At Night We Walk in Circles Read Online Free PDF Page B

Astrid had offered to keep their mother company. Francisco drove his father’s old car, which still smelled of Sebastián, a fact which was obvious to Nelson, but not to Francisco, who’d been gone too long to remember something as important as how their father had smelled. The evening was cold and damp, but Francisco had scarcely left his mother’s side in the week he’d been home, and the very idea of being out in the streets of the city filled him with wonder. He drove slowly; he wanted to see it all. It had been only six years, but nothing was as he remembered—it was like visiting the place for the very first time. He marveled at the brightly lit casinos lining Marina Avenue, neon castles built as if from the scavenged ruins of foreign amusement parks. There was a miniature Statue of Liberty, slightly more voluptuous than the original, smiling coquettishly and wearing sunglasses; there was a replica Eiffel Tower, its metal spire glowing amid klieg lights. A few blocks down, a semifunctional windmill presided over a bingo parlor called Don Quixote’s. On a windy day, Nelson explained, this attraction might even rotate, albeit very slowly. It was not uncommon to see young couples posing for pictures with the windmill, turning its blades by hand and laughing. Sometimes they wore wedding clothes. It was impossible to say when, how, or why this place had become a landmark, but it had.
    Francisco noted each as they passed. “How long has this one been there?” he’d ask, and Nelson would shrug, because he had no answers and little interest. He found his brother’s curiosity unseemly. He’d long ago decided not to pay attention, because it was impossible to keep up with anyway. Maps of this city are outdated the moment they leave the printers. The avenue they drove along, for example: its commercial area had been cratered by a bomb in the late eighties—both Nelson and Francisco had clear memories of the incident—and the frightened residents had done what they could to move elsewhere, to safer, or seemingly safer, districts. Its sidewalks had once been choked with informal vendors, but these were run off by police in the early nineties, and had reconvened in a market built especially for them in an abandoned lot at the corner of University Avenue. Now the area was showing signs of life again: a new mall had been inaugurated, and some weekends it was glutted with shoppers who had money to spend, a development everyone, even the shoppers themselves, found surprising.
    They found a restaurant along this renovated stretch of gaudy storefronts, a loud, brightly lit creole place, whose waiters hurried through the tables in period dress, evoking not so much a bygone historical era but the very contemporary tone of an amateurish theater production. Everyone is acting, Nelson thought, my brother and I too—and the idea saddened him. They ordered beers, and Francisco noted that they’d never had a drink together in their lives. They clinked bottles, forced smiles, but there was nothing to celebrate.
    Francisco knew Nelson’s plans had changed, but he thought it was worth discussing. He was only desperate to recover something of that optimism, that closeness he’d felt with Nelson as recently as a month before. He found it hard to believe it could disappear so quickly, and so completely.
    Nelson didn’t accept the premise. When Francisco asked, Nelson’s face screwed into a frown. “I don’t have plans anymore.”
    â€œYou don’t have plans? No, what you mean is—”
    â€œYou’ve seen her. You’ve seen how she is. I’m supposed to leave now?”
    â€œI’m not saying
now
. Not immediate plans.”
    Nelson rolled a bottle cap between his fingers, as if distracted. He wasn’t. “When will it be okay, do you think, to abandon my mother?”
    Francisco sat back.
    â€œI mean, let’s just estimate,”