The Night

For her it was a magical night. She could see the moon by the window. She was naked, lying over the bed with the soul fulfilled, the lips dry of so many kisses, she held him gently, silent, while he slept without knowing that for her a verse was made with every kiss, a poem with every touch that were permanently recorded in her heart. She looked at him in the silence of the night and listened to their heartbeats, their interlaced peaceful breathing.
She remembered the first time she saw him. A blind date, she , of course, refused to go, but her friends were persistent. So she ended up going with her oldest ugliest skirt, her old black boots and one of the many hippie shirts she had. She tied her hair on a pony tail and without any make-up just waited for them.
Luis and Julia had gotten the idea to find her someone to love. But she couldn´t be less interested. She had enough with her photography and her books.
He arrived to her house, the meeting point, a while before her friends. She opened the door and encountered some guy with a beard, with some rather long hair, by the shoulder, some funny eyeglasses, small lips, one could say he looked like werewolf with green velveteen trousers. She found him likeable, and yet, she felt uncomfortable with him, but he turned it all around with some pleasant conversation.
He told her he had just arrived from Spain, and that he found himself a little lost. His friends had all gotten married and now he found himself like the permanently unmarried uncle, a John with no Land. She understood him well and felt more at ease with him. At least all this wise man titles, Phd in physical anthropology , etc. that his friends had hung on him didn´t make him a smart ass monkey. Luis and Julia arrived late only to find them on the sofa laughing, talking about art movies like two kids, comparing all the movies they had seen.
She was very young, she was 21, he was 33, but they seemed to speak the same language regardless of time and space. The night went by fast, between glasses of wine, cigarettes and the looks that came and went from Luis to Julia that congratulated each other on this grand matchmaking success. And indeed it was a great idea to unite two lonely birds like them.
The four of them agreed to meet the next weekend. They said goodbye with a warm kiss on the cheek and a loving hand shake. He would call her.
She had sworn she would never wait the sound of the phone again, however there she stood and she passed by it thirty times and unhooked it just to make sure it had signal. He didn´t call, and she didn´t want to know more, she cancelled the date for next week. She was not in for another broken heart, she though when she explained to Julia the reason. Julia tried to excuse him, there must certainly would be a logical reason, but she didn´t want to know any reason at all, she was just not willing to take the chance.

He moved in the bed and started to snore loudly, while she smiled thinking perhaps one day she would know all his habits like an old married couple after many years.
And many years had passed since the sustainable development conference where they met again. He saw her from the other side of the room, and stood up to meet her. She didn´t want to talk much with him. The phone, after all, never rang. So she was cold and unpleasant and went to the other side of the room where Luis and Julia awaited for her.
Julia asked what he had said, and before she could answer went ahead to tell her they encountered him in the registration center that morning and he had said, quite embarrassed that back then, after they met for the first time, he lost his phone book and couldn´t call anyone. By that time, she was dating some guy, and she laughed to herself thinking about such a lousy timing! To show up then when things were going well.

They spent the conference like two rabbits that don´t dare to approach, looking at each other with quick glances. The shy wise man followed her around without daring to ask her to meet him again. She saw him and wished with all her heart he would come but since she was seeing someone she felt she didn´t want more trouble. However the night of the closure of the conference she couldn´t take it any longer and she came to him. She told him she had seen a movie he would love and with that she opened the door to his world, his eyes light up and they started talking as if they had seen each other the afternoon before. This time she got his number and said she would call. But she didn´t.

He opened his eyes, and gave her a long look, he held her tight against his chest and kissed her on the lips with sweetness. “I thought you had been a dream”, he said softly, and he caressed her hair while he kissed her again, just to go back to sleep with a smile.

A year passed before she called him after a breakup with the other guy. He picked up the phone half asleep, but immediately recognized her voice. They would go to the cinema. He picked her up in a yellow Volkswagen, the old bug model, that worked only half way, he called it Titaguas. When she came close she could see a pile of papers on the back seat. He was wearing the same green trousers he did when they met, but this time she was wearing her best jeans, a sweater she had bought on a trip to Paris, she was wearing perfume and she had straightened her hair. He noticed it, but he didn´t say a word, but she could tell he was nervous, almost insecure.
They had a delightful afternoon, after the cinema they spent hours seating, on the uncomfortable seats of the Titaguas talking about all and nothing. But not without first having danced with no music on the pavement in the middle of the street, like two mad lovers.
So they spent many afternoons and many days, without grand gestures just making each other happy, and one of those days they decided to put each other the title and call themselves a couple.
He wanted to marry her, but he didn´t dare ask. After all she had only 23 and a life ahead of her, much to do, to learn, to discover, He was a man already with his 35 and wanted a stable future. She wanted to wait. She didn´t want to make love to him until after they got married, but she didn´t say it, she just kept avoiding it, and avoiding it. And in all this avoiding and the words unspoken they drifted apart, and some nothing that neither of them could remember made them break up. One year after going to the cinema on the Titaguas and discovering that there was no one in the world more perfect for him than her and vice versa.
We humans are idiotic creatures: we can have happiness on the palm of our hand and just like water we let it run through our fingers.
The memory of that goodbye soured her heart while she was in his arms, thinking time had flown away from them in such absurd terms.
A few months after parting he married someone else. He lasted only 6 months married. She too got married. She had a couple of kids and a mediocre marriage that she ended when she couldn´t take the farce any longer.
She went to live in Madrid and for many years she didn´t hear anything about him, until that rainy autumn afternoon when they ran into each other in a bookshop in the Chamberí neighborhood, on the Fuencarral street.
He was 60, she was 48. He had grown a belly, he had scarce hair and a long white beard, she had the dyed hair to hide the gray, and dressed conservatively to hide the stretch marks, blubbers and cellulite that had come to her with aging. But the moment they saw each other it was as if the elixir of eternal youth had been injected through their veins. They had several drinks in a pub in Malasaña, and between words with no sense they touched each other with the avidity of a mad passion quieted by years, that suddenly exploited with their encounter. They went to her apartment. Clothes flew, busy hands recognized terrain, tracing all. Everything that in so many years of dreaming to touch was touched, caressed, kissed. Lips that encountered each other with rage, two eyes that crossed like two fires that collide in a dry forest. They made love like they and never done it before with anyone. With the passion and the love that had been missing from every night of their lives. And so fell the night over that afternoon, and while he was sleeping she had the certainty that this time it was forever.