After dessert, Ilaria and Luca spoke enthusiastically about the following day’s plans, but David had grown tired, barely saying another word. By the time their plates were cleared, David had drifted away completely and sat staring at the table in soft focus. With this, conversation lulled and all three fell silent. David sensed that this was the moment to excuse himself. In one fluid motion, he got up, put some money on the table, and said he was going for a walk.
The van in the praça had gone and in the resulting darkness the feelings that David had swallowed at dinner began to crawl over his skin. All of them – shame, disgust, anger – all together, were at once externalised. Now that he was outside, he could let it all out. A tension moved from his stomach to his spine, creeping upward towards his shoulders, and settled finally at the base of his neck. This knot then began to pulse.
David had learned to slip away from lunches and dinners at the beginning of these attacks. At first, being alone was cathartic enough and, after a long walk, the tension would melt away. It was only recently that these feelings would bubble up all of a sudden, without any warning, and then nag at him until he was very drunk.
Far from the fairy lights and swinging chairs of the barracas, David walked the dusty backstreets to a bar full of plastic chairs and stray dogs. There, he was the only gringo and sat alone. The owner recognised him from the night before but paid him no particular attention.The bar’s sole waiter, a fat caboclo, sat panting by a pair of ancient, crackling speakers that played a depressing samba. After some minutes, he brought David a beer. Although it was a Friday, the punters barely spoke, let alone danced. David toyed with the condensation that had formed under his glass and started his nightly ritual of going over every detail of each day of the past six months.
In hindsight, the signs of betrayal were clear to David. Although initially they were almost imperceptible – glances, gestures, a shift in tone – little by little these small, unspoken demonstrations of affection become something more. What he couldn’t see then, now at the bar seemed painfully obvious. He felt stupid and anxious. Standing before the blinding light of his feelings for Ilaria, he failed to see small embers that had begun to smolder further afield, glowing there in the dark.
—
Ilaria had been waiting by the road for only a few minutes when David and Luca’s black Renault appeared around the bend. As the car came to a stop in a cloud of dust, she was relieved to see two travelers of her own age. Ilaria slid into the back seat, slammed the door shut, and introduced herself. She too was headed for Bolivia, mostly hitchhiking, after having been laid off from a dull public sector job in Buenos Aires.
“It’s everything – the constant talk of inflation, everybody so tense all the time, the stress of living in a city. I just wanted to get away, you know?” she explained.
They did know. David handed her a lit joint of paraguayo. She balanced it from the side of her mouth as she tied her black hair into a ponytail. Both David and Luca snuck glimpses of Ilaria in the rearview mirror, their eyes drawn to a large tulip tattooed on her upper thigh.
From the front, David listened carefully to Ilaria speak. Her voice was animated though very soft, marked with a sweet zheísmo. After a little conversation, David turned around to meet her gaze and allowed himself to admire her. She laughed at his jokes and when they spoke in Spanish, her blue eyes would widen as she playfully mocked his laboured Argentine accent. Of the dozen or so hitchhikers that David and Luca had picked up before Ilaria, many had been good value, breaking up the trip, adding some extra colour here and there – but both of them understood from the ease with which all three spoke that Ilaria was the best.
Beyond Cafayate, the earth twisted up toward the sun and Ilaria fell asleep, her head leaning against the rear passenger window. Breathing softly, her appearance clashed with the soaring quebrada outside of the glass: soft alabaster skin framed by the jagged, red landscape.
—
David needed to leave the bar. Drunk and stoned, the past had become too visceral, overlapping with the now. He stood up, spilling what remained of his beer, and headed toward the empty beach. In the sand he tripped over his own feet. His head was spinning and he felt very sick. He tried to get up but his whole body was weighed down, made heavy by regret, so he gave up, immersing himself in lucid recollections of her. His consciousness swayed between two states. Every moment they shared becomes tangible. He reaches out to touch her.
Prone, he digs his fingernails into the sand. He forces his face down
His hand,
so much so it hurt his nose. Pressure mounts behind his eyes,
making its way
he grinds his teeth and tastes the earth. He can’t do anything
up her thigh, to her groin,
to stop it, to just let it die, to rot away. It was all coming back
warm, fleshy. Entwined, the
up, no matter what. He gets onto his knees and unbuttons
two of them, laughing. Biting her
half of his shirt. He pulls it off and lurches toward the surf.
neck, she runs her fingers down the
Knee deep he realises he’s wearing his socks. The
length of his back, ‘Es que te adoro, mi amor,
waves crash violently and but he isn’t afraid. The water
no sabes cuanto.’ The day he confronted her. ‘David, basta’
reaches his belly and he recoils. He slips under.
‘Ya se acabó. No sé qué decirte.’ They come together, eyes open.
Unspoiled darkness. His lungs now burn. It’s
He takes her hand. His head, resting on her belly, rises and falls.
so cold. Underneath the surface, the water
For the first time, he is free from desire. For the first time, he is happy
above him sounds like Ilaria’s breathing.
to be David. She wipes away his fever sweat and replaces it with a wet kiss.
She had told him about her love for Luca two months ago to the day.
—
David punches him. He punches him as hard as he can in the side of his head. He watched as his friend’s face distorts and his arms instinctively fence. Luca slumps forward, his body showing no resistance nor response to the waves. David moves towards the crown of Luca’s that bobs above the waterline and put his hands around his neck. He rings his friends neck. From then until the beach, David sees nothing but blurs. He could taste the saltwater around his mouth and he could feel the wind on his face, but he doesn’t see a thing.
When his vision returns, Ilaria still there on her alter. Gilded by dying light, the earth rippled under her. Above her, the sky was her cupola, painted only for her. She was perfect and all things were an extension of her. She was the centre of it, haloed. Silently, David lay beside her and pressed his face into her hair. He felt the droplets of sea spray in her braids. He smells the sweat on the back of her neck. He allows himself to smile.
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