rock and roll?”
“Sure! Why not? Something light, like the Beatles’ music. You have to make people feel that it’s cool to say
No
!”
Patricia imitated the neck movement with which Paul McCartney used to follow the beat, shaking his head.
“She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah …”
“Which, in my case, would be, ‘She loves you, no, no, no …’ What the heck will I do with this damn
No
?”
“Something youthful, cute, amusing. Something with a little whoop at the end: ‘No, oh, oh …’?”
Bettini rubbed his eyes, trying to erase the image of this nightmare.
“No, oh, oh …?”
“That’s it, No, oh, oh …”
“Good-bye, Patricia!”
“Are you leaving?”
“Nope. You are!”
LAURA YÁÑEZ is now at my place. She’s Patricia Bettini’s close friend and, at the same time, the complete opposite of her. While Pati’s a good student and has thin lips, small breasts, and straight brown hair that she wears in a ponytail that she tightens with a barrette, Laura has dark, messy curls that shine with gel. Even in the middle of winter, her skin is copper colored, as if she had just come back from the beach. Her purse is covered with stickers with the images of the new pop stars, and her fleshy lips are enhanced with a vibrant lipstick that she puts on as soon as she leaves the school. Her chest busts out from the uniform shirt, and she unbuttons it enough for us to see the vertiginous curves of her smooth breasts. Her easy smile shows perfect teeth, and she constantly moves her hips as if she were listening to tropical music.
About her school life she says only, “I’m a lioness in a cage.” This motto’s confirmed by her report card, where, by the end of the semester, the grades in red look like a cherry festival.
I make her some tea and don’t ask what brings Laura Yáñez by herself to my place, because I prefer not to know. Her contribution to “teatime” is a pack of Triton cookies, the round chocolate ones with white cream filling. After the first sip, she tells me she came to ask me for a favor.
She has arrived at the conclusion that even if she burns the midnight oil studying from now on, she’ll never be able to make up for those red grades, so she’ll have to repeat the year.
“Just imagine,” she tells me, “the effect that would have on my mood. All of my girlfriends are going to college, or they’re going to start dating so they can get married, and I’d have to stay in that cage, but with the young girls in the lower grade, whom I can’t stand. And that’s the best-case situation, because my parents already told me that they don’t have any more money to keep paying for the Scuola Italiana. They’re tired of making so many sacrifices. They told me that if I get held back, they would send me to a technical school or to the Culinary Institute, and I’ll end up as a cook in a hotel.
“In conclusion,” she says between melancholy bites of a cookie, “I’ve decided to drop out of schoolright away and start working and make money to buy the things I like.”
My tea tastes bitter without sugar, but I keep drinking it in silence.
I know what Laura likes: older guys, being the queen of the disco when she dances salsa, polo shirts two sizes too small so that the fabric makes her breasts even more noticeable, jeans chiseled on the curves of her hard bottom, and watching soap operas dreaming that someday she’ll meet a producer who will discover her and give her a part, and she’ll become famous and rich.
On the other hand, Laura doesn’t give a damn about Aristotle or Shakespeare. The only scene she likes from
Hamlet
is when Polonius asks him what he’s reading and he answers, “Words, words, words.” For Laura, world culture is expressed in words, and words are a bad check. According to her, everybody talks too much about democracy, but we should take a look at what’s happening in Chile. Her philosophy—live intensely today, because you could be killed at
“Sure! Why not? Something light, like the Beatles’ music. You have to make people feel that it’s cool to say
No
!”
Patricia imitated the neck movement with which Paul McCartney used to follow the beat, shaking his head.
“She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah …”
“Which, in my case, would be, ‘She loves you, no, no, no …’ What the heck will I do with this damn
No
?”
“Something youthful, cute, amusing. Something with a little whoop at the end: ‘No, oh, oh …’?”
Bettini rubbed his eyes, trying to erase the image of this nightmare.
“No, oh, oh …?”
“That’s it, No, oh, oh …”
“Good-bye, Patricia!”
“Are you leaving?”
“Nope. You are!”
LAURA YÁÑEZ is now at my place. She’s Patricia Bettini’s close friend and, at the same time, the complete opposite of her. While Pati’s a good student and has thin lips, small breasts, and straight brown hair that she wears in a ponytail that she tightens with a barrette, Laura has dark, messy curls that shine with gel. Even in the middle of winter, her skin is copper colored, as if she had just come back from the beach. Her purse is covered with stickers with the images of the new pop stars, and her fleshy lips are enhanced with a vibrant lipstick that she puts on as soon as she leaves the school. Her chest busts out from the uniform shirt, and she unbuttons it enough for us to see the vertiginous curves of her smooth breasts. Her easy smile shows perfect teeth, and she constantly moves her hips as if she were listening to tropical music.
About her school life she says only, “I’m a lioness in a cage.” This motto’s confirmed by her report card, where, by the end of the semester, the grades in red look like a cherry festival.
I make her some tea and don’t ask what brings Laura Yáñez by herself to my place, because I prefer not to know. Her contribution to “teatime” is a pack of Triton cookies, the round chocolate ones with white cream filling. After the first sip, she tells me she came to ask me for a favor.
She has arrived at the conclusion that even if she burns the midnight oil studying from now on, she’ll never be able to make up for those red grades, so she’ll have to repeat the year.
“Just imagine,” she tells me, “the effect that would have on my mood. All of my girlfriends are going to college, or they’re going to start dating so they can get married, and I’d have to stay in that cage, but with the young girls in the lower grade, whom I can’t stand. And that’s the best-case situation, because my parents already told me that they don’t have any more money to keep paying for the Scuola Italiana. They’re tired of making so many sacrifices. They told me that if I get held back, they would send me to a technical school or to the Culinary Institute, and I’ll end up as a cook in a hotel.
“In conclusion,” she says between melancholy bites of a cookie, “I’ve decided to drop out of schoolright away and start working and make money to buy the things I like.”
My tea tastes bitter without sugar, but I keep drinking it in silence.
I know what Laura likes: older guys, being the queen of the disco when she dances salsa, polo shirts two sizes too small so that the fabric makes her breasts even more noticeable, jeans chiseled on the curves of her hard bottom, and watching soap operas dreaming that someday she’ll meet a producer who will discover her and give her a part, and she’ll become famous and rich.
On the other hand, Laura doesn’t give a damn about Aristotle or Shakespeare. The only scene she likes from
Hamlet
is when Polonius asks him what he’s reading and he answers, “Words, words, words.” For Laura, world culture is expressed in words, and words are a bad check. According to her, everybody talks too much about democracy, but we should take a look at what’s happening in Chile. Her philosophy—live intensely today, because you could be killed at
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