Anyway, so dinner with your parents was great, albeit with me performing acrobatics the entire time in order to avoid or not broach certain topics. Basically they asked about my life in Buenos Aires, if I liked it, if I’d adapted, who I was hanging out with there, they noted how few people had made it in the city, that most of them had come on home (danger: Julián), they asked if I was happy with my job, and here I glossed over some stuff and only told them all the good parts, filtering out my fears, for their sake, emphasizing my flexible schedule and that I did with my time as I wished, that that really was great, and then they asked me about school, or no, I think they asked me about that first and with that I really laid it on thick, extolling all the many virtues, all the many benefits of institutionalized learning, citing more what I recalled of my hopes for college when I was about to go as opposed to what I found in fact upon arrival/ended up with. That yeah, I liked it, that yeah, it was taking me a while to graduate, that I still don’t have a board to lay stuff out at home but that I do have a big table, that when I have to I work at a classmate’s house, and that yes, I have met a ton of really cool people, and that there are all kinds of people, there really are, most of them from Buenos Aires, but from other places too, that there are just a lot of people period, so you get a little bit of everything, although I guess not everything everything, it’s an expensive major, the materials are all really expensive, yeah, really outrageous, and that my dad has to keep sending me an allowance for all the materials I need for my different classes, that, I mean, I got a scholarship but that my dad pays rent as well, which is a huge relief because if we had to pay rent we couldn’t go to school at all, definitely not. That yeah, that Ramiro is still in college too, but he’s kind of setting his own pace, taking it easier because he’s really into music right now, that he met some guys at school, I mean, he met one of them there and then through him the others, his group of friends, most of them from Buenos Aires or from the suburbs, all musicians, mostly rock, yeah, they have a band. Yeah, it’s great, Rami’s really into it and plays all day some days; he just bought a used keyboard from one of these guys, so now he’s doing both guitar and keyboard, and he’s beginning to compose. No, it doesn’t bother me at all, I actually really like it, I like the music they make, and I like having music and people around, that’s the main thing, is that I really like having people around. No, it doesn’t really bother me when I’m trying to study, that I either shut the door or go to some classmate’s house or some café, but in general it doesn’t bother me anyway, it actually helps me focus, I’d say it relaxes me. That in fact my boyfriend is the drummer for their band, so it could hardly bother me. Yes, exactly, Manuel, oh, yes, I’m very happy, that recently things have been getting serious between us. No, he’s from Mendoza, but he’s been living in Buenos Aires for forever. He’s just a little bit older, two years older than Ramiro. So that’s what they do, they have the band, they’ve been playing for quite a while, just that Rami joined them relatively recently because they had a fight with their guitarist, who was also their singer, so it was Rami and this other guy who sings who joined the band at the same time. He sings really well, it did the band a world of good to make that change, this guy really has an incredible voice, totally unique, and he also gets so enthusiastic about the band, about the group itself, in terms of the people too, which is really important. Reducido, that’s the name of the band: Reducido. Yeah, they play quite a bit, on the south side mostly, I mean of Buenos Aires, and in little nearby towns as well, they play quite a bit in small towns, they get quite a few gigs. Yeah, they usually do play with other bands, they’re still not appearing on their own yet, or I mean, very infrequently, but it doesn’t really make sense for them yet, they’re not that likely to draw enough of a crowd to pay to rent the space and move all their stuff around, I mean, one of the guys has a truck, so that transports all the equipment, but even so, the idea is to make some money, even if it’s just to maintain all their instruments and such. And for food and what have you. Yes, I’m super happy, Manuel and I are going very strong, oh, yeah, he’s very laid back, yes, yes, I really care about him (danger: Julián), he cares about me too, we care a lot about each other. No, yeah, he also works in a store that sells instruments, on Talcahuano, yeah, right smack in the middle of the city, that there are a lot of them there, yeah, that he gets a little bored, but it’s not that bad considering. And it’s actually not under the table or anything. And besides it’s only temporary: he wants to start teaching music classes in schools, he likes kids. So I mean I definitely can’t complain, and your mother says how it’s so great that things are going so great, and I say, no, absolutely, I definitely can’t complain, and cheers, I say, and they say cheers.
We walk home, because we’d gone to the place on Rivadavia, which, of course, still has that old Nicolás as their main waiter, who told me how I’d changed, kid, while meanwhile staring at my chest, which made me fairly uncomfortable, but anyway we came back on foot, and you can’t possibly imagine how cold it was, and your mom laced her arm through mine, and your dad was holding on to her, and that was how we walked on back to your place, all of us drunk, almost a family.
I still can’t figure out if I am happy or sad. All I know is that I’m here. I’m here, that’s the one thing I am sure of.
Ali and I have developed a similar technique. It’s strange. When I wake up she’s the first thing I see, usually she’s still asleep. She sleeps until she feels me moving, and then her eyes part slightly, usually she can’t be bothered to do much more than that, so she sizes me up for a second or so, sees that everything is in its place and as it should be, that my waking up this time is not significantly different from any of the other times, and unless she yawns or stretches or shifts a little she’ll just stay perfectly still. Then I stretch out or writhe around a little in your bed, toss and turn and roll over and over, and then I simply watch her, being peaceful. I wonder which of us is guarding which at night.
Today Vanina came to see me, and it was super weird. Not that she would come, of course, because apparently she had heard I was around, and then she asked your mom, and it’s not like your mom could have lied to her, and plus she had no reason to do so. So she came, and we drank mate. It wasn’t that bad, in the end, once I’d overcome my initial panic or whatever it was. I mean at first I was utterly inhibited, I don’t know, she was happy, purely and sincerely happy just to see me. I mean, in reality, of course, things aren’t actually that complicated. Or at least they aren’t for everyone. She seemed good too. I don’t know why I say too, I don’t know if I’m doing good, I don’t know, you’d have to ask her, I guess, how it was I came across. For the moment I prefer not knowing. Anyway, the point is that she’s still there, I mean, here, but that she’s happy, happy with her decision to stay, to not go to college, to not go off somewhere to go to college, like most of us. She said that at first it was really tough. And besides, at the time she was going out with Mario, and Mario was going to La Plata, and she started to go for it, she thought about going with him, but in the end she didn’t, she ultimately decided to stay because actually, when she was being totally honest with herself—her words—she couldn’t think of a single good reason to go, since she loved Esquel, she always had. But that it’s only been in the past two or three years that she started to be really good again, that at first she used to get depressed because she wound up kind of lonely, feeling like she’d ended up here by herself, and she was working, but she was kind of depressed. She was working as a waitress. But then apparently she started seeing the owner of this bar, it’s this new place, on Rivadavia, orange, kind of dimly lit, that has a pool table, anyway, but so she started seeing Omar. That at first they were seeing each other in secret because Omar was married, but then apparently they fell in love, and then Omar left his wife, and Vanina and he moved in together, and now she’s like thrilled living and working with him. That at first people had been judgmental, but then in reality nobody actually even liked Omar’s ex-wife, who went back to Madryn, because she was from there, so really the majority had been on her side, like they’d mostly been supportive, but regardless she had not been too concerned because she knew the gossip would die down after some time passed and everybody’d just relax. And