Swift as Desire Read Online Free

the old days—they don’t do it that way anymore. Everything’s changed.… Well, Chueco died, but we’re still hanging on…that’s why I try to get along as best I can while there’s still life in me. I go bowling now, I really like it. I go three times a week. My bowling friends are all over sixty but they’re still at it. There’s one guy who just turned ninety, he’s still bowling. And he’s good, too. Imagine that! To still be able to handle a ten-pound ball at his age! The bad thing is they have started to charge eighty pesos a game, which is pretty expensive for us, given our pensions, it’s just too much. But the good thing is that the other day, by chance, I was walking down Calle Sullivan and discovered a bowling alley above a shoe store. A man and a young girl were playing and I asked them if I could join in. They said the alley was set aside in the mornings for federal government retirees and I told them I was retired, but not from the federal government. They said it didn’t matter, I could still play there. They usually charge eighteen pesos a game, but they let us senior citizens play for nine pesos, and they throw in free coffee too. And since I’m in with the owner of the restaurant, she always gives me two or three cups, because I take her a box of chocolates every now and then, you know? So she treats me pretty well. I’ve been playing for about thirty years and though I’m not that good, I’m not that bad either, I’m okay, I can’t complain. My average score for a set of three games is between 150 and 160, even though sometimes I break out and getup into the five hundreds. A couple weeks ago I got 583 in three games! How do you like that, Jubián!? Jubián, have you stopped talking to me?”
    “No, don Chucho, he just gets like that sometimes. He gets tired, or something, mostly when we talk about my
mamá.
”
    “That’s a shame. Has she come to visit him?”
    “No, she hasn’t wanted to.”

    T HIS LAST PART I say with some fear. Almost secretively. Aware of the way my father’s ears have been trained to listen to two conversations at once. His gaze seems lost in his memories, but I know perfectly well that is no impediment for him to be able to follow the course of our conversation as well. His long years of practice as a telegraph operator allow him to handle two and even three conversations simultaneously with startling ease.
    And I really don’t want him to know my mother’s opinion of him and his illness. Although, on the other hand, he’s probably aware of
her
most recent thoughts, even though he hasn’t looked her in the eyes for more than fifteen years. I wonder what image of my mother will remain with him? The one from the day they said good-bye? Or the day they first saw each other? Perhaps the image of her that day on that balcony, awakening all sorts of illusions and desires in the men around her, all admiring her figure. And my
mamá
, what image of herhusband has remained with her? Is she capable of imagining my father as sick as he is? In the afternoons, after watching her
telenovelas
, does she ever think of him? And if she does, what image comes to mind? Above all, I wonder if she is capable of imagining him smiling, as he did in the good old days, when they danced
danzón
in the Plaza de Veracruz, when the magnet of the north caused the tide to rise in the eyes of the sea.

Chapter 2
    D ANZÓN
MUSIC FLOODED the Plaza de Veracruz. Graceful couples swept across the dance floor with swanlike elegance, their bodies radiating sensuality with every step. You could cut the voluptuousness in the air with a knife. One couple stood out from all the rest, the one comprised of Júbilo and his wife. Júbilo was wearing a white linen suit and Luz María, his wife, a crisp white organza dress. The whiteness of their clothes stood out against their tanned skin. They had spent a month going to the beach, daily, and it showed. The heat of the sun, trapped within their bodies,