The animals line up outside my door. Pairs of them, and patient.
I exaggerate. It does rain with gusto every day, but there are stretches of sun that can be really convincing before they´re squelched by purple storm clouds....
Sunday afternoon I went for a ride with my roommate Rubén and a few of his friends in the countryside outside of Cuenca. There was jacobo (que estaba bien volando), who swears like a sailor and dresses like teenage Eurotrash (it´s actually rather endearing. he looks about 12 and uses so much gel that his hair looks like it was glued in place as one cohesive unit). Then there was Maira, a lawyer who draws on her eyebrows with admirable precision and was trying her damnedest to include my stammering Spanish/gibberish in the conversation. Then Rubén, my roommate, a portly dude who enjoys laughing, and his little girlfriend, Antonieta, who is from the coast and speaks as though her tongue´s just received a shot of Novacaine. And me, feeling very blonde and very nauseous.
Ya. So we drove around, beautiful countryside, etc, until we found a tiny little town with a bar, which had ´one old soldier every died´ written ominously over its colorful purple and red door. We had no money, but the bartender ushered us in anyway. He looked exactly like an aged Che and his other patrons were two prostitutes and their johns drinking shots of whiskey at 3 in the afternoon. There were saddles on the barstools and blocks of wood to sit on around the tables. And the walls made no attempt at hiding the daylight seeping in between their boards. The whole place was strangely cheerful in spite of itself. The five of us split a beer and chatted with the...locals. One of the guys asked me where I was from and when I replied ´near Canada´ he asked, ´Maine? Portland? Lewiston? Bangor?´ I almost fell out of my saddle. Lewiston?!
In other news, the population of 19-58 Calle Luis Cordero has grown. Antonieta, Rubén's sassy chaquita girlfriend, who visited last weekend, was back again on Friday. On Monday when I asked her if she would still be around at the end of the day, she said, 'I´m here until may 12'. Hm. News to me. later that night a guy named Enri(que) stopped by to drop of a computer... and tv... and his clothes... 'Enri's going to live with us now,' said Rubén, cheerfully. ¡Que bueno! more people to torture with my Spanish... actually, Enri is usually absent and when he´s here is so quiet that I barely notice him. He´s maybe 40 and I don´t even know what he does...
That's all for now, so chao.
No comments:
Post a Comment