Félix’s
Félix accelerates
Pedro spits on the steering wheel
Félix feels his macho hormone-amen rising up
Pedro reflects hormones are idiots
The dog lifts his leg and urinates
The dog behind him tries to urinate more than the first one
In the sacred space where men piss
Félix jumps the median
Pedro goes over the cliff
The dogs urinate
They’re served with parsley at the undersecretary’s barbecue.
A Cousin
Without Charm
1. We didn’t talk about “That Woman” in this house. Even her name was forgotten. She was simply “That Woman.” Some crossed themselves when she was mentioned; some sneered; some took offense. It was very difficult to convince the matriarch, Doña Piedad Quiroz de Sorolla, that “That Woman” was no longer here, and Doña Piedita could get out of bed and move around the desolate house in El Desierto de los Leones with no danger of running into the wicked “That Woman.”
“There’s no reason anymore to fulfill your vow, Doña Piedita. You can get up and walk. You can even change your dress.”
Because the “vow” that Widow de Sorolla had imposed on herself consisted of two decisions. First, to take to her bed, and second, to take to her bed dressed without getting up or changing her “clothes” until “That Woman” had left.
The truth is that life was better before, or at least bearable. The big old house in El Desierto, submerged in mourning since the death of the patriarch, Don Fermín Sorolla, revived when the daughter of the family, Ana Fernanda Sorolla, contracted matrimony with a young accountant, Jesús Aníbal de Lillo. The wedding caused a great stir, and everyone remarked on what a good-looking couple they were: Ana Fernanda—tall, very white-skinned, with luxuriant black hair and a suggestive mixture of willfulness and affection in her eyes, lips always partially open to show off her teeth, her Indian cheekbones, high and hard under skin that was so Spanish, and her walk, also intriguing, tip-toeing and stepping hard at the same time—all of which seemed to support as well as complement the serious, dry personality of the bridegroom, as if the severe manner and amiable but distant smile of CPA Jesús Aníbal de Lillo served to toughen the barely “virile” physical beauty of a twenty-seven-year-old man who had kept the look of a beardless adolescent: impeccable skin and pale cheeks on which the long blond mustache could not erase the impression that Jesús Aníbal was a young Asturian Apollo with curly blond hair and a bearing not at all athletic, almost
consumed
in his refined, patrician physical essence, of ordinary height and only apparent fragility, for in the nakedness of their bedroom—Ana Fernanda discovered it that very night—the young certified public accountant possessed extreme virile potency, proclaiming in words, over and over again, his sexual satisfaction when he fell back naked beside a modest Ana Fernanda rapidly covered by the sheet while her husband declaimed with actions his instantaneous, incessantly renewed sexual hunger.
Ever since he met Ana Fernanda at the celebrated Christmas party of the poet Carlos Pellicer, Jesús Aníbal had felt attracted to her and stifled the ugly thought that the girl was rich, the daughter of a newly rich millionaire who was protected by powerful politicians, recipient of a thousand contracts, and married to a Quiroz of provincial lineage who had been impoverished by the same thing that had enriched her husband: the political changes that invariably translated into favor or disfavor in Mexico. But this time Jesús Aníbal was the pauper allied by marriage to a wealthy family. Wealthy but severely eccentric.
After the wedding, Jesús Aníbal de Lillo would have preferred to leave the ancestral home of the Sorollas in the solitary and perpetually démodé Desierto de los Leones in the far southwest of Mexico City: a steep forest of twisting paths, fragrant pines, and views of Mount Ajusco that
Félix accelerates
Pedro spits on the steering wheel
Félix feels his macho hormone-amen rising up
Pedro reflects hormones are idiots
The dog lifts his leg and urinates
The dog behind him tries to urinate more than the first one
In the sacred space where men piss
Félix jumps the median
Pedro goes over the cliff
The dogs urinate
They’re served with parsley at the undersecretary’s barbecue.
A Cousin
Without Charm
1. We didn’t talk about “That Woman” in this house. Even her name was forgotten. She was simply “That Woman.” Some crossed themselves when she was mentioned; some sneered; some took offense. It was very difficult to convince the matriarch, Doña Piedad Quiroz de Sorolla, that “That Woman” was no longer here, and Doña Piedita could get out of bed and move around the desolate house in El Desierto de los Leones with no danger of running into the wicked “That Woman.”
“There’s no reason anymore to fulfill your vow, Doña Piedita. You can get up and walk. You can even change your dress.”
Because the “vow” that Widow de Sorolla had imposed on herself consisted of two decisions. First, to take to her bed, and second, to take to her bed dressed without getting up or changing her “clothes” until “That Woman” had left.
The truth is that life was better before, or at least bearable. The big old house in El Desierto, submerged in mourning since the death of the patriarch, Don Fermín Sorolla, revived when the daughter of the family, Ana Fernanda Sorolla, contracted matrimony with a young accountant, Jesús Aníbal de Lillo. The wedding caused a great stir, and everyone remarked on what a good-looking couple they were: Ana Fernanda—tall, very white-skinned, with luxuriant black hair and a suggestive mixture of willfulness and affection in her eyes, lips always partially open to show off her teeth, her Indian cheekbones, high and hard under skin that was so Spanish, and her walk, also intriguing, tip-toeing and stepping hard at the same time—all of which seemed to support as well as complement the serious, dry personality of the bridegroom, as if the severe manner and amiable but distant smile of CPA Jesús Aníbal de Lillo served to toughen the barely “virile” physical beauty of a twenty-seven-year-old man who had kept the look of a beardless adolescent: impeccable skin and pale cheeks on which the long blond mustache could not erase the impression that Jesús Aníbal was a young Asturian Apollo with curly blond hair and a bearing not at all athletic, almost
consumed
in his refined, patrician physical essence, of ordinary height and only apparent fragility, for in the nakedness of their bedroom—Ana Fernanda discovered it that very night—the young certified public accountant possessed extreme virile potency, proclaiming in words, over and over again, his sexual satisfaction when he fell back naked beside a modest Ana Fernanda rapidly covered by the sheet while her husband declaimed with actions his instantaneous, incessantly renewed sexual hunger.
Ever since he met Ana Fernanda at the celebrated Christmas party of the poet Carlos Pellicer, Jesús Aníbal had felt attracted to her and stifled the ugly thought that the girl was rich, the daughter of a newly rich millionaire who was protected by powerful politicians, recipient of a thousand contracts, and married to a Quiroz of provincial lineage who had been impoverished by the same thing that had enriched her husband: the political changes that invariably translated into favor or disfavor in Mexico. But this time Jesús Aníbal was the pauper allied by marriage to a wealthy family. Wealthy but severely eccentric.
After the wedding, Jesús Aníbal de Lillo would have preferred to leave the ancestral home of the Sorollas in the solitary and perpetually démodé Desierto de los Leones in the far southwest of Mexico City: a steep forest of twisting paths, fragrant pines, and views of Mount Ajusco that
Similar Books
