The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club (8 page)

Everything that made me happy is either thousands of miles away or gone for good.

Just when I’m ready to give up and free-fall into a full-on panic here in the middle of this strange park in this strange city where I’ll probably die and be eaten by feral cats,
his
face pops into my head. Mateo. Not the Mateo smirking at me from my doorway. Not the Mateo dropping me on the floor. The Mateo in the photographs, with the smile that’s somehow happy and sad, that smile that makes me want to smile back and comfort him, that smile that for a moment makes me forget I am the one in need of comforting. He’s the last person I should be thinking about right now; well, the second-to-last person. But I don’t want to let go of that smile. It’s a small indulgence, harmless, doesn’t mean anything. And it works like a charm. Everything else clears away. I can breathe. I am not going to die or become kitty kibble.

Ah, yes, I think, feeling myself again, the electronics store. That means venturing back out onto the street. Maybe just another few minutes or so. It’s nice here. With my eyes closed, I could be almost anywhere.

Something soft brushes against my bare leg, forcing me to open my eyes. A small black cat with white eyebrows is twirling herself between my calves. I reach down to pet my new friend, startled by the ridge of spine felt so easily through her fur. She looks up at me appreciatively but doesn’t make a sound. None of them does, I realize. I’ve been sitting in this park spilling over with cats for at least half an hour, and I haven’t heard a single meow. Are they that content, or have they simply become accustomed to their own degree of misery? I reach out a tentative hand to my benchmate, who is still sprawled across half the seat, tail flicking over the edge of the wood. He stretches his neck in my direction, then gives up, lolling his head back onto the wood. When I first sat down, I had the childish idea that perhaps I’d stumbled across someplace magic, but open your eyes, and there is a melancholy here that you can’t ignore. That might explain why there aren’t any couples strolling the grounds, hand in hand. There are at least a dozen people scattered about on benches, and they are each alone.

I’ve got to get out of here. Stepping gingerly around my little friend, I make my way back toward the entrance. I step into the flow of sidewalk traffic and let it swoop me along, heading south, farther away from Andrea’s yellow house. When I feel the panic begin to rise again, I summon Trish’s semi-facetious voice:
Fake it till you make it.
Map clutched tightly in one hand, I pump the other, mimicking the determined walk of the urban Argentine. Teenagers, businessmen, grandmothers, children. They all have it. Even kiosk patrons seem to merely slow down rather than stop completely, selecting and purchasing their newspaper, cigarettes, whatever, in one fluid motion. There are no dillydalliers, no aimless window-shoppers. Best of all, I realize gratefully, there is little time or space to be lonely with hundreds of people rushing around you.

It’s after four
P.M.,
and I glide along in the throng of commuters and schoolchildren for a good five blocks before I see it. A window crammed with stereos, irons, microwaves, clock radios, and, yes, hair dryers. I’ve actually found an electronics store! I won’t go back empty-handed, defeated by traffic noise and a few troubling memories. My enthusiasm, however, is tempered by no small amount of dread. Now comes the hard part.

Inside the shop, a perspiring middle-aged man rushes to greet me. He offers up a flurry of Spanish to which I can only shake my head. Flash back to fifth grade, when we moved out of our old house and I transferred to a new school midyear. They were way ahead of my old class, and I sat absolutely silent for three whole days until the teacher asked me a math question I couldn’t understand, let alone answer. It was like being in a foreign country and not speaking the language. Kind of like this. “
Por favor,
” I say quietly, not even attempting to roll my R’s, and point to the hair dryer in the window. But it’s too high up, and I could easily be pointing at three different things. The man swabs his forehead with a handkerchief and looks at me curiously. I could mime drying my hair. No, I decide, this is embarrassing enough. But I need that bloody hair dryer. If I don’t get it, I will never have a good-hair day again, will never attract a man, will never get asked out, engaged, or married. My future hinges on that hair dryer. “
Por favor,
” I offer again, with more enthusiastic pointing this time. The salesman shrugs his shoulders sympathetically. The other shoppers turn and stare. My eyes feel heavy and hot. Oh no, Cassie. Not that, not here. Keep it together, girl. You’re doing fine.

I pull the pocket Spanish dictionary from my bag as discreetly as possible and look up “hair dryer.” I am that ten-year-old girl once more, trembling in her chair, admitting finally, eyes planted on the linoleum floor, that she is utterly, hopelessly lost in the math lesson.
I don’t know what a fraction is.
“
¿Se-ca-dor del pe-lo?
”

Unlike my new grade-five teacher, who shook her head and tsked loudly, the salesman lights up with a huge smile. “Ah,
sí, sí, sí. ¡Secador del pelo!
” He slaps his hands together and disappears through a door behind the counter. The curious shoppers turn back to their transactions. Seconds later, my damp, grinning salesman returns with a hair dryer in a box. He presents it with a flourish, as if it were a bounty of jewels. And that’s all it takes, this stranger’s enthusiasm to help an American woman who needs a hair dryer more than anything else in the entire world. There’s simply no stopping it. I let loose a sprinkling of tears. “
Gracias,
” I say. “
Gracias, señor. Muchas gracias.
” Somewhere between the next “
muchas
” and “
gracias,
” the sprinkling turns into full-blown sobbing. A fraud, I have my friends and family convinced that I am tougher than what life has thrown me, that I’m a survivor. But I am no such thing. I am, in fact, all raw emotions and seeping wounds. These last two weeks of pretending I was in control, that I knew what I was doing, that Jeff had done me a favor, that I was excited to start a new chapter, it all comes pouring out of me. “I. Am. So. Sorry,” I stutter through brief gaps in the crying. “My. Fiancé. Left. Me. For. Some. One. E-e-else.”

The next few minutes are a blur. As I squawk out the tale of My Black Wednesday—Jeff, job, etc.—I sense ghostly figures circling about me, feel the light touch of angels on my arms and shoulders. A hand helps me into a chair. Another pushes tissues toward me. Hushed Spanish trickles all around. I hear tsking, but the warm, grandmotherly kind. I am so grateful for it all, even their pity, but I’m also acutely aware of how embarrassed I will feel about this scene the moment I regain my senses. Here’s an item I forgot to add to my to-do list: Travel bravely thousands of miles to bare soul to electronics-store patrons and employees who haven’t got a clue what you’re saying. Check! Is this better or worse than having an anxiety attack in the middle of a park overrun by cats? Hard call. All I know for sure is that none of this was the way this day was supposed to go. Or maybe it was. How is one to know how one’s day is supposed to go if one doesn’t have a plan? What is wrong with me? Without a bunch of lists, am I truly incapable of functioning? Trish likes to tease me about that very idea, but it’s just teasing, isn’t it? Life before The Plan was so long ago, I’m not sure. I am sure that I have to get out of here fast.

“
Gracias,
” I say weakly, rising from the chair. “I’m sorry. So sorry.
Muchas gracias.
” How much is the hair dryer? The tag says thirty-five pesos. Thank God I exchanged some cash at the airport. Waiting thirty seconds for my credit card to clear would be unbearable. I grab four ten-peso notes from my wallet, push them into the salesman’s damp hands, and rush outside. I clutch the dryer under my arm a little tighter as I head in the direction of the yellow house. Whatever the universe throws at me next, at least my hair will look good.

If I can just make it back to the yellow house, everything will be okay. There is, after all, a lot to do. Bags to unpack, travel books to pore over, lists to make. I should probably call my parents and then Sam and Trish. But didn’t Andrea say I need a phone card to make long-distance calls? E-mail will have to suffice for now. I stop and let out a breath. I’ve forgotten the plug converter I need for my laptop. I’m only a block from the scene of my public meltdown, but, as incredibly kind as those people were, there’s no way I’m showing my face there again. Ever. I’ll find another store tomorrow. Another store, another chance to humiliate myself. Do I really need the Internet? I could start reading more books and newspapers. And e-mail? I’ll single-handedly revive the lost art of letter writing. As great as spreadsheets are, plain old paper sufficed for thousands of years.

The answer to my problem swings open mere inches from my nose. There it is on the door in big block letters:
INTERNET
and
TELéFONO
. I step into the small shop and repeat the second word to the guy at the counter, who reminds me of a doorman at my favorite dance club in Seattle who never smiles. Sam, Trish, and I tell him stupid jokes and flirt shamelessly to see if we can get a reaction, but he’s as stoic as a Buckingham Palace guard. The counter guy waves me toward the line of empty glass booths, barely lifting his eyes from the computer game he’s playing. His disinterest is kind of nice, like a bit of home. I am tempted to recite a naughty limerick, but I suspect I’d be wasting my breath.

I step into a booth against the window, look up the international code for the U.S., and start to call . . . Who should I call? If I call my parents, I’ll have to fake that everything’s wonderful or they’ll worry. If I call Sam or Trish, I’ll end up telling them everything, and that means having to relive it all. I can’t do it. My pulse and breathing have finally settled into a normal rhythm. Plus, the idea of Mr. Empathetic at the counter watching me cry is too much to bear.

I call Jeff.

I’m not sure why. My fingers seem to be pushing the buttons, and now it’s ringing and I don’t have a clue what I’m going to say. Jeff and I haven’t spoken, if you can call it that, since I went by our apartment to pack up my clothes. “I’ve come for my things,” I said when he answered the door. He stepped back to let me in, not saying a word, then sat quietly in the living room while I packed. In the end, I took only my clothes. I didn’t want anything else, not the things we’d bought together, not even the meager furnishings that I’d brought from my old apartment in the University District. As much as I loved the ebony lamps we swooned over in that swank downtown boutique and the circular area rug I’d hauled home seven blocks from a garage sale, I couldn’t bear the thought of keeping anything
she
might have touched. When I’d loaded two big suitcases, three garbage bags, and a laundry hamper full of shoes into the elevator, he came into the hall and said, “Take care of yourself.” Not “I’ll take care of you.” Not “I made a mistake.” Not even “I’ll miss you.”
Take care of yourself.
That’s when I finally understood that we were done. I nodded and pushed the lobby button. I held it together just long enough for the mirrored doors to close.

Four rings and the voice mail message clicks on. I should hang up, but I can’t seem to manage it. “Hi, you’ve reached Jeff. Sorry I missed you . . .” He changed the message. Why am I so surprised that he changed the message? It’s been weeks. I don’t live there anymore. I am thousands of miles away. I sold the engagement ring. What was I expecting? Of course he changed the message. The beep jerks me back to my senses, and I slam the receiver down. If I didn’t know what I was going to say when I made the call, I sure as hell don’t have a clue now.
Hi, you’ve reached Jeff. Sorry I missed you . . .
I’m not sure how long I stare at the phone—could be a minute or an hour. It’s the strangest sensation to feel as though you are falling, or rather, being pulled down into a hole in the earth, when you are most definitely sitting on a stool in a glass booth in an Internet café in Buenos Aires. I try to conjure up an image of something to calm me, but my mind is blank and buzzing at the same time. A million words and images and thoughts and hopes, but I can’t grasp any of it.

There’s knocking on the glass behind me. I’ve been sitting here too long, and I suppose the disinterested young man is now very interested in the crazy woman who spends two pesos on a ten-second call and then sits staring at the phone for hours on end. I would be embarrassed, but I’ve tapped my quota on that emotion for the day. I fish a five-peso note from my purse and turn to face him with as much disinterest as I can muster.

But it’s not the guy at the counter. It’s my landlady, smiling and waving wildly, Jorge sprouting from her hip and chewing on a granola bar. I am so glad to see them both.

“Oh, Cassandra,” Andrea almost shouts as I step out of the booth. “What happy luck. I’m going to the market now for dinner, and I see you sitting here.”

“Andrea. Hello. I was just calling . . . home.”

“Oh, marvelous. Your family must be happy to hear from you,
sí
?”

“Yeah. Yes.
Sí.
”

“You tell them how you love Buenos Aires.”

“
Sí.
” I don’t even know this woman, but I feel bad lying to her.

“You are done now?”

“Uh,
sí.
” That’s true, at least.

“You come with me to the market, then?”

“Well, I . . .” Market. I imagine open stands of tropical fruit and vegetables, exotic smoked meats and rind cheeses hanging overhead, crooked wood crates spilling over with rustic breads and delicate pastries. I have a kitchen in my apartment. I should probably put something in it—I can’t subsist on Andrea’s coffee and croissants indefinitely. And I am starting to get very hungry. “Okay, sure. Yes.
Sí.
”