Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter Read Online Free PDF

with dark hair and very white skin, her every movement graceful, even her manner of breathing, she had a tiny face with classic lineaments, and features that appeared to have been designed by an Oriental miniaturist. A year younger than Richard, she had just finished secondary school; her one defect was timidity—so excessive that the organizers of the Miss Peru contest, to their despair, had been unable to persuade her to enter—and everyone, including Dr. Quinteros, was at a loss to explain why she was getting married so soon, and above all why she was marrying Red Antúnez. There was no denying that young Antúnez had certain things going for him—his good heart and his good nature, a degree in business administration from the University of Chicago, the fertilizer company he would one day inherit, several cups he’d won bicycle racing—but among the innumerable boys of Miraflores and San Isidro who’d courted Elianita and who would have committed murder or robbed a bank to marry her, Red was beyond a doubt the least attractive and (Dr. Quinteros was ashamed of allowing himself to harbor such an opinion regarding someone who within a few hours would become his nephew by marriage) the dullest and most dim-witted.
    “You take longer to change clothes than my mom, Uncle Alberto,” Richard complained between leaps.
    When they went into the exercise room, Coco, for whom pedagogy was not a way of earning a living but a vocation, was instructing Blacky Humilla, pointing to his stomach and preaching this axiom of philosophy to him: “When you eat, when you work, when you’re at the movies, when you’re humping your wife, when you’re having a drink, at every moment in your life, and, if possible, even in your coffin: suck in your gut!”
    “Ten minutes of warm-ups to make your carcass happy, Methuselah,” the instructor ordered Dr. Quinteros.
    As he jumped rope next to Richard and felt a pleasant warmth creep over his whole body, the thought came to him that, when all was said and done, it really wasn’t so terrible to be fifty years old if a person was in as good shape as he was. Among his friends who were his age, was there a single one with a belly as smooth as his, such supple muscles? Without searching any farther, his brother Roberto, what with his spare tire and his potbelly and his premature hunchback, looked ten years older than he did, despite the fact that he was three years younger. Poor Roberto, he must be sad at seeing Elianita, the apple of his eye, getting married. Because, of course, he’d be losing her in a way. The doctor’s daughter, Charo, would be getting married almost any day now—her fiancé, Tato Soldevilla, would soon be getting his degree in engineering—and then he, too, would feel sad and older. Dr. Quinteros went on jumping rope without getting tangled up in it or missing a step, with the agility that comes with practice, changing feet and crossing and uncrossing his hands like a consummate gymnast. He saw in the mirror, however, that his nephew was jumping too fast and recklessly tripping all over himself. His teeth were clenched, his forehead was gleaming with sweat, and he was keeping his eyes closed as though to concentrate better. Was he perhaps having woman trouble?
    “That’s enough rope jumping, you two lazybones.” Even though he was lifting weights with Polly and Blacky, Coco had had his eye on them and was keeping track of the time. “Three sets of sit-ups. On your butts, you fossils.”
    Abdominals were Dr. Quinteros’s strong point. He did them very fast, with his hands behind the nape of his neck, with the board raised to the second position, keeping his back raised off the floor and almost touching his knees with his forehead. Between each series of thirty he took a one-minute rest, lying stretched out flat, breathing deeply. When he’d finished the ninety, he sat down and noted, to his satisfaction, that he’d beaten Richard. After this workout, he was sweating