Read Online Holy City by Guillermo Orsi - Free Book Online Page B

who’s in love with you is going to come and ruin your night’s sleep.”
    Just to contradict his arrogant psychoanalyst’s tone, she points out that the last time she saw the skunk was in the early hours.
    â€œThe guy’s a swine, I’m sure he didn’t come to make love, did he?” A sad smile from Verónica. She pushes the intestines to the side of her plate: too greasy for her. “Give them to Mauser. He can eat anything.” The dog snaffles them, but then does not seem too happy to eat them under the table. He prefers meat too. Bértola tells her he does not know what breed he is. “He looks like a cocker spaniel, but he’s the size of a sheepdog and has their eyes. He’s probably one of those fashionable genetic experiments. Alright, don’t talk to me about your love life: I expect it’s the ghouls who brought you here, isn’t it?”
    Verónica explains she senses that something is about to explode. The same feeling she had shortly before the death of Romano, her first real man, the cop.
    â€œWho killed him?”
    â€œThe police.”
    Bértola’s moon has climbed down from the top branch of the china-berry tree. Now it is creeping furtively across the neighboring flat roofs, skirting the water tanks.
    â€œI always knew it wasn’t a good idea to be a cop.”
    â€œIt’s a simple story,” Verónica says. “I didn’t tell it to you before, because there’s nothing to tell.”
    â€œNothing fits, nothing can really be explained when it’s too simple,” says Bértola, with the look of a Socrates.
    They both laugh. The laughter comes from a long way off, from the need (as simple as the story of her cop) to laugh at all that is impossible to explain, all that is dark and gloomy.

PART TWO
Pichuco Opens his Eyes

1
    Pacogoya drove back slowly from his trip to San Pedro, Verónica tells the psychoanalyst on his night off.
    He chugs along steadily at ninety in the slow lane. Other cars zoom past, almost brushing against his car, as if rebuking him for driving like a human being rather than a madman. This does not mean his road manners have suddenly improved: it is just that he cannot concentrate on his driving the way he had when he left Buenos Aires. He needs to think about what happened, although he cannot get that clear in his mind either. All he sees are images and the feeling that nothing is real, that he dreamt the house by the orange groves and in a moment he will wake up in his Recoleta apartment, his wretched bunk on the
Queen of Storms
, or in the cabin of some Swedish or German woman who, recovering from their alcoholic haze in the wan early morning light, will peer at him suspiciously, then tell him to get out, in languages only they can follow.
    But deep down he knows he is awake and that there is no way out. To make matters worse, he is returning to Buenos Aires empty-handed: he will have to try to explain, to give all the money back. Because when he arrived and went to look for Uncle in the Florida Garden late that night, there was no sign of him. Not at his usual table, or at the bar, or anywhere around. There is no reply when he telephones his mobile.Pacogoya does not leave a message, then curses himself for phoning: now his number will be registered somewhere that it probably should not be.
    As night progresses, the corner of Florida and Paraguay becomes another planet. Unlike its daytime earthly inhabitants, the nocturnal aliens are stealthy figures on the prowl. They glide along silently, or sit in bars that are about to shut like the Florida Garden, where the waiters gradually close in around them as they pile chairs on tables and finally tell them they have to leave, they’re just closing. The waiters’ union is as homophobic as the rest of the trade unions in Argentina. The only exception is the Queers’ Association, but that is not a real union; they do not sit down