Delirium Read Free Page B

a fortune out of them in electrocardiograms, sonograms, or stress tests, or thread a stent through the kernel of their souls, they almost always end up the same as they would’ve here, six feet under and pushing up daisies; just look at what happened to your father, sweetheart, who took himself off to Houston only to return a little later in cold storage on an Avianca flight, just in time for his own burial in the Central Cemetery of Bogotá.
    But to get back to Spider: as you must have heard, angel, that was what messed up your head and put an end to my lucky streak, and believe me I’m sorry you’re sick, Agustina, you know better than anyone that if I ever hurt you it wasn’t on purpose. What happened with Spider was that after four major operations and a pile of cash spent on rehab, the doctors in Houston, Texas, managed to save his skin but not his pride, because he wound up paraplegic and impotent, the poor bastard, shoveled into a wheelchair like a potted plant, and probably incontinent on top of it all, although Spider swears he’s not, that not being able to screw or walk is humiliation enough and that the day he shits himself, too, he’ll shoot himself without a second thought. When he’s wallowing in self-pity, Spider says that that son of a bitch Parsley was the lucky one, since now he must be chasing mares up in heaven. What it all means, darling, is that this has been a chain of disasters and the first broken link was Spider; psychologically he was broken, is what I mean, although his huge fortune is still intact. Things happen the way they happen and whoever loses is lost, and in this three-way game Spider lost, you lost, and I lost, to say nothing of the supporting cast.
    This was on a Thursday, I can tell you the precise day, an ill-fated Thursday when the five of us were having our usual dinner at L’Esplanade: Spider Salazar, Jorge Luis Ayerbe, your brother Joaco, the gringo Rony Silver, and I, the four of them smelling of Hermès and dressed in Armani, all wearing those Ferragamo ties with little equestrian prints imported straight from the Via Condotti, Spider’s with little spurs, your brother Joaco’s with riding crops, Jorge Luis’s with saddles, and Silver’s with something like tiny unicorns, as if the four had come to some kind of sissy agreement. They all arrived at L’Esplanade dressed up like respectable people, but I came straight to the restaurant from the Turkish bath, still steaming and radiating tan, healthy to the toes of my sockless Nikes, and shirtless under my raw wool Ralph Lauren sweater; you know how I dress, Agustina doll, I don’t have to tell you, and I dress the way I do so that they never forget I’ve got them beat in the youth game, because any one of them could be my father, and any of their fiftysomething wives could be my mother, with those crocodile bags and big gold bracelets, and tailored pastel suits, while my thing is chicks by the dozen, top models, TV stars, architecture students, water-ski instructors, skinny little screwed-up long-haired beauties, Agustina, like you.
    The truth is, if I’d chosen just one of them to set up house with, it would’ve been you, my little princess-in-waiting; it would almost certainly have been you, the one with the hottest little body, the prettiest and the craziest of them all. But never mind, why talk about setting up house, let Father Niccoló set up house for orphans and old people, let him shoot for sainthood; why should I care about homemaking, when it has nothing to do with me or my life, and I’m more than satisfied with what fate has seen fit to give me, a hot girl for every cold night, because if I’ve ever had a problem it’s been lack of appetite, there’s been so much sweet stuff that sometimes I get sick of it. And money-wise, too, I run circles around your hotshot brother Joaco, your dead father, Carlos Vicente, and plenty of the Bogotá old-money types, who know that when I’m paying they’re served