Free Sweet Money by Ernesto Mallo Page A

him.
     
    Even though Fermín came away thinking exactly what Lascano wanted him to, the visit brought about no tangible results. He needs to reflect, and walking is the best way he knows to do that. His world has shrunk even further. By now, he’s got almost nothing left. With Jorge’s death – whether brought about by the Apostles or a gift to them from Heaven – they won the battle. Chances are high that his own life’s in danger. Suddenly
he’s overwhelmed by that same confused, diffuse and constant fear he had during the dictatorship, that sensation that at any moment he could be captured, tortured and killed. He doesn’t know if his friend, Fuseli, and Eva, his too-brief lover, are in exile or if the military made them disappear. He wants to believe, he hopes, they managed to escape. Then, just as he turns down Corrientes, she appears: crossing the street diagonally toward him. He catches a brief glimpse of her profile as she walks by. Is it her? The air she stirs up as she walks past swirls around him. He feels like he’s falling into the slipstream of foaming pheromones she leaves in her wake. Her catlike walk compels him to quicken his pace, like the cyclist who drafts behind a truck, taking advantage of the vacuum created by the movement of a body through space. Suddenly, she breaks into a trot to get to the bus waiting at the stop, and she boards. When she’s on the stairs he calls out her name, she turns, it’s her, it’s not her. As this anonymous woman departs, Lascano sees the love of his life, love lost. He remembers Marisa’s coffin being carried along the paths of the La Tablada cemetery, Fuseli’s last words on the telephone, the foreshortened figure he saw from where he lay bleeding on the ground: Eva running away. That very real Eva who loved him one stormy night. Just when he thought he had nothing more to lose, she appeared, and from there unfolded the entire story that has brought him to this exact moment when he truly has nobody or nothing left. Lascano angrily pops two aspirins into his mouth and bites into them; the sound echoes inside his head like a pair of smashed and broken testicles.

11
    He’s been wandering aimlessly around the house ever since he woke up, out of sorts, unable to make sense of what he’s doing, but finally it’s the clock that gives him orders about how to proceed. He has to quickly get dressed. He hates rushing. Last night Vanina suggested they meet for breakfast. For her, it’s always “we have to talk”. She’s always going on about their relationship, their connection. Marcelo has the impression that all those years of psychoanalysis poisoned her language and that “we have to talk” comes so frequently it can’t be healthy, even though to her it seems the most natural thing in the world.
    In the elevator, he presses his briefcase between his legs and finishes adjusting his tie. The outside world greets him with a massive traffic jam accompanied by a deafening symphony of insults and honking. Buenos Aires drivers are a plague. He looks at his watch and calculates that he’ll arrive no less than ten or fifteen minutes late. He knows Vanina will wait for him, but only so she can tell him how angry she is, a privilege she allows herself because she herself is never late. To top it off he wants to get to the office early, he’s got a ton of things to do, but as he didn’t write anything down he’s afraid he’ll
forget. Last night, on his way home from his mother’s house, he had a breakthrough on the Biterman case. In a moment of inspiration he saw each and every step he needed to take as well as the order he should take them in – which is as important as the steps themselves. He told himself he was going to write it all down in his little grey notebook on his way to meet Vanina, but he has now decided to walk to avoid the traffic. To make matters worse, he knows that Vanina is going to come with demands, a pile of questions about their intimacy,