One Out of Two Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing.
    Along those same lines: let the suitor’s true intentions come to light over time. Considering her age and considering her other baggage, she shouldn’t go losing her head over some momentary fling.
    So, hands were not held or fondled, except while dancing with the music swirling around them … And the dialogue flowed, two silhouettes and an affectionate mood, a future pointing who knows where.
    For a moment, let us imagine—we must—the atmosphere and the rhythm framing the action, the magnetism between them: flirtatious Constitución dimly illuminated and wearing a lovely dress with a definite girlish touch. Let us imagine the man when his eyes lit upon her, dumbstruck at the sight of such a marvel, then, instinctively, with no introduction save a fixed stare, the culminating moment, the propitious sensation shared from afar, and the pull to connect.
    Their faces said yes: ardor.
    Everything necessary to start the ball rolling.
    That tall man with pointy sideburns—and clearly descended from heaven—is thirty-five years old. A little younger than she, manageable: especially: because of the unpleasant tension of enduring a long and rocky bachelorhood. An exceedingly agreeable man who wears cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat, a country saint who smiles at the ladies while smoothing down his mustache to give himself airs. By no means, though, is he a popinjay. Just talk to him, and you’ll see. He uses stratagems to make conquests, like any man at a dance. So much for his bearing, and as for what he does for a living: he buys and sells animals on credit or with cash. Only goats and pigs, because he doesn’t yet own even a jalopy, so he transports his beasts strapped to the gratings on the roofs of the run-down trucks of strangers. Even so: he’s doing just fine, thank you very much, and one day in the not-too-distant future he hopes to be the proud owner of a stakebed truck that he can use to transport his own livestock.
    She dotted every i and crossed every t that had anything to do with her suitor, whose name was Oscar Segura. His likes, his dislikes, she was frank to a fault. Constitución even found out his real address—Calle Gómez Farías, number twenty-five, Colonia Zaragoza, Ciudad Frontera—which she corroborated with Soledad, as well as his marital status, just in case. In spite of his age, he lives with his parents and all his siblings. He is the eldest, and really as wonderful as they come, a paragon of good behavior, according to their aunt’s account, with a warm heart and no attachments, so a great help to his parents in many important ways. A man of deep feeling without streaks of knavery or traces of cynicism. Quite the opposite: moral and generous, a fighting angel.
    The winning twin gave a too-smug description of his upright figure, replete with details that were mostly beside the point. Carried away, she even said it would be her privilege to sketch him, especially his face, and she promptly picked up a nearby pencil and piece of paper. Though now an objection was raised:
    “There’s really no need, I can picture him just fine from your words,” says the loser.
    Then, to avoid any more of her sister’s braggadocio, she stands up, like a spoiled child, or something of the sort: setting aside the tasks at hand, she walks over to the shop door. How puzzling.
    There, sullen and fuming, she stands with her arms crossed. Staring off into the distance, or pretending to.
    There is bitterness, there is pain, there is displeasure and probably injustice, for one was the spitting image of the other and now because of the toss of a coin, they no longer are. The so-called silent one never could have imagined that the Fates of love would show up after they’d been separated for only a few days. Herein, then, lies the catch, for an identical destiny would have been hers had that coin landed after one more turn.
    Constitución watched her with surprise and, yes, at the same time placed a pencil