The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa

muscle, or a piece of skin.
    “Had he changed very much?”
    He had become very much a gringo in the way he dressed and spoke, for he continually used English words. But though his hair was gray and he had put on weight, he still had the same long, melancholy Pluto face, and all the timidity and inhibitions of his youth.
    “Seeing you arrive must have been like a gift from heaven.”
    “He turned so pale! I thought he was going to faint. He was waiting for me with a bouquet of flowers bigger than he was. The limousine was one of those silver-colored ones that gangsters have in movies. With a bar, a television, a stereo, and—this will kill you—leopardskin seat covers.”
    “Poor ecologists,” Don Rigoberto responded with enthusiasm.
    “I know it’s very parvenu,” Modesto apologized while the chauffeur, an extremely tall Afghani in a maroon uniform, arranged their luggage in the trunk. “But it was the most expensive one.”
    “He’s able to laugh at himself,” Don Rigoberto declared. “That’s nice.”
    “On the ride to the Plaza he paid me a few compliments, blushing all the way to his ears,” Doña Lucrecia continued. “He said I looked very young and even more beautiful than when he asked me to marry him.”
    “You are,” Don Rigoberto interrupted, drinking in her breath. “More and more, every day, every hour.”
    “Not a single remark in bad taste, not a single offensive insinuation,” she said. “He was so grateful to me for joining him that he made me feel like the good Samaritan in the Bible.”
    “Do you know what he was wondering while he was being so gallant?”
    “What?” Doña Lucrecia slipped her leg between her husband’s.
    “If he would see you naked that afternoon, in the Plaza, or if he would have to wait until that night, or even until Paris,” Don Rigoberto explained.
    “He didn’t see me naked that afternoon or that night. Unless he peeked through the keyhole while I was bathing and dressing for the Metropolitan Opera. What he had said about separate rooms was true. Mine overlooked Central Park.”
    “But he must have at least held your hand at the opera, in the restaurant,” he complained, feeling disappointed. “With the help of a little champagne, he must have put his cheek to yours while you were dancing at Regine’s. He must have kissed your neck, your ear.”
    Not at all. He had not tried to take her hand or kiss her during that long night, though he did not spare the compliments, but always at a respectful distance. He was very likable, in fact, mocking his own lack of experience (“I’m mortified, Lucre, but in six years of marriage I’ve never cheated on my wife”), and admitting to her that this was the first time in his life he had attended the opera or set foot in Le Cirque and Regine’s.
    “The only thing I’m sure of is that I must ask for Dom Pérignon, sniff at the glass of wine as if I suffered from allergies, and order dishes with French names.”
    He looked at her with immeasurable, canine gratitude.
    “To tell the truth, I’ve come out of vanity, Modesto. And curiosity too, of course. After ten years of our not seeing each other, of our not being in touch at all, is it possible you’re still in love with me?”
    “Love isn’t the right word,” he pointed out. “I’m in love with Dorothy, the gringa I married, who’s very understanding and lets me sing in bed.”
    “For him you meant something more subtle,” Don Rigoberto declared. “Unreality, illusion, the woman of his memory and desires. I want to worship you the same way, the way he does. Wait, wait.”
    He removed her tiny nightgown and then positioned her so that their skin would touch in more places. He reined in his desire and asked her to continue.
    “We returned to the hotel just as I was beginning to yawn. He said good night at a distance from my door. He wished me pleasant dreams. He behaved so well, he was so much a gentleman, that the next morning I flirted with him