Santiago gets dropped off first. It's almost four by now, and he's got to get changed and head to the restaurant. We make
the rest of the drive in near silence, simply because of the language barrier, though the guy does point out some sights along
the way--a restaurant he supplies here, a particularly lovely park there, the racetrack, shops, and important buildings. He
drops me off in front of my building with a cheerful
"Ciao!"
and cheek kiss, and once I've entered the vestibule, nodded, and murmured
"Buenos dias"
to the doorman and climbed into the creaking elevator, I am, after a day of being with people, solitary again. I smell like
meat for the first time in a while, the scent enhanced, as I consider it, by a faint green aroma of dust and cow shit.
Now it's the long slog toward Argentine dinnertime. Everyone here eats at ten or ten thirty. To go to a restaurant at nine,
especially alone, especially as a woman, is to court undue, concerned attention from waiters and the one other person eating
at that early hour.
Since arriving in Buenos Aires, moving into this small, comfortable apartment, I have developed a routine. I take my customary
shower, in my customary but not much enjoyed lukewarm water, and then I take my customary nap. When I awake, I open my customary
wine bottle, drink my two customary first glasses, and then, atop my single bed's comforter, attempt to distract myself from
my thoughts in my customary fashion. Try to bring back the physical sensation of waking up with D's arms around me, his cheek
resting on my shoulder, his reliable morning erection pressing against my thigh...
One character in
Buffy
, Willow, happens to be a witch, and when she is heartbroken over losing her girlfriend she can perform a spell to fill out
some clothes left behind, as if they were being worn by an invisible, beloved body, and have them, simply, hold her. What
I do is a bit like that, except I have no magical powers, and afterward there follows the inevitable result. A stupid bind,
this general need tethered so closely to this particular desire, this one person. I wind up unable to get where I want to
be at all, or if I do get there, it's only to find that no relief at all comes with the spasm and shudder--just tears and a
bitter sense of senselessness.
I can't imagine D ever having such a problem, ever having any sort of problem with sex at all. Though maybe the way he paraglided
right off my planet, as soundlessly and utterly as the ivory-billed woodpecker that birders will spend the rest of their lonesome
lives searching for, is a symptom of his own disease. I'd like to believe that.
I splash water on my face and watch some TV, listlessly, downing the rest of my bottle of wine with the steady efficiency
of a good butcher. At last it's nine thirty. I dress in something pretty, go downstairs, catch a cab, manage to convey that
I want to go to the address Santiago has written out for me.
The restaurant is loud, bustling. Soccer pennants and pictures and team shirts cover the walls. I am the only person eating
alone, and both the waiters and the other diners are very careful not to stare at me, as if I'm an exotic, doomed creature,
a dodo or some such. I order the
matambre
as an appetizer, of course. It arrives at my table prepared something like this. I have made up this recipe, but I think
it comes pretty close:
M
ATAMBRE A LA
P
IZZA
1
matambre,
about 5 pounds (This is going to be nearly impossible for you to find. Call Josh, as I did, or use flank steak. Which won't
really be the same thing, at all.)
1/2 gallon milk
1/2 gallon water
Salt and pepper
11/2 cups tomato sauce
2 cups mozzarella cheese
Your choice of pizza toppings
Lay the
matambre
on a cutting board, fat side up. Trim off some but not all of the extra fat.
On the stove, bring the milk and water to a boil in a pot large enough to hold the meat. Once it's boiling, slip in the meat
and turn down the heat. Let it simmer for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile prepare a charcoal grill. You'll want it nice and hot.
After 30 minutes, lift the
matambre
from the pot and pat it dry. Season with salt and pepper. Place it on the grill, fat side down, and cook it until the fat
is golden brown, about 10 minutes. Turn the
matambre
and cook for about 10 minutes more.
While the second side is cooking, top the fat side with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and any other pizza toppings you
like--pepper, onions, hell, pepperoni if you want. If you do it right you'll wind up thinking there is a God, and he's an Italian
stoner. It will feed the same number as a large pizza, whatever that means to you.
And there's more insane food to come. Specifically, steak. There are six or eight different cuts to choose from on the menu,
as at most traditional
parrillas.
I've been reading up on this, so I know what to go for--
bife de chorizo
, the classic Argentine strip steak. Tourists, I've already figured out, generally go for the more expensive
lomo,
or tenderloin, but I still hold on to my high-handed butcher's contempt for such insipid flesh.
My waiter is a young man with a thin mustache who asks me in his broken English where I'm from and if I'm loving Buenos Aires
as much as it deserves to be loved. He maintains the proprietary consideration that I have by now realized is an intrinsic
part of the female solo-dining experience in this country. It's a strange reversal: the way he treats me reminds me of the
way I used to watch D treat attractive waitresses in expensive restaurants, with a casual assured flirtatiousness that made
me feel both a twinge of jealousy and a strange welling of pride. (It's one thing when I lie in bed, willing the memories--I
deserve that anguish, bring it upon myself. But, dammit, why does my brain foist those remembrances on me when I'm in the
middle of a perfectly pleasant meal, being talked up by a perfectly nice-looking waiter?) When I ask for my steak
jugosa,
he looks skeptical, or as if he hasn't understood me correctly, much as he looked when I ordered an entire bottle of wine
for myself. I've gotten used to this. When I first got here, I would order my steaks
a punto
("to the point," or medium rare). But for some reason, because I'm a tourist or a woman, waiters seem unwilling to believe
I want a steak that hasn't been cooked halfway to oblivion. Odd, since they don't blink an eye when I order
criadillas
--that would be lamb testicles, to you and me.
I repeat my request.
"Si, jugosa, por favor."
My waiter shrugs, smiles, writes something down on his pad, then refills my glass of Malbec and goes to put in my order.
The steak, when it comes, is divine--deeply flavorful, slightly chewy, with a crackling layer of golden brown fat along one
edge, which, after I have devoured every last bit of meat, I suck at blissfully.
By the time I'm winding down with the last of the wine and a double espresso to see me home, the restaurant has gotten a little
quieter. Finally I've successfully timed my meal to Argentine standards. The difference being of course that all these gorgeous
Argentines, after stuffing themselves with extraordinary quantities of protein, will proceed to hit the dance clubs and tango
bars and house parties that keep people on the streets of Buenos Aires until dawn, whereas I'm going home to my bed, a little
drunk (though not so drunk as some might expect from two bottles of wine in the course of an evening--here's to Irish genes
and alcoholism) and exhausted from my day of meat tourism. My waiter, whose name, I've learned, is Marco, lingers at my table.
He tells me he's from La Boca, a working-class neighborhood in the southern part of the city, the center of the rabid Argentine
futbol
culture. The stadium is there, and people have a tradition of painting their houses in the garish colors of their favorite
teams. I've been told before this that I can't leave Argentina without taking in a football game, but due to my sports phobia
I doubt that I will. Still, I nod enthusiastically at his semicoherent chatter about teams and players, assure him I will
indeed catch a game when I can, don't demur too much when he tells me he will show me around "all the most good parts of my
neighborhood." With my check he delivers a La Brigada business card with his name printed on it, and on the back, handwritten,
"Tango." And a phone number.
"I teach also. You know tango?"
The American Dame gives a half smile. "I know
of
it. But I don't know how."
"I will teach you. Call me, okay, Julie?" I pocket the card with a smile and say yes. Though I know that I won't.
It's a long cab ride home, the cabbie a quiet, grandfatherly man in a
gaucho
-style beret. We don't talk. Staring out the window as we drive down the broad Avenida 9 de Julio, perhaps drifting on the
rippling wake of my meal, I find myself falling into a reverie, a tender swell of self-pity and melancholy that isn't entirely
unpleasant, a gentle, guilty feeling that I don't wish Eric were here, combined with a furtive enjoyment of being alone, and
even lonely. It's not that I don't miss him; I do. But I realize I rather love the little tug of it. I feel like a witch who
has sent her familiar away from her to do her bidding, but still knows exactly where in the world it is. Rather painful, and
at the same time rather a relief.
Certainly, spending any time with another man, any other man--D usually, but not always, the exception--reminds me that I love
my husband down to the guts and marrow. ("Eyeballs to entrails, my sweet" is what Spike would say, and Spike might have been
a vampire on a cult TV show with a bad peroxide helmet of hair, but he knew a little something of love.) Rotund Brazilians
and goofy tango-dancing waiters, even Santiago, I hold up, in retrospect or at the time, as further evidence that Eric is
someone other and above, someone singular.
I use that word advisedly. I don't just mean "special," like you always think the person you love is special. I think Eric
is special because he always has these insane ideas for projects he wants to embark upon, which sound totally bonkers until
you think about them for ten minutes and suddenly realize they're fucking brilliant. I think he's special because he hates
his eyebrows even though they're fantastic and he has no idea how beautiful he is and his obsessions range from the national
treasure that is Fran Drescher to conspiracy theories about museum fakes. And I think D is special too, because of how fiercely
he fucks me, because he masturbates with his left hand and eats with his right, because I adore his nasty, sneaky sense of
humor and sly smirk and the way he can make you laugh even while boring you to tears as he holds forth on some obscure filmmaker
or TV show or eighties hair metal band, and because he always wears the same two sweaters and walks in this gliding, unhurried
way, like he's on rails.
But this is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an objective recognition of a truly extraordinary person, the sort
of person anyone with a brain and a heart understands is someone she is lucky to know. Not because he's smarter or purer or
kinder or gentler than everyone else--though of course Eric is often all of these things--but because he... glows. I don't really
like getting into talking about souls and crap like that, but
something
shines out of Eric. He lives his life so close to the surface of his skin somehow--not like a daredevil, more like the shoot
of a plant, transparent and tender. That's not quite right either. He isn't fragile, not someone to be coddled, even though
he elicits from me such a ferocious protectiveness that it's probably not good for either of us. God, what is it? He's
honest
. Not in the bullshit way that he always says what's true or doesn't cheat people or whatever. There's just no bullshit about
him at all. He's got his hang-ups and self-delusions and esteem issues like everyone else, but he has also got this purity
of self that I am so proud of. Proud as if it is my purity. As if he's my surrogate soul.
But something isn't right here. If I have a soul, it should be my own, I guess. My own to be proud of or ashamed of. It's
just so much easier to take on his.
Maybe that's it. Why I don't want Eric here. Maybe I want to feel soulless for a while. Or not soulless, but with my soul
at a distance, away from my errant body and mind. Maybe I just want to be unburdened.
It is nearly midnight, and the cabdriver has the radio turned to the football game. Just as the broadcast voice begins to
grow more exercised, we pass a brightly lit cafe, which is suddenly exploding, as we drive by, with roaring male voices and
leaping male bodies. "What on earth?"
The man smiles into the rearview mirror. "Goal."
A
RMANDO COMES
out of the gym the morning of our appointment talking into his cell phone, doesn't stop for any longer than it takes to give
me a wave and air-kiss hello before gesturing to me to follow him to his car, which is valet-parked. He's a compact man, energetic,
a stark contrast to Santiago's tall, thin frame and slightest hint of gentle melancholy. He has a broad, tanned face with
a low forehead and a gap in his front teeth, close-cropped, Brillo-pad hair, and a scrub of beard kept at just the right degree
of rakish unkemptness. Armando is Santiago's friend. He raises water buffalo, and today he's going to take me to see his herd.
As we drive south and west, he spends half his time on the phone and the other half explaining to me his operation, his plan
to expand water buffalo sales into the domestic market, a tough sell because whereas Europeans are into healthful eating and
whatnot, and find the lean, clean meat of buffalo desirable, Argentines just want their beef beefy and plentiful.
Once outside the city limits, the landscape quickly becomes empty and wide, fields of cattle separated by dirt roads lined
with scrubby trees. The pampas, I suppose these are. It looks rather like south Texas, my parents' country, pale and dusty
and flat. Cattle country.