Home Reading Service Read online

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “That means David was with someone else. They described him to me, and I thought it was you.”

  “And what was David supposed to be doing in a used bookstore? Buying a book? He has a hard enough time reading the order list!”

  “The same thing they do to me,” I told him.

  Güero hesitated for a moment, absorbed my sentence, and sat back down for the second time.

  “Are you saying he was making the owner of the bookstore shell out for a payment?”

  It was the first time he’d used the words “payment” and “shell out” with me. He was always careful to use euphemisms like “make a contribution,” “provide sponsorship,” and even “reciprocity.”

  “Yes, the owner told me; he’s a friend,” I answered. “He knows I have a furniture store and he called to ask what to do in situations like these. Like I told you, he just opened.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, David’s crossed a line.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What’s it supposed to mean? It means that he’s crossed a line, that little fucker. He’s done it before and this time they’re gonna fuck him up good.”

  * * *

  —

  IN A WAY I’d also crossed a line in the house of Margó Benítez, sleeping in her bed and afterward creeping up on Aurelia’s naked body in order to make love to her, when I should have left. Even though I didn’t do anything reprehensible, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Margó never opened the door for me again. I don’t know what I’d do if she also dropped out of the home reading program. I still had to complete a quarter of my community service hours and I was running out of listeners. The Jiménez brothers had canceled, the same as Colonel Atarriaga; the Reséndizes had just canceled a reading, and the way things were looking, with Señora Reséndiz launching her career as a patron of the arts, it wasn’t at all improbable that they’d follow the example of the others. Regarding the Vigil family, after the rebellion of the non-deaf, of which I was the cause, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the priest decided to cut his losses in order to restore the monastic order that reigned in his home before my appearance. I was horrified, imagining the interruption of the home reading program looming over my head, along with my consequent consignment to cleaning the toilets in some government hospital or prison.

  When Aurelia opened the door with her customary smile, there was not the slightest hint of malice in her eyes, as if nothing had happened between us during my previous visit. At the far end of the living room, in her wheelchair, Margó was speaking with Rómulo Esparza, her voice coach. Her hair was loose and she looked gorgeous. Rómulo Esparza and I shook hands, coldly, which didn’t go unnoticed by Margó. With her hair down like that she reminded me of the photograph on her bedside table, and I wondered if she’d untied it on purpose, as a way to tell me that she knew that I’d slept in her bedroom. Maybe it was true that she’d concocted everything so I’d see her photograph when I woke in her bed and that I’d know the magnitude of the beauty she was capable of. I looked at Rómulo Esparza, whose obsequious, almost pretentious mannerisms appeared to be proof of his passion for the owner of the house. I was so stunned by Margó’s change in appearance that I forgot to shake her hand.

  “Please be seated, Eduardo,” she told me, addressing me formally once again in front of her voice coach, and that hint of collusion with me produced an inner meltdown. “Did someone cut out your tongue? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  At that point, Aurelia brought a cup of coffee for me from the kitchen. Margo’s cup and that of the voice coach were empty on the center table where there was also a plate of cookies.

  “Help yourself to a cookie,” Margó said. “Maestro Esparza brought them and they’re delicious. Did you know that I’ve been asked to sing at the event in honor of Isabel Fraire?”

  “Yes, Humberto Reséndiz told me. Congratulations.”

  “You should congratulate Maestro Esparza as well. Without him, I’d never dare to do such a thing.”

  I congratulated Rómulo Esparza, who thanked me by nodding his head.

  Margó asked if I could help them adapt some lines by Isabel Fraire to a melody Maestro Esparza had composed. She’d thought of the poem about skin I’d read to her.

  Here we go again with the skin poem! It seemed as if it were the only poem Isabel Fraire had written.

  “Tatis Reséndiz is going to recite that poem,” I told them.

  “That’s not a problem at all, quite the opposite,” Rómulo Esparza said. “The audience will enjoy a double performance of the same poem. Do you have it with you?”

  I didn’t have the book, but I did have the page where I’d copied it out by hand so I could read it to Margó. I opened my briefcase and gave the sheet of paper to the maestro.

  The truth was that I didn’t give a damn about any of this. I and no one else was responsible for the turn things had taken, when I fell into the declamatory webs Amalia Reséndiz wove. I should have refused when the couple asked my permission to invite their friends to my readings. From that moment on everything had become overblown and vulgar. I remembered my father stammering when he read Isabel Fraire’s lines and I felt like a fraud twice over. Poor Isabel Fraire, hardly read when she was alive and abused in death.

  Rómulo Esparza, finishing reading over the skin poem, moved his head to indicate that he was profoundly affected.

  “Sublime!” he uttered with a sigh. “I’m going to copy it down right now,” and he took out a fountain pen and started to copy it on the back of a piece of sheet music.

  “I really don’t think it’s such a good idea to sing Isabel Fraire’s poems,” I said, unable to contain myself.

  “Why not?” Margó asked.

  “Her lines should be whispered,” I said, “almost mumbled, not sung.”

  “You didn’t mumble at all when you read them to me the first time, Eduardo; you even made me cry.”

  I didn’t know how to respond, and fortunately Aurelia came in again to remove the empty cups her employer and Rómulo Esparza had left on the table. I looked at her eyes for a sign of our shared afternoon, but her smile was as pristine as the porcelain coffee service, identical to the smiles she always bestowed upon me. She went back to the kitchen and Rómulo Esparza asked for permission to use the bathroom, thereby leaving Margó and me alone.

  “Drink your coffee, it’s getting cold,” she said, lowering her voice and once again addressing me informally.

  “You look beautiful with your hair down,” I told her, and I took a sip of my coffee.

  “Thank you.” She smiled.

  “Thank you for the coffee the other day, when you weren’t at home.”

  “I didn’t have a chance to tell you beforehand. Forgive me if I made you come in vain.”

  “I didn’t come in vain,” I told her, and I hesitated, doubting whether to tell her I’d slept in her bedroom and contemplated the photograph of her in the bathing suit, but the risk of somehow compromising Aurelia made me restrain myself.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, because she seemed pensive.

  “No.”

  Her dry reply made me insist: “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  She looked down, focused on the rug. The coffee table stood between us and I got to my feet, thinking I would sidestep that obstacle and embrace her and kiss her, but at that moment the bathroom door opened and Rómulo Esparza returned to the living room, rubbing his hands.

  “Have you convinced our friend Eduardo that we can indeed sing Isolda Fraire’s poems?” he asked the owner of the house.

  “Isabel,” I corrected.

  “We were talking about something else,” Margó said.

  Rómulo Esparza removed his guitar from its case, tuned
it, and hummed a melody, then he looked at the poem he’d just copied, and he started to set the lines to the melody, looking at Margó, who looked back at him. They understood each other perfectly and I felt jealous of the voice coach, who clearly had an influence on the owner of the house. Margó didn’t sing a single note; instead she merely hummed the lines Rómulo Esparza indicated to her, softly. I had the feeling that my presence was making her self-conscious, that’s why I stood up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. When she saw me enter, Aurelia’s daughter ran to a corner to hide, I suppose because she wasn’t used to seeing me there, and Aurelia, typical of her, smiled at me excessively. I asked her for a glass of water. The girl watched me, intrigued, from her corner, while her mother gave me a glass of water on a little plate, and I asked her under my breath if she’d put something in my tequila, more than anything to remind her of our encounter a few days before and to assure myself that she hadn’t forgotten about it, but I was struck again by her unbridled smile, which made me wonder again if she wasn’t a little crazy. The girl ran to hide under the table and from there she watched me, a picaresque smile on her face, which was a carbon copy of her mother’s. In the living room Rómulo Esparza was marking a beat and we heard a guitar chord.

  “No, that’s too high, go down an octave,” Margó told him, and insisted, “down, down.”

  Fed up with Aurelia’s smiling face, I obeyed Margo’s instructions and I went down, that is I got under the table, beside the girl, who covered her mouth to stifle her giggles. Aurelia bent down and shook her daughter, which frightened her and made her cry out, and then she straightened up again and left us alone in that imaginary cave. I watched Aurelia’s legs as she moved around the kitchen and I regretted not making love to her in her room the week before. That was what she wanted, otherwise she wouldn’t have taken off her clothes. My member came alive remembering her prominent ass, with just that right amount of cellulite that I like so much and that makes an ass appear to have been touched by many hands. The girl suddenly became serious, as if she wondered what we were doing there, which was the same thing I was asking myself. The only one who seemed to think it was normal was Aurelia, who began to hum while she bustled about the kitchen. I supposed that she was happy because the friend of her employer, the distinguished young man who came to the house to read books, was under the table playing with her daughter. It suddenly occurred to me that children that age are meant to be kissed, so I reached for the girl’s face and kissed her on the cheek, but my member was still hard and, embarrassed, I looked away from her, focusing on a vague point until my erection subsided. Then I kissed her again, thinking it had been ages since I’d kissed a child. After Mamá’s death I’d lived among wrinkles and decline, and once I’d started reading for people in their homes that landscape of flabby skin had expanded and become more pronounced. Even Gladis, who’d always been pure oxygen for me, was growing older before my eyes. Were there home readers for children, like there were for the retired and infirm? A job like that would best be done under tables. I kissed Aurelia’s daughter again and asked her if she enjoyed her visit to Valle de Bravo. Her mother, hearing my question, bent down and told her, “Tell him yes, that you liked it a lot.”

  The girl looked like she didn’t understand, and Aurelia became enraged. “Come on, you stupid girl, tell him you liked it!”

  She was frightened, started to cry, and I defended her.

  “Don’t yell at her,” I told Aurelia, and held the child in my arms, but she broke loose, as frightened of my arms as she was of her mother’s behavior.

  “Why is Griselda crying?” Margó shouted from the living room.

  Aurelia grabbed her daughter roughly by the hand.

  “It’s nothing, señora,” she said, and she left the kitchen with the girl, taking her to her room. Rómulo Esparza and Margó said something I didn’t hear, and I assumed they were talking about me. I thought she would call for me, but she didn’t, and I waited for her to enter the kitchen in her wheelchair and see me there, under the table. I’d tell her that I wanted to hear her sing and that I’d come to the kitchen because I thought that she felt self-conscious in front of me in the living room. Under the table? she’d ask me, and I was overwhelmed by the feeling of how ridiculous my situation was. I imagined Father Clark coming into the kitchen suddenly and saying, “I’m glad to see you, Eduardo,” and sitting next to me, under the table, to tell me something of great importance. Leaving there he’d slam the table into the wall, inciting Margó’s rage. I started to laugh. I didn’t feel like moving, as if I’d found my true place in the world, and that made me laugh even harder. I expected nothing, absolutely nothing, and that was a revelation, in its own way. I heard another guitar chord emanating from the living room. All of a sudden everything annoyed me. Rómulo Esparza’s simple presence with his toilet etiquette made me sick. I was expected to complete one hour of home reading, but I was not obliged to listen to their rehearsal. Then the girl reappeared, looked at me, laughed, and left again. Reluctantly, I got up and went back to the living room, where Rómulo Esparza was putting his guitar back in its case. The rehearsal had come to an end and both of them avoided looking at me. Margó was visibly furious with me and I prudently decided not to have her sign my visitation form. She and Rómulo Esparza said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, then she turned her wheelchair and rolled down the hall without saying goodbye to me. I picked up my briefcase and followed Rómulo Esparza to the door. He opened it and we left together. Once we were on the street he asked where I’d parked my car and I told him I’d come on foot.

  “Me too,” he said.

  We were heading in opposite directions, but I decided to walk to the corner with him because I needed human companionship and, while we walked, I noticed that his stuffy-looking mannerisms had disappeared. We moved forward shoulder to shoulder due to the narrow sidewalk, rubbing into each other with each step and at no time did he attempt to move away from me. I felt revived by this unexpected physical contact. I’d misjudged him, I thought. He earned his living giving private lessons and perhaps his calculated mannerisms were a tool of his trade. I wanted to initiate a friendly conversation to show him there were no hard feelings and that he could trust me, but the noise from the traffic was unbearable. We walked as if we were fleeing a conflagration. I wished he would have stopped suddenly and asked me, “What’s wrong with you, Eduardo? Why’d you go to the kitchen and hide under the table? Didn’t you see how your actions affected our dear Margó, who loves you so much?” I was prepared to receive his heartfelt complaints, as long as they were made in the spirit of friendship. I would have loved for him to tell me, “Go back to Margó’s house right now and ask her to forgive you, get down on your knees if you have to and kiss her hands. She adores you, Eduardo, she’s told me as much. She didn’t get one note right because of how distraught she was, didn’t you notice? That’s why we ended our rehearsal so early.” I’d hug him, thank him for his advice, ask him to forgive my arrogance, and afterward I’d run back to Margó’s house and do exactly what that good man had asked me to do. I saw myself weeping on my knees while I kissed her hands, praising her kindness and her skin as if they were one and the same thing. Your skin, your skin, Margó, does anything else matter? I’d tell her. But we’d already reached the corner, where our paths diverged, without speaking a single word to each other. Rómulo Esparza extended his hand and he didn’t even thank me for walking with him. We shook hands coldly and I watched him cross the street, moving away through the crowd and the roaring traffic. That was our City of Eternal Spring!

  * * *

  —

  THAT NIGHT I looked for all the Isabel Fraire books Papá owned. There were three and only one of them was of her own poetry, the same one I’d bought from Abigael Martínez. There was a small volume of her translations of English-speaking poets and a book of essays titled North American Thinkers of the XX Century. On the back cover of this last one the
re was an author photo. You could see a woman with a wide face, long black hair hanging down and hiding part of it, her features vaguely reminding me of a Sioux Indian, and she had a thick, sensual mouth that contrasted with the serenity of her gaze. It wasn’t a face one would easily forget, even if you couldn’t say she was beautiful. The picture had been taken nine years before. None of these books had an inscription. I opened them, searching among the pages for some indication of the friendship between her and my father, like a postcard, or some scrap of paper with writing on it, but I didn’t find anything. I thought that, had they been lovers, she would have left the smallest written clue in one of these books, even if it had been an unoriginal inscription, devised so it wouldn’t raise any suspicions in my mother. I looked at the picture again, trying to imagine how those inquisitive-looking eyes would settle on my father’s, and I thought it was idiotic to presume there’d been something between the two of them. What would he, an unassuming furniture-store owner who liked poetry, have talked about with one of the most talented poets in the country, whose lines, more whimsical than obedient to any kind of linear order, seemed to boil over the page? She tended to fall off ladders, Abigael had told me over breakfast at Sanborns, and I suspected, by how he said it, that he was in love with her himself, though she didn’t love him in return. He also told me that his wife wrote poems and from time to time, at Isabel’s insistence, she showed them to her, and though Isabel liked them, his wife never had the nerve to publish anything during her lifetime.

  The telephone rang. It was Margó. As soon as I heard her voice I knew she was still upset with me. She reproached me for how rudely I’d behaved with her and Rómulo Esparza, leaving them alone in the living room to go to the kitchen with Aurelia. But what hurt her the most, she added, was that I would have doubted her ability to sing Isabel Fraire’s poetry. I told her that I hadn’t said that, but that her poetry in particular, in my opinion, was not the most suitable to be sung, and I added: “I went to the kitchen because I felt like my presence made you feel self-conscious about singing and I was dying to listen to you.”