fine, stop. Thanks, Humberto. Stop! Kisses to everyone, ciao, Humberto, ciao. She jumped out of the car trying to reach the door of the building before it closed behind the couple, and she made it. She was inside. She tried to catch her breath. Thanks, Papaíto, I owe you, half a second more and I wouldn’t have made it.
When the driver saw that she was inside, he was contentand drove off. Great, we’re free of Saint Humberto. We’re safe, Papaíto, you were stupendous. But maybe not so stupendous, the couple who had just left was locking the door from the outside. What a nightmare. They had locked her in.
Coño , it was really dark, she couldn’t see a thing. Where was the light? Here, here, the light switch. And now where is the button, the one you pressed from inside to open the door. Pawing the walls, she found the damn button and pressed it, but she realized that there were two locks and it had opened only one of them. The second one remained locked at night for security purposes. There was nothing to do, she was locked in.
In other words, a prisoner of this run-of-the-mill building at about one in the morning, hoping that the couple who had left would return, reasoning that if they had keys it was because they lived there, and if they lived there, they would have to return at some point. The light would shut off after a minute and a half and she would turn it back on, not because there was anything to look at but because of how depressing it was to wait in the dark, like Audrey Hepburn, she thought, blind and with her short hairstyle, hiding in the dark from the murderer.
She sat on one of the marble steps and her kidneys must have grown cold because she suddenly needed to pee, adding to her torment, since she had told Sandrita that she would be back by eleven at the latest, and it was almost two. Sandrita probably thought that they were torturing her this veryminute. She imagined Sandrita getting the word out—the foreigner has been nabbed, everyone for themselves—or leaping from the balcony in fear of what was to come. Aurelia had to return to the apartment on Deán Funes immediately, but she didn’t dare knock at any of the apartments of her prison building so that they would open the front door. It was unthinkable to do such a thing at that hour. So there she was, with her box of grape-colored Ballys, her inheritance documents, and the letter from Mamaíta, with its beautiful and distraught words.
“Did you get out?” Mateo asked.
“If I hadn’t, you never would’ve been born. Don’t you see that I was going to meet your father the following day? I finally got out around two in the morning when a young man went out and I snuck through right behind him.” That night, at the apartment on Deán Funes, Aurelia couldn’t sleep, mulling over everything in her head. The dinner with that pair of toadies of the military junta had left a sharp thorn lodged within, so white and cultured, the sons of bitches generals, such wonderful horsemen, such steeds. Argentinean values? Right and human? Motherfuckers, they were a bunch of butchers is what they were. And it doesn’t matter how she looked at it, tossing around on the bed, she couldn’t sleep, out of shame for not having said anything. She should have pulled off that tablecloth, embroidered in neat cross-stitching, splattering the omelet and île flottante against the wall. Instead she didn’t say a peep, eating her food bite by bite,at that table, listening to all their perversions and playing the chickenshit, and now how it came back at her, nausea and upset stomach, as if she had swallowed poison.
On top of that there was Sandrita, who as expected had been waiting for her with her hackles up and had torn her to pieces with quite the lecture for arriving at such an hour, that she had frightened the shit out of her and she had been about to flee the house and sound the alarm, that she was a flake, a lightweight, a shitty petit bourgeois. She went on
When the driver saw that she was inside, he was contentand drove off. Great, we’re free of Saint Humberto. We’re safe, Papaíto, you were stupendous. But maybe not so stupendous, the couple who had just left was locking the door from the outside. What a nightmare. They had locked her in.
Coño , it was really dark, she couldn’t see a thing. Where was the light? Here, here, the light switch. And now where is the button, the one you pressed from inside to open the door. Pawing the walls, she found the damn button and pressed it, but she realized that there were two locks and it had opened only one of them. The second one remained locked at night for security purposes. There was nothing to do, she was locked in.
In other words, a prisoner of this run-of-the-mill building at about one in the morning, hoping that the couple who had left would return, reasoning that if they had keys it was because they lived there, and if they lived there, they would have to return at some point. The light would shut off after a minute and a half and she would turn it back on, not because there was anything to look at but because of how depressing it was to wait in the dark, like Audrey Hepburn, she thought, blind and with her short hairstyle, hiding in the dark from the murderer.
She sat on one of the marble steps and her kidneys must have grown cold because she suddenly needed to pee, adding to her torment, since she had told Sandrita that she would be back by eleven at the latest, and it was almost two. Sandrita probably thought that they were torturing her this veryminute. She imagined Sandrita getting the word out—the foreigner has been nabbed, everyone for themselves—or leaping from the balcony in fear of what was to come. Aurelia had to return to the apartment on Deán Funes immediately, but she didn’t dare knock at any of the apartments of her prison building so that they would open the front door. It was unthinkable to do such a thing at that hour. So there she was, with her box of grape-colored Ballys, her inheritance documents, and the letter from Mamaíta, with its beautiful and distraught words.
“Did you get out?” Mateo asked.
“If I hadn’t, you never would’ve been born. Don’t you see that I was going to meet your father the following day? I finally got out around two in the morning when a young man went out and I snuck through right behind him.” That night, at the apartment on Deán Funes, Aurelia couldn’t sleep, mulling over everything in her head. The dinner with that pair of toadies of the military junta had left a sharp thorn lodged within, so white and cultured, the sons of bitches generals, such wonderful horsemen, such steeds. Argentinean values? Right and human? Motherfuckers, they were a bunch of butchers is what they were. And it doesn’t matter how she looked at it, tossing around on the bed, she couldn’t sleep, out of shame for not having said anything. She should have pulled off that tablecloth, embroidered in neat cross-stitching, splattering the omelet and île flottante against the wall. Instead she didn’t say a peep, eating her food bite by bite,at that table, listening to all their perversions and playing the chickenshit, and now how it came back at her, nausea and upset stomach, as if she had swallowed poison.
On top of that there was Sandrita, who as expected had been waiting for her with her hackles up and had torn her to pieces with quite the lecture for arriving at such an hour, that she had frightened the shit out of her and she had been about to flee the house and sound the alarm, that she was a flake, a lightweight, a shitty petit bourgeois. She went on
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