ringing him. I don’t think it is such an effort for you. The main thing is that you should want to do so. As you know, there is no way I can call you, since I don’t know which number to ring to get you. I so want to hear your voice!
That’s enough for now. I only wanted to tell you a little about myself and my feelings . . . Give the children a kiss on my behalf and keep reminding them how much I love them. Also greetings to your sister and brother-in-law, tell them to be themselves, and that they should write to me some time. As for you, please don’t forget me: write to me, ring me, or at least remember me, just a little . . . Because I shall always, always love you . . .
Your Nena
Mario Conde’s stomach was out of training and had to make a special effort to accommodate and then digest the astonishing nutritional challenge its inconsiderate owner now inflicted on it. While Josefina settled for a grilled fish fillet, a bright and cheerful green salad and a dish of almond ice cream for dessert, Conde and Skinny began the assault on their physical and intellectual, historical and contemporary hungers, with a cocktail of oysters and prawns, destined to subvert their palate with fishy flavours long lost in the crevices of memory. The former then prepared to disappear down a juicy path of meat and potatoes in purest Cuban style, while the latter flung himself into a spicy well of broth with chickpeas that made him sweat from every single one of his multitude of pores. Then, as their bodies warmed to the task, like long-distance runners getting into their best stride, they competed to see who could eat the most rice and chicken, served in ridiculous portions – of both rice and chicken, a friendly gesture from the management – before finishing off with a shared ham pizza that Skinny insisted on ordering and stuffing into a remaining space, which proclaimed its hatred of a vacuum. For their epilogue they chose fritters, drenched in fruit juices, with a parfum of aniseed and lime peel, and neither could refuse, being such gentlemen in the circumstances, a taste of the rice and milk infused with cinnamon that Fatman Contreras himself prepared – a recipe of his great-grandmother’s, an Andalusian whore who liked the good life and died at the ripe old age of eighty-eight, puffing on her cigar and sipping a shot of rum. They’d downed two bottles of Chilean Concha y Toro before getting to the desserts and then ordered two double shots of vintage rum to wipe their chops clean and accompany their coffees – doubles that quadrupled when the friends lit up the delicately layered cigars presented to them by the ex-policeman who’d converted to gourmet living and who flopped his voluminous mass of humanity down between them and Tinguaro at the end of the night, so they could toast one another with a glass of chilled Fra Angelico. The Count wasn’t taken aback by the bill for seven hundred and eighty pesos, and when he’d paid Tinguaro his hundred pesos, he happily brought to a close what had been one of his most profitable days ever with a net loss of three hundred and eighty pesos and the soothing feeling that he might be able to pass through the eye of a needle, because he’d never be a rich man . . .
Tossing in his bed, unable to read, Conde only got to sleep around four, and in the meantime, as he belched and sweated uncomfortably, his retina was revisited time and again by the almost irritatingly persistent image of Violeta del Río, a recent revelation to him and news to Fatman Contreras too. Perhaps his stubborn detective instincts had also been aroused by the surfeit and had forced him to notice a few incongruities in his find. The first and most perturbing was the strange decision, apparently unmotivated, at least as far as Vanidades was concerned, which led that “beautiful and refined” woman, “at the pinnacle of her career” to abandon the stage and, by all accounts, vanish so definitively that nothing
That’s enough for now. I only wanted to tell you a little about myself and my feelings . . . Give the children a kiss on my behalf and keep reminding them how much I love them. Also greetings to your sister and brother-in-law, tell them to be themselves, and that they should write to me some time. As for you, please don’t forget me: write to me, ring me, or at least remember me, just a little . . . Because I shall always, always love you . . .
Your Nena
Mario Conde’s stomach was out of training and had to make a special effort to accommodate and then digest the astonishing nutritional challenge its inconsiderate owner now inflicted on it. While Josefina settled for a grilled fish fillet, a bright and cheerful green salad and a dish of almond ice cream for dessert, Conde and Skinny began the assault on their physical and intellectual, historical and contemporary hungers, with a cocktail of oysters and prawns, destined to subvert their palate with fishy flavours long lost in the crevices of memory. The former then prepared to disappear down a juicy path of meat and potatoes in purest Cuban style, while the latter flung himself into a spicy well of broth with chickpeas that made him sweat from every single one of his multitude of pores. Then, as their bodies warmed to the task, like long-distance runners getting into their best stride, they competed to see who could eat the most rice and chicken, served in ridiculous portions – of both rice and chicken, a friendly gesture from the management – before finishing off with a shared ham pizza that Skinny insisted on ordering and stuffing into a remaining space, which proclaimed its hatred of a vacuum. For their epilogue they chose fritters, drenched in fruit juices, with a parfum of aniseed and lime peel, and neither could refuse, being such gentlemen in the circumstances, a taste of the rice and milk infused with cinnamon that Fatman Contreras himself prepared – a recipe of his great-grandmother’s, an Andalusian whore who liked the good life and died at the ripe old age of eighty-eight, puffing on her cigar and sipping a shot of rum. They’d downed two bottles of Chilean Concha y Toro before getting to the desserts and then ordered two double shots of vintage rum to wipe their chops clean and accompany their coffees – doubles that quadrupled when the friends lit up the delicately layered cigars presented to them by the ex-policeman who’d converted to gourmet living and who flopped his voluminous mass of humanity down between them and Tinguaro at the end of the night, so they could toast one another with a glass of chilled Fra Angelico. The Count wasn’t taken aback by the bill for seven hundred and eighty pesos, and when he’d paid Tinguaro his hundred pesos, he happily brought to a close what had been one of his most profitable days ever with a net loss of three hundred and eighty pesos and the soothing feeling that he might be able to pass through the eye of a needle, because he’d never be a rich man . . .
Tossing in his bed, unable to read, Conde only got to sleep around four, and in the meantime, as he belched and sweated uncomfortably, his retina was revisited time and again by the almost irritatingly persistent image of Violeta del Río, a recent revelation to him and news to Fatman Contreras too. Perhaps his stubborn detective instincts had also been aroused by the surfeit and had forced him to notice a few incongruities in his find. The first and most perturbing was the strange decision, apparently unmotivated, at least as far as Vanidades was concerned, which led that “beautiful and refined” woman, “at the pinnacle of her career” to abandon the stage and, by all accounts, vanish so definitively that nothing
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