The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [21]
Moreover, Isolde was healthily lusty. Within the upper-class circuit was a skein of brothers and cousins. While at the college she’d gone to, sleeping with one or another person was considered quite normal, she had no idea how small this world was. One night, after plenty of champagne, she slept with a guy after a party. Immediately, the word got out. It was actually the other brother she’d been interested in, Lucio, but now he backed away. Or rather, he still let her approach him, but now had a little smirk on his face whenever her name was discussed. She soon understood that she had tarnished herself. She’d lived in Austria and London, had traveled throughout Europe. Yet it didn’t matter. She was in this small circle now. It was like an insect trap, sticky. You put your foot somewhere and the move was irremediable. It was stuck there for all to see. Still, no matter what, the Austrian card was strong.
Isolde imagined herself working as cultural attaché, in the embassies, hosting parties. Or in charge of a charity group for children. The funds would be raised at cocktail parties. Most appealing was this idea of being ambassador to the European art world, all the more so as her conception of it remained so vague. Only later would I learn what her actual situation was that, running low on money and without a job, Isolde had taken to asking discreetly at cocktail parties if anyone knew of any work she could do, to the delight of a certain bevy of snickering Argentines.
Walking home afterward, I thought about Isolde, cutting her path here, as I was cutting mine. I remembered what I’d learned at the botanist’s about invasive plants. Once in a foreign environment, some species simply shrivel and die. There’s too much moisture or too little. The seed can’t get a grip in the ground. Others, however, due to the lack of the delicate balance of natural controls, suddenly grow rampant or metamorphose, a calyx, for example, hypertrophying. The foreign air, the soil, touches something in them. A part of their character, maybe dormant before, is suddenly pricked to life.
six
The e-mail I’d been waiting for from Leonarda arrived. “Hey, I’m on lab duty today. Searching for the virtual equivalent of the Ebola virus. You wanna come by and pick me up @ five?” She left an address. I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about, but I was definitely going.
It was in a neighborhood I’d never been to, Boedo. The streets looked disheveled. The eucalyptus were in a state of constant dishevelment, tumbling down, falling over themselves. Imported trees, they weren’t even from here originally. The smell, depending on atmospheric conditions in your head, could be bracing, soothing, intoxicating. I tore off a bunch of leaves, crushed and smelled them as I walked.
Following the street numbers, I soon located a white door. There were three buzzers. How to know? I pressed the second one down, then the third right after that. But before anyone had time to respond, the door opened and a lithe young man slipped out, letting me enter behind him.
The yard inside was muddy with sprouts of grass. Wooden boards had been laid out to step on. On the far side was a low structure like a garage but longer, with a wall of windowpanes. I followed the wooden boards to the structure’s door, which was ajar. A short hallway led to the main room. The room gave an impression of glass. Besides the windows, glass shards were piled up against the wall. Something big had broken. Everywhere people crouched over computers, some old, some new, a few with their backs open. A printer had been taken apart. There were cords everywhere.
At first I didn’t see Leonarda. Then