s neither yours nor not yours, I don’t know exactly how to explain it: it’s yours, but neutralized, taken down a notch. And