The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [10]
I felt a bit shy about discussing this subject with a stranger, but I also had a lot of questions. “Do you do it for the money?” I asked.
“No, no, it’s not really for the money, though the money’s great. Plus you get benefits, like free dinners. The other day I got a new CD, the Tori Amos one. But it’s more than that. It makes me feel better. When I’m doing it, I feel good, very confident.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess the beautiful thing is that it annihilates the whole problem of desire.”
“It does?” I felt confused.
“Yeah, it’s perfect. Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s desire that’s painful, very, very painful. This way you can have sex without suffering all that pain.”
We turned the hose off.
“And the clients you see here are which clients?”
“The prostitute ones. It’s a friend of mine’s uncle’s place. I don’t have to pay, that’s why.”
“Is Hugo a john?”
“Yeah, yeah, he is, actually.”
As he was talking, we headed back downstairs. Once inside the apartment, I checked the water. It jerked, spurted and then came out smoothly.
“Yea!” Gabriel said.
He turned to me. “What about you? What are you doing here?” he asked.
I told him about my divorce and how I’d started fainting. It seemed like intimate information, but not so intimate after what he’d told me.
“Did they check for epilepsy?” he asked.
“Yeah, I was in the hospital, they checked for everything. They ended up saying that it was psychological.”
“Like a little death.”
“Exactly. The last time it happened I really thought I’d died. A friend of mine suggested that I get away. That’s how I ended up here.”
He looked at me curiously. “How long were you married?” he asked.
“Nine years.”
“No shit. The longest I ever stayed with anyone was two weeks. Kids?”
“We always said we’d have kids. That was the next step, but it never happened. I mean, we always said that, but never tried.”
“Affairs? Did you have affairs?”
I shook my head.
He looked at me closely. “It’s like you’re starting at year zero or something.”
I smiled. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Cool,” he said. He seemed to be getting more and more interested in my case. “This is a very good place to be starting at zero. Everyone will be nice to you.”
“Because I’m a foreigner?”
“Because you’re a certain kind of foreigner. My advice is to try things. Try everything.” He looked at his watch. “I really have to go now.”
I walked him to the door.
“But wait,” I said. “About the gigolo. When you say it alleviates desire, what do you mean?”
“Desire, I mean the emotional part of desire.” He thought for a second. “You still function as an animal, but you’re not in that horrible state of yearning.”
After he left, I sat thinking for a while. For starters, I couldn’t believe that I’d just met someone who was studying to be a doctor and working as a gigolo at the same time. Then I thought about what he’d said about “that horrible state of yearning.” “Horrible state of yearning”—what was he talking about? Finally I remembered what he’d said about me. “My advice is to try things. Try everything.” The thought of it interested me and gave me the jitters.
three
I received an e-mail from a girl named Leonarda that said: “I read ur sign. Plese I kneed to study English.” I wrote back proposing that we meet the following day in a café with a red-and-gold motif near my place. I had never been inside, but had passed it numerous times.
I arrived a bit early and sat down. After a few minutes a man came over and asked if he could sit with me. I said I was waiting for someone. He laughed and began to sit down anyway as if he didn’t understand. I shook my head more vigorously. It seemed he wanted something. I looked around. At the other tables were women sitting alone. Now I saw it, the situation, the way the women were dressed, in tight black, white and red clothes, with makeup on and very high sandals. I watched them wonderingly for a moment. Another man seemed to be approaching. Just at that moment, I felt someone grab my hand. It was a young woman with dark hair in a ponytail and startling green