The Crystal Frontier Read Free Page A

side of the border. Dinner at six o’clock in the afternoon, how crude. When he got back, the party was in full swing, so he put his finger over his lips to tell the young Indian servant to say nothing. It didn’t matter: the boy was a Pacuache who didn’t speak Spanish, which was why Doña Lucila had hired him, so the ladies could say whatever they liked without eavesdroppers. Besides, this little Indian boy was as slim and handsome as a desert god, made not of white marble but of ebony instead, and when the highballs had gone to their heads, the ladies would collectively undress him and make him walk around naked with a tray on his head. They were soul sisters, completely uninhibited, or did the ladies in the capital think that just because they were from the north they had to be hicks? No way! With the border a mere step away, you could be in a Neiman Marcus, a Saks, a Cartier in half an hour. What right did these women from the capital have to brag, when they were condemned to buy their clothes at Perisur? Okay now, keep it down—Doña Lucila put her finger to her lips—here comes Leonardo’s goddaughter. They say she’s really conceited, that she’s traveled a lot, and that she’s very chic (as they say), so just be yourselves, but don’t offend her.
    Michelina was the only one who didn’t have a face-lift. She sat down, smiling and amiable, among the twenty or so rich and perfumed women, all of them outfitted on the other side of the border, bejewelled, most with mahogany-tinted locks, some wearing Venetian fantasy glasses, others watery-eyed trying out their contact lenses, but all liberated. And if this girl from the capital wanted to join them, fine, but if she turned out to be a tight-ass, they’d just ignore her … This was the girls’ gang, and they drank supersweet liqueurs because they got you stoned faster and were tastier, as if life were an eternal dessert (desert? dessert? postre? desierto? ). They would drink sweet aníse on ice, a so-called nun, a cloudy drink that got you drunk fast. (Oh, Lucilita, how I’m screwing up—and it’s only my first little nun …) Like drinking the sky, girls, like getting drunk on clouds. They began singing: You and the clouds have driven me crazy, you and the clouds will be my death …
    They all laughed and drank more nuns and someone told Michelina to loosen up, that she really looked like a nun sitting there in the middle of the room on a puff covered in lilac brocade, all symmetrical. But isn’t your goddaughter crooked anywhere, Lucilita? Hey, she’s only my husband’s goddaughter, not mine. Anyway, what perfection, her eyes along one line, her nose another straight line, her chin cleft, her lips so…! Some laughed because they were sorry for Lucila, staring at her and blushing, but Lucila let it all go by, turned inward; their comments rolled off her like water off a duck, as if nothing had happened. They were here celebrating the absence of men—well, except for that little Indian boy who doesn’t count. And there’s my husband’s goddaughter, who’s oh so refined and courteous. Now, don’t make her uncomfortable. Let her be just as she is and let us be the way we are. After all, we all came from the convent, don’t forget. All of us went to school with the nuns and one day we all got liberated, so don’t make Michelina feel funny. But come on, we’re all back in the convent, Lucilita, said a lady whose glasses were encrusted with diamonds, all alone, without men, but sure thinking about them!
    This set off a verbal Ping-Pong game about men, their evils, their cheapness, their indifference, their adeptness at avoiding responsibility (work the usual pretext), their fear of physical pain (I’d like to see a single one of those bastards give birth just once), their limited sexual skill (so how could they not look for lovers?).