Free A Change of Skin by Carlos Fuentes

searched for a clean glass and ice and something to drink.”
    The tortoiseshell comb. The bottle of deodorant. The round celluloid package of condoms wrapped in gold paper.
    â€œLigeia.”
    â€œWhat, Javier, what?”
    â€œI forgot my toothbrush and toothpaste.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œI can’t brush my teeth. Why don’t you take care of these things? Now we’ll have to go out to a drugstore.”
    â€œIf there is a drugstore.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIf there is one, such a luxury as a drugstore in this damn place.”
    He laughs quietly. He goes on: “I couldn’t find a clean glass. I had to be satisfied with one some girl had used and had left marked with lipstick. It was given to me by the hand of a girl I couldn’t see. Only her hand, her arm…”
    He raises the opaque bottle with the green label and reads: 10 mgs. hydrochloride of 7-chlor-2-methylamine-5-phenyl-3-H-4-benzodiazepine oxide, with excipient 190 mgs., following the formula of F-Hoffmann-LaRoche & Cie., S.A., Basel, Switzerland. He places the bottle on the shelf.
    â€œâ€¦ her hand and arm and the drink she held out to me. Amber liquid. Ice that had almost melted. The rim stained with her orange lipstick. A copper bracelet on her wrist. Are you listening?”
    â€œYes, Javier, I’m listening.”
    â€œThe record player was playing and in the living room several couples were dancing. Someone had turned off the lights in the hall. I couldn’t see her face in that broken, dim, flickering light. I could hear her voice singing very softly and I tried to imagine her orange lips, her invisible smile…”
    Sitting in the rocker, you begin to hum. Finally the words come back to you: It’s the wrong song, in the wrong style, though your smile is lovely, it’s the wrong smile  …
    Again he is reading: Each troche contains 1.18 mgs. of Tripluoperazine cyclohydrate, Isopramide diiodide 6.79 mgs. Mode of administration: oral. Dosage as instructed by the physician. To be dispensed only by the prescription and under the supervision of a physician licensed by the Department of Health and Assistance.
    â€œHer voice was sugary and so very low that I could hardly hear it against the hidden voice from the record player. Presently she stopped singing and spoke.”
    â€œHello. You’re very handsome tonight.”
    â€œYes, that’s right. How did you know? I took her hand and drew her near me and put my other hand on her naked back. One of her arms went around my shoulders and the other dropped for me to take her wrist. We began to dance, dancing…”
    You sing quietly: “ You don’t know how happy I am that we met. I’m strangely attracted to you …”
    â€œâ€¦ very slowly, hardly moving, our bodies touching lightly and then separating. I could see her face now in the faint light, but not clearly. To have seen her clearly I would have had to step back from her and I preferred not to but rather to discover her without my eyes, a warm and elemental discovery of someone more forgotten than unknown.”
    Javier lifts the bottle of Stelabid that he is holding and places it beside the reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror. You come into the bathroom and are reflected behind him. You look down at one of the bottles: Oratic acid 55.80 mgs., Xanthine 6.66 mgs., Adenine 3.34 mgs. Excipient c.p.b. 250 mgs. You put the bottle on the shelf.
    â€œI didn’t speak to her. I was afraid that anything I said might only provoke her to laugh. Or that she, like me, would be able to speak only in clichés. So I kept silent. I closed my eyes against her cheek and felt her warm young breath and the vague fragrance of her high breasts, which as we separated from the embrace of dancing were illuminated by the flickering light. It drew her profile…”
    You take off your blouse and hang it over the back of the toilet. With your hip you