Tag: open time

46

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Mother

“Víctor.”

“Yes?” he answered mechanically as he tensed; delicate topics could only grow in crescendo.

“If you ever have babies, and one of them is a boy, would you name it Blue?”

“Blue?”

“As a name.”

“But Blue is not a name for a person,” he repeated, feeling himself at the beginning of the conversation again.

“But I like it,” she argued, tenacious, like every time she made a decision she was fully convinced of.

“You like very weird things.”

“Ana is weird and you like her.”

“Ana is weird?” Víctor was surprised, he did not thought his girlfriend had any particular weirdness at all; the fact was that he actually considered her to be excessively ordinary.

“Yes.”

“Wow…” he did not want to ask the nature of such an assertion.

“So, are you going to name your baby Blue?”

“I’ll have to ask Ana.”

“Why?” the girl’s utter surprise tone pleased Víctor.

“The baby’s mother should have an opinion, shouldn’t she?”

“But I don’t want you to have babies with Ana,” Cristina was horrified, she did not know his brother’s girlfriend but she was sure she would not like her, she was not appropriate for him, her brother, her constant and pillar, who deserved more, so much more, someone unique, exceptional, like him; someone absolute.

“Why?”

“I don’t like Ana.”

“You don’t know her. Also, I’m the one who has to like her.”

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know,” that he had asked himself more than once, but he also did not sense from her any specially stirring behaviour.

“But she’s your girlfriend.”

“Yeah. But that comes with time. Would your rather she wasn’t?”

“Yes. I want you to have a boyfriend named Blue.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” he repeated once more.

“Because you like girls.”

“Yes…”

“You’re weird too,” sentenced the girl with a firmer tone than him.

“Well, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she articulated while smiling with her mouth full of bread and cheese, not even waiting for the last chunks Víctor had just removed from the fire to cool down.

35

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STREET VENDORS (AND OTHER SUBURB DELIGHTS)

vendedores ambulantes

For sale: endings. I have them in all colors: worn, souring, completely wrong. Prejudiced, consistent, decisive. For sale: endings, one by one, and they are sold in a cared Luxury Edition, enclosed in freezer bags and decorated with a red satin ribbon (blood red, for those who doubt about it).

For sale: endings for desperated people, for old flames, for old smiles. For those who never knew to say goodbye, and for the flirty ones with vacuous look. Endings made of false ink, that one reappearing throughout the years. Endings for those who don’t like the endings, for those who have seen too many station kisses, for those who don’t want to run anymore. For those who flee and seek finding themselves.

For sale: clever, clumsy, painful endings. Endings that will persecute your whole life, endings that you don’t know why they arrived, endings that will make you cry when you see them. All of them soft, or steep, or irritating to skin and pupils. To hair. Endings that will eat you nails, endings that remove you the laughter. Endings that aren’t really endings, but things left incomplete. Unexplained endings. Hurting endings. Endings of the own error.

Finally, I have the one euro endings section, those that you don’t mind to carry. They are sold in a gift paper pack; some of them even rolled up in kebap paper (understand it, it’s just an euro…). All handmade by fingers and thumbs. And ladies and gentlemen, here I put my stand, because the weight of all these endings doesn’n let me advance anymore.

 

33

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Flowers

 “I would love to fuck you, will you let me?” he whispers in my ear, caressing me with his broken and fluid voice from which I drink like a hungry baby.

But it is not a question. It is in its origin: he is asking me, but when it reaches me it is not anymore; I only hear a desire, a longing that I know not if it is his or mine anymore. And he does not wait for an answer, why would he?, he already knows it, of course he knows it, it cannot be more obvious. Every single fibre in me, every pore from my skin writhes, impulses me against him and screams yes, of course yes, fuck me, disappear inside me and make me disappear with you.

He undoes the only button in his excessively antiquated underwear and he does not need his hands to get rid of it. No, he just gently swings his hips, slowly, like all of his movements, as if elegance fought with languor and made him into a simple continuum of seduction. He moves his hips while he moves his hands all over me and the fabric slides along his perfectly sculpted legs.

I know I am going to lose control, I feel it escaping from me like a handful of sand between my fingers, and I try to fight against it, to resist, because when the moment comes I will no longer be responsible of my actions and I will submit myself to his desires because they are the same as mine. I do not want to be a puppet, I need not to lose control. Once I have lost it I will be completely his, but he will not be mine, not fully. I barely know if he is it even a little.

His tongue tangles over my body opening trails of fire on its way; I melt and I feel myself starting to disappear when he glides it along my penis. I cannot help moaning, and with every moan it escapes from me a shred of my limited self-control. I get tense, or loose. Or…

I want to be able to think with clarity, but I palpitate inside his mouth and his moans blend with mine like a chorus that rises on the same rhythm and the echo of which jumps on the high ceilings of the room. But he retires in the middle of the way, not having gotten close to letting me finish, and I am thankful for it because I want to make this moment last, shape it in my hands and savour it.

The Prince separates my legs and places himself between them, he bends over me and licks my lips with the tip of his tongue.

“Yes…”

26

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Blue

 

 

“Blue? What is Blue to you? Ha, ha! See what I did there? I should have been a poet, I tell ya!” The vendor guffawed, clearly pleased with himself. Kepa ignored him, staring instead at the tower, his forehead furrowed in thought.

Blue.

“Come on then”, he gestured with a pair of tongs, “you can have one of these, on the house. You look like you need cheering up”.

Blue. Why can’t I remember? The colour means something. Blue for the sky, blue for the sea, blue for sensible corporate business. Blue for loyalty blue for intelligence, blue for memory…

The vendor pulled out a small, concealed drawer and with the tongs delicately removed what looked like a mini burrito. He placed it with care into a cardboard case and trotted the couple of steps over to his frowning companion. The gathering crowd looked only at the billowing steam.

“Here, try this one on for size. New variety. You’ll love it. People are dying for it! hahahaha”

Blue.

Absently, Kepa palmed the roll, feeling the warmth in his fingers. He was cold, he realised, and popped the roll into his mouth.

Blue for the sea. Blue for memories….

He choked, coughing and spluttering as part of the roll went down his wind pipe. He doubled over with the effort to dislodge the piece of food. When it finally moved, he stood up and looked to the vendor who was looking back at him with a grin.

“What is blue to you?”

Kepa looked at the Elysium, shining brilliantly in the dark of night. Then, he turned to the vendor and his stand. The stand had not been touched since the vendor first opened it yet it still billowed out steam, a steam that enticed almost all, no, Kepa realised, every single person who passed by was drawn to it. He looked around. Every last person stood, staring at the vendor’s stand, some visibly salivating. And yet, it began to dawn on him, looking at the stand properly for the first time, that he could smell nothing. Whatever was drawing them in, was not affecting him. The vendor cocked his head and nodded towards Ellie. To Kepa, it looked as though the tower was beginnning to leak light. Blue seeped at first, then rapidly gathered force, covering the landscape in an icy glow. He watched as it crept nearer and nearer, until it began to touch the gathering crowd, draining them of any hues of pink or red. It did not just make them look frozen, it was, he suddenly realised, literally, freezing them in place. He turned quickly to find the vendor.

With his usual cheerful expression the vendor said: “You have three minutes”.

 

25

  By

Mother

 “We’re alone again and it’s dinner time. What do we cook tonight?”

Both walked into the kitchen, Victor trying to shake off the unpleasant sensation his mother had left him with, and the kid trotting by his side.

“I want cheese.”

“You always want cheese.”

“Mum says it’s good.”

“Mum…” he bit his tongue not to make the mistake of saying something bad about their mother in front of his sister. “OK.”

His mother’s sudden and completely indifferent attitude was totally incomprehensible for him. Only until a few months ago he had always found her excessively sweet and curious. When Victor thought about his mother, the first image that came to his mind, the most powerful, was her head appearing, cheerfully, at his door when she came from work and asking him about his day. His everlastingly patient mother, who used to give him advice, usually too indiscrete, about the girl he was going out with. The woman who, more than once, he and his sister had emotionally blackmailed so she went out with her friends to have some fun, even for a few hours, for them to be able to enjoy throwing themselves at the sofa, watching some films and eating popcorn until feeling ill. But now…

Victor felt the intense look of his sister on his back while he took out every kind of cheese he could find in the fridge and started to fear any of her too elaborated questions judging by the silence of the kid. He chose the easy way and looked for some bread too.

“You told mum you’re going out tonight. Are you seeing Ana?”

“Yes, I am. Do you want me to tell her something?” although the kid had not shown any interest for the girl he was going out with, for some reason, he always tried for some kind of friendship to arise between the women in his life.

“No. I don’t like it,” not in the form of a question, but the girl, indeed, let the issue drop.

“You don’t like Ana?”

“No. It’s a too common name.”

“Well, it’s the one she’s got.”

“I’d rather you go out with someone with a prettier name.”

Victor could not help but laugh. Maybe his sister thought he had chosen the girl because of her name. Maybe her looks. Why not? How else, he thought, would kids choose the things they like. Some reflection about that idea emerged on the depths of his mind, but he opted for dismissing it.

“Prettier? Like what?”

“Blue.”

21

  By

The coffin

It is seven in the morning on a Monday, which looks like one of the eighty-five rainy days in the city of Algeciras. It is cold in the harbour’s distribution centre and there is at least one hour before sunrise. A crew of workers toils in time to load the last wagon of a goods train that will take nearly nine hours to reach its destination: Barcelona. A crane helps two guys to place a small but heavy wooden box. There is nothing to wonder, nothing to suspect. All packages are heavy and uncomfortable.

The young men are waiting at the door of the wagon to put the last item of the shipment, in a nearly 400-meter long wagon. The yellow machine that carries the last pallet arrives. The guys look at each other surprised, they are novice, this is the first time they meet with something like that: a coffin. The first reflex is the instinct of superstition, to refuse to touch that thing which the machine placed into the old wagon floor. The curt cry of the machine operator forced them to move and to push the coffin to a vehicle’s corner.

The convoy, pulled by a 319 locomotive of 1150 horsepower, departed from Algeciras on time. After six and a half hours, the coffin was opened. Jaume Bastida came out of the coffin with a small toolbox and a lever in his hands. He moved around looking for a very specific box, a small one with a huge orange sticker: “Fragile”. Jaume used the lever skilfully, taking care not to destroy the wooden box. When he pulled the side cover the content was visible: a safe.

Several hours later, Francesc Bastida parked an old hearse inside a garage in Castelldefels. He is uncomfortable with the suit and the tie, but the shoes are killing him since he left the harbour of Barcelona. He closed the door of the garage from the inside, loosened his tie and threw the jacket on some old pneumatics. He opened the back door of the hearse and knocks on the coffin. Francesc opened the lid and there he was, Jaume, drenched in sweat, playing dead with his hands crossed, with his tongue out, surrounded by banknotes.

20

  By

Ellie’s Shadow.

Everybody in the city knows how to tell the time without a watch – see where Ellie casts her shadow. Towering over the contours of the skyline, Ellie’s gaze faces east and west, north and south. She is the first to see the dawn and the last to catch the final strands of light setting over the horizon. She rises from a ground of white rock and her marble surface gleams in the sunshine. Her presence is constant, like time itself.

Some say the Elysium is the heart and brain of the city; all roads begin and end at her base, all intelligence passes through her corridors. She is the to and fro of the city, she is its constant vigilance. Her four faces see out past the wealth of the inner city limits, whose residents prefer and can afford the marble of the Elysium, out past the market sector, that broad band of jumbled buildings and bazaars encircling the inner city, acting as a physical buffer between the wealthy areas and the red-stained slabs of the tower block residences, which stand at the edge of the dome.

Within Ellie’s walls, agents worry the corridors. On the first floor, there are school tours being guided around a small room filled with historical details about past glories and heroes. This is the only floor open to the public. Most of the first ten floors are open to those with limited access and is comprised mainly of administrative staff. There are few people who know exactly sure how high Ellie is, because the lifts to the first ten floors only give the option of ten floors. There is more to her though, the city knows but it stands back, out of deference rather than ignorance. They know that if she falls, they all fall.

From her upper floors, an outside Agent screams before being sedated. The information will have to be enough for now. The exchange is tomorrow and the wipe needs time.

19

  By

On the first day, he had been beaten. His voice had been breaking at the same time. He was short, croaky, with a face full of adolescent pimples and swollen lips. That was when the short-lived nickname ‘Toad’ was born.

Nobody had called him that in years. In the camp, you could volunteer for different surgeries. He had. More than once.

Kepa brought his hand up to his face. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion in the void, but he knew he was fast. Nobody had beaten him again after that first time, and left unscathed. His fists and his footwork were unparalleled by the time the camps had closed. Every week, youngsters left the camp with a bruised eye, lip or ribs thanks to Kepa.

There was only one summer left until he reached adulthood and could claim independence when they had shut down, and his grandfather had worried that Kepa would have to stay with his father for the few months. He did not have to worry for long; just after the camps made their announcements, Kepa was contacted by more than one scout.

“Who came to you?”

There were many. He was smart too; excellent memory and problem solving skills, but some discovered his lone wolf tendencies and never called back.

“They wanted a team player?”

“I have Bianca…I’ve always had Bianca… She’s all I need.”

“Who is Bianca?”

Kepa began to fall faster. He clasped his hand to his chest, tightfisted.

“Where is Bianca?” He demanded. “What have you done with her!”

“Tell me the story of Bianca”.

The descent upward slowed, for a moment.

“No.”

“Tell me the story of Bianca”.

Kepa spiralled faster. “No! What. Have. You. Done. With. Bianca!”