Читать книгу Fish Soup - Margarita García Robayo - Страница 17

11

The next flight to Miami was hell. And the ones after that. The Captain was avoiding me and now seemed more interested in Susana who, as she had no ass to speak of, had started sporting a very revealing push-up bra. I couldn’t care less because I had my Johnny, who was becoming more attentive and affectionate; he’d given me a laptop, so we could chat. I told him about the city: that in the centre they were building mansions that were filling up with celebrities. Julio Iglesias, Caroline of Monaco, Mick Jagger, Lady Gaga – they all had houses there. Johnny didn’t seem very impressed. All Johnny wanted was for me to turn on the webcam and talk dirty to him while I touched myself. And I did, but not always. I thought: one day Johnny will come to his senses, he’ll know what to do.

Johnny was becoming flaky.

The last time I saw him, he took me to the same dive bar with the buffalo wings, in Kendall. He was distracted, sullen, eyeing up the Dominican slut, who appeared to have developed huge matronly hips overnight. At some point, a well-dressed woman stood at the doorway and surveyed the place. Johnny said, she doesn’t think it looks clean enough for her to sit her bony ass down. He sounded bitter, resentful. Then he fell silent again. What’s up? I asked him. He said there was nothing wrong. We went to a motel, we fucked, he lit a cigarette and went silent again. I switched on the TV, nothing happened, it was broken.

On the flight back, Susana avoided me. I said to her: Johnny’s going to ask me to marry him and she said, Great! But it sounded false.

Then one day, Johnny stood me up. I was waiting in the lobby of the hotel. I was all dressed up to go salsa dancing: hair in a ponytail, shiny trousers, jangly metal bracelet. Suddenly I felt ridiculous. I called his home phone number, his wife answered, and before I’d finished asking for him, she was shouting at me, holly shit, you fokin puta! Then she threatened to shoot me three times in the pussy. There was a pause, during which I suppose she was catching her breath to start insulting me again, and I seized the opportunity to say: look, lady, Johnny knocked me up. And I hung up.

Going back was miserable. When I got to the apartment, I collapsed on the living room sofa, staring out the window: the chicken sign wasn’t lit up. It wouldn’t be until later. I didn’t eat, I didn’t go to the toilet, all I did was think about Johnny and stare at the grimy window pane. 19, 18, 17, 16…

Johnny didn’t appear online. I sent him three hundred and seventeen emails. Nothing. I never heard from him again. And with time, the sadness passed, but I was filled with pity. Firstly, for him, because he must have lost everything: his car, his unemployment benefit, his Ecuadorian wife, his VIP passes, his dignity. Then for me, because I’d lost my drives around Miami, the lobster and champagne, the sunsets in Mallory Square, the good life that Johnny had got me used to. And then for me, again for me, for the many times in my life, for every time I’d lost someone I didn’t even care about.