“We forgot to ask her to get water,” said Juan Martín, and it was the first sensible thing he’d said since morning.
My heart started to beat faster: What if we got dehydrated? I rolled down the windows without giving a thought to the bugs. What could they be, other than moths, beetles, crickets? Maybe a bat. Juan Martín said, “Your cousin is irresponsible. She brings us all the way out here where no cars ever pass without even making sure this wreck could run.”
“How do you know whether she took the car in?” I asked him, furious, and I thought it would be easy to kill him right there; I could get a screwdriver from the trunk and stab it into his neck. I knew he didn’t want to kill me, he just wanted to treat me badly and break me so I’d hate my life and wouldn’t even have the guts left to change it. He started to turn on the radio and I almost told him to stop, we had to conserve the battery, but then I let him do it. I was enjoying his ignorance; how I was going to relish it when the tow truck came and he had to explain that he’d used up the battery looking for who knows what on the radio. What could be on the radio around there at night? Chamamé and more chamamé, and some lonely people who called in and cried and remembered their children who had died in the Malvinas.
The rescue mechanics arrived an hour later. As I’d imagined, they chastised Juan Martín for having the radio on. He sputtered excuses. The mechanics got to work and Juan Martín acted like he was supervising them. I got out and took Natalia’s hand.
“You can’t even imagine what a hottie the trucker is. One of those Swedes from Oberá. I mean this guy is smoking. He’s going to spend the night in Clorinda, and I think I’ll stay with him. If the car gets going, that idiot husband of yours can take you to Corrientes,” she said to me in a low voice.
But the car didn’t start and they had to tow the three of us to Clorinda. The car stayed in the city’s automobile club branch, but the mechanics very kindly took us to the hotel Natalia directed them to, pompously called The Ambassador. It was white and had colonial arches, but I knew, just from looking at it from outside, that it was going to smell of damp and maybe wouldn’t have hot water. It had a restaurant, though, or more like a grill, with white plastic tables where a family and several solitary men were sitting. “We’re going to shower,” I told Juan Martín, “and then let’s get something to eat.”
As they were handing us the hotel keys, a man who could only be the trucker came into the reception area. Natalia went skipping over to him like a teenager. The guy was two heads taller than her, and had muscled arms and blond hair cut very short. “Hello,” he said to us, and he smiled. He seemed charming but he could be anything, a degenerate, a wife beater, a rapist—since he was extremely good looking, any girl would rather see him as a golden prince of the highway. I greeted him; Juan Martín took the key and looked at me so I would follow him. I did. Natalia called after me that we’d meet up in an hour to eat and I thought: how tragic, she gets an hour with that sweet-smiling Viking, while I spend an hour tolerating my husband.
Juan Martín yelled at me: “Not once, not even once did you take my side, do you realize? Not about anything. All day long.” He shouted that Natalia was a whore, that she went off with the first guy who crossed her path. He shouted that I was a whore too because I’d been making eyes at the goddamn blond barbarian. I told him that blond barbarian had rescued us on the highway, and that at the very least he could have thanked him. “You’re rude,” I yelled. “You’re coarse.”
“I’m coarse? You fucking little brat,” he shouted, and he went into the bathroom and slammed the door. From there he shouted more and cursed because there was no hot water and because the towels reeked of mildew, and finally he came out and threw himself on the bed. “You have nothing to say.”
“What do you want me to say?” I answered.
“You may want to leave me now,” he said, “but you’ll see when we get back to Buenos Aires, things will be better.”
“What if they aren’t?” I asked him.
“You’re not going to leave me that easy,” he said, and he lit a cigarette. I took a cold shower and thought that maybe, when I came out, he would have fallen asleep and the cigarette would have lit the sheets on fire and he would die there, in the Clorinda hotel. But when I came out, cold and wet, my blond hair dripping and pathetic, he was waiting for me dressed and perfumed to go to dinner.
“I’m sorry,” he told me. “Sometimes I’m impossible.”
“Let’s go eat,” I said, and I put on a loose dress and barely dragged a comb through my hair. I wanted the blond trucker to see me like that, freshly bathed and a bit disheveled. When Juan Martín tried to kiss me, I turned my cheek. But he didn’t say anything—he resigned himself.
In the grill there were only two men, my cousin, and the blond trucker left. A dark-haired girl asked us what we wanted and said there was only short ribs, chorizo (she could make sandwiches), and mixed salad. We said yes to everything and ordered a cold soda. I was more thirsty than hungry, even though at the entrance to Clorinda I’d bought a grapefruit Fanta that was nice and cold. It was my favorite soda; for some reason you couldn’t get it anymore in Buenos Aires, but it still existed in the interior—maybe they were old bottles, or maybe they still produced it there. Things took longer to disappear up there in the north.
The men were telling ghost stories. Natalia was sitting very close to the blond guy, and they were sharing a cigarette. He had opened his white shirt a little; he was tanned, he was marvelous.
“Something really strange happened to me not long ago,” said the splendid blond.
“Tell us, buddy, no one’s sleeping here!” shouted another one of the truckers, who was drinking beer. Was he going to get back on the road like that, half drunk? There were always accidents out on these roads, and this was probably why. My uncle Carlos, for example, never got behind the wheel if he was wasted, but he was an exception among his friends and even in our family.