The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club (25 page)

“She broke his heart,” I say. “Yes, I understand.” And suddenly, I really do.

I try to read but can’t concentrate. What am I to do with this new information that’s turned my stomach into a pit of butterflies? I would blog, but this is one thing I wouldn’t dare share. Sleep comes, begrudgingly, fitfully. I dream I am back in my old apartment, pale gray walls, spare, sharp ebony furniture. There’s no music, just the sound of eggs sizzling in a pan, popping and crackling in the hot oil. I’m wearing an apron, the goofy kind my stepdad wears when he’s barbecuing, and my hair is in rollers. I call out to Jeff. Does he want eggs? The eggs are done. He doesn’t want any, he calls back, but I want him to try the eggs, so I take the pan and move through the apartment. Except it isn’t the apartment anymore. There’s a long staircase and shag carpeting, wallpaper and Pledged furniture. I enter the dining room, formal and set for dinner, and see them naked and writhing on the Persian area rug—that much doesn’t change. Jeff and Lauren, limbs entwined so intricately I can’t separate one from the other. Jeff, I scream. Jeff, what are you doing? Stop, Jeff, please stop. I stomp my feet and shake my arms at him like a child. The eggs slide from the pan onto the floor. I notice a dirty shovel in the corner beside the buffet and think how curiously out of place that seems. The room begins to swirl around the naked bodies. I can see them from every angle. Jeff looks up at me and then Lauren. Except it isn’t Lauren anymore, it’s Silvana. Jeff and Silvana, her long black hair trailing down her bare back, over his feet, and out the door.

I wake up sweating, the sheet twisted around my arms and legs like a rope. I rip the bedclothes off, lie there panting until I catch my breath. The dream comes back to me in small gray pieces. They bring with them a sleepy, fuzz-headed clarity. We are the same, Mateo and I. The only difference is that I know how to carry on, how to rebuild from the rubble, how to stop the wrecking ball from striking again. He needs me to show him how, I understand abruptly, brilliantly. This is why we’ve found each other. He needs my help. The clock flashes 2:14
A.M.
I wrap a long sweater around my nightgown, slide into my flip-flops, and walk quickly to the pink and blue house.

Outside, the air has been cooled slightly by a weak breeze from the river. Yet another streetlight has burnt out and only the lights from windows illuminate Mateo’s block. There are no cars on the road. A neighbor is listening to classical music. A violin crescendo lifts up through the hushed street and into the night, a trail of sweet notes chirping behind it.

The dim blue of a TV glows through the large window on the main floor. Otherwise, the house is dark. I push open the iron gate, walk slowly to the door, and knock. There’s no answer. I knock again, long and loud. I hear footsteps, and then the great black door swings open. I step back protectively. We aren’t on the best of terms at the moment. After the scene at El Taller that night, I think it’s likely that he’s written me off completely. But he doesn’t look mad when he opens the door, just surprised and then, dare I think it, maybe a little bit pleased.

“Cassie.” He’s wiping his hands on something. A painter’s rag, I think, excited that I might understand something, know something real and important about his life, until I realize that it’s only a dish towel.

“Hi.” Never in the history of the world has this word sounded so stupid, so trite. This is no way to begin such an important conversation, one that will . . . I realize with a jolt of fear that I have no idea what I’m going to say next. Why didn’t I practice something on the way over here? I plan every tiny detail in my life, but not this?

“What are you doing here?”

“I, uh . . .” What am I doing here, pounding on his door in the middle of the night? I look at Mateo’s sweet green eyes, crinkling at the corners with curiosity. The night we kissed seems like forever ago and only yesterday. I want it again, want it so bad I ache.

I take a long breath and, standing there at his doorstep in my nightgown and sweater, let it all come pouring out, the museum, the paintings, the talk with Andrea. These are loose fragments and unclaimed remainders tenuously held together by my perhaps wishful arithmetic, but somehow it adds up to something in my head.

Mateo looks at me hard, as if I’m speaking another language—one he doesn’t understand. A fat Siamese cat coils around his leg, mewing gently for attention. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“What I’m trying to say”—I take a gulp of air—“is that I know you’re scared. I get it. When someone breaks your heart, you feel like . . . like you won’t ever breathe right again. But you do. You will. You have to. You can’t just give up. You’re so talented and smart and funny and amazing. I understand why you’re scared to love someone . . .” These last words surprise me, leave me breathless. I hadn’t planned on using that word. It’s slippery, that word. But there’s no going back. I stand in front of this man vulnerable, exposed. I suck in my breath and wait for him to reciprocate and reveal himself to me.

He doesn’t say anything. Why doesn’t he say anything? Please say something.

“Thank you for your concern,” he says finally, dragging out the last word scornfully. The sardonic tone jolts me off my cloud. There is no curious crinkle in the corners of his eyes, only a stern crease between his brows. “But you really don’t know anything about me. I’m not one of your broken hearts that you can fix with a bottle of wine and a few good cries.”

“I know you’re not. That’s not what I meant.” I don’t know what I meant. I don’t know what I’m doing here in the middle of the night, half naked. “I didn’t—”

“You can save the love advice for your circle of admirers, online and off.”

“What do you mean?”

Mateo reaches behind the door and tugs at something on the wall. He pushes it at me—a page from the
Clarín,
Buenos Aires’ biggest newspaper, folded into a small square with a pinhole in the corner. It’s a half-page article in Spanish. Other than the word “blog” peppered through the article, I have no idea what it says.

“I can’t read this.” I try to hand it back to him, but he won’t take it.

“It’s about a travel blog based on one woman’s adventures in Argentina. An American woman.” My eyes widen in disbelief. It couldn’t be. I scan the article again for more familiar words. I find
americana, compasión, anónimo, gratitud.
And there, near the end, my old URL.

Augustina mentioned something about a reporter, I remember, but I figured he was from some small neighborhood paper. And when she said that he wanted to write about “us,” I assumed she meant the Madres. I never dreamed of including myself in that “us.” I never dreamed any of this could come from my little blog.

“Apparently, you’ve inspired newfound interest in an old, forgotten cause. The Madres attribute over sixteen thousand dollars in new donations to you. Some guy from Michigan even started an online letter-writing campaign to U.S. politicians.”

“Wow” is all that comes to me. Wow. I did this. I did this? I did. I did this. I am seconds from bursting into song and dance when I glance up and see Mateo looking nowhere near as pleased as I’m feeling. This is no time for self-congratulation.
Your circle of admirers, online and off.
Has he read my blog? He’s read my blog.

“You read my blog.”

“Yes,” he says flatly. “Catchy new name, by the way.”

My heart pounds against my chest, in my ears. It all sinks in, the whole big fat ugly truth. Oh, God, I am shouting inside. Oh, God! Oh, God! He knows about my blog!

He. Knows. Everything.

Adrenaline buzzes through my veins, a fight-or-flight response. I vote for flight, but my feet won’t move. All those entries about the haughty, superior, sexy M. The rantings about his rudeness and, later, the rapturous retelling of every word exchanged, every glance, every accidental touch. Please, oh please, don’t let him know all that. Why did I write those things? What was I thinking? I pull my sweater tight around me, around this stark nakedness. I am all exposed skin, nerve endings, and organs.

“Mateo, I’m sorry if I’ve said or done anything to offend you or embarrass you.” He doesn’t speak, forcing me to fill the space between us. I struggle to remember why I’m standing here on his doorstep in the middle of the night. The paintings. “But that’s beside the point.”

“And what is the point?”

“I understand why you stopped painting. I really do. But it’s been years. You shouldn’t give up on everything because of what one—”

“Give up? And what are
you
doing, Cassie?” he asks, his voice growing louder and angrier. “You’re too scared to let anything happen to you that you can’t control, anything that doesn’t fit neatly into your plan for this imaginary perfect life. You shut out everything and everyone that isn’t on some spreadsheet. That’s just a fancy form of giving up.”

Perfect.
Once again the word is hurled against me. Just like Jeff.

Who is Mateo to judge me? I think, my anger rising. Living in this half-painted house, living this half-painted life, who is he to judge anyone?

“At least I’m trying to make a future for myself. It’s like you stopped living. You don’t paint. You work in a bar. You won’t . . . And this house.” I throw up my arms and shake my head. “At least I’m not afraid to try.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. Not by a long shot.”

“Maybe I’m wrong.” His face is softening, but his voice sounds so cold, so far away. I want to reach across the space between us, to touch his arm, his cheek, to pull us together through this awful moment. “But it doesn’t matter, does it?” he says. “You’re going home soon. You can go back to your perfect life, and what I do here won’t matter.”

“You’re right,” I say, straightening. “It doesn’t matter.” I step back from the doorway, ready to flee. But I don’t really want to go. “Sorry I bothered you,” I say. As I make my way down the tiled walk, all I can think is:
Stop me. Stop yourself. Don’t leave it like this.

But he doesn’t try to stop me, and I keep walking. From across the street, I glance back in the dark. Mateo lifts the cat to his chest and shuts the door, taking with him all the light from within.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
fter two and a half days of unplanned sulking, marathon Spanish-sitcom watching, and a self-imposed moratorium on all communication devices, I give myself a good talking-to: You can torture yourself, or you can put this whole Mateo thing to rest once and for all and get on with things.

I meet Jamie at her favorite
helado
shop for a double scoop of sensibleness. I don’t know if it’s her expression when we talk, her right eyebrow rising into a comically Freudian point, or the fact that we have so little history together, but I feel like I can tell her things I barely dare tell myself. Naturally, I leave out all the ridiculous stuff Mateo said about me.

“So he stopped painting and now he just works at that bar?”

“Yep. Andrea said his uncle owns it. It was supposed to be a part-time job while he was in art school.” I look at my ice cream cone. There’s too much of it. Why did I get dulce de leche? I never get this flavor. It’s too sweet. These damn Argentines and their sugar cravings. It must be contagious. I almost never ate sweet things at home. My feet are sticky from the heat. It’s too hot for tennis shoes. I should stick with flip-flops from now on, I decide. I turn my gaze out the window. A fat cat strolls by the open door with all the swagger of an L.A. pimp.

“Jeez. Poor guy. That’s some serious damage that woman did to him. He sounds really screwed up.”

“I know. It’s positively tragic.” It feels good to get Jamie’s confirmation that it is indeed Mateo who’s the screwed-up one. I take a long lick of ice cream. Not such a bad flavor, actually. It kind of grows on you.

“Anyway, I was thinking I might want to do a bit of traveling.” The idea has just come to me. How’s that for doing things that aren’t on a spreadsheet?

Jamie’s eyebrow arches skeptically. “Why now?”

“Well, Doctor, I’ve been thinking about that bike I never got . . .”

“Okay, smart-ass.” She makes a face.

“I just want to see more of Argentina before I go home,” I say seriously. “Which is pretty soon. So do you want to come with me?”

I wait for the litany of reasons why I shouldn’t run away from my problems.

“Okay,” she says, dabbing the gooey mess with her napkin, her eyebrow sinking into calm repose. “Where shall we go?”

Jamie will be here within the hour, and there are still a few loose ends to tie up. C.J. has researched a few options for letting people post personal ads on the website. We confer via instant messaging and decide to go with the simplest solution. I’ve already put together a pricing scale—with photo, without photo, etc.—and created an ad for the service to go on the home page. Once the back end is ready, we’ll be set to go.

C.J. is psyched. “This could be huge,” he writes.

I am slightly less enthusiastic. “Move over, Idealmatch.com,” I write, wondering if the sarcasm translates.

I send a mass e-mail to family and friends, letting them know I’ll be incommunicado for a week. My paranoid parents have requested my itinerary, so I send that, too. I do, however, ignore my mother’s question about my preference in bedding. The great quilt-versus-duvet debate of 2005 will have to wait until I’m back.

I make a quick call to Dan to say goodbye.

“I’d be lying if I said I hope you have fun,” he says. Yesterday he offered to come with me. When I said it was going to be a girls’ trip, he went online and researched a bunch of “girl” places Jamie and I could go to for fun, like good shopping areas and spas to hit. He really is such a great guy, cute, sweet, considerate—a total catch. He’s even hinted at his openness to leaving Boston for the right person. If only I felt . . . more. Everything would be so easy. “The truth is, I hope you have a miserable time and miss me terribly. I miss you already.”

“Me, too,” I lie kindly. I’m looking forward to getting a break from his sometimes overly enthusiastic wooing. Before I can feel too guilty, I remind myself that this trip might just be the best thing for us. I’ve taken Dan for granted, but maybe I really will miss him and realize that I am actually madly in love.

Finally, I post a brief “gone fishing” blog, just in case anyone’s still reading my personal page. I try to sound as upbeat as possible, though I realize the chance is pretty slim that Mateo will be visiting my blog anymore.

I close my laptop and grab my newly purchased backpack. There’s a small twinge of sadness as I shut the lights and close the door behind me. Better get used to that, I tell myself.

Andrea, Jorge, and the dogs are waiting for me downstairs. “We’ll miss you,” she says, handing me a freezer bag full of homemade muffins for the flight.

“Me, too,” I say, meaning it fully.

“But you’ll love Mendoza.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“All the wine and sunshine you want.” She waves her arms around with a Brazilian flourish that tells me she’s working her way up to something.

“Mmm,” I say.

“Did you say goodbye to all your new friends?” she asks. I don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know who she’s talking about. He obviously hasn’t told her about our fight.

“Everyone but Mateo. I haven’t seen him around.” I omit the fact that I’ve done everything in my power to steer clear of him for the past three days.

Andrea smiles thinly and gives me a big hug. For a split second, I could swear I feel two little arms wrap themselves around my leg, but when I look down, Jorge is safely tucked behind his mother’s leg.

A car honks outside. I wave to Jamie through the iron gate. One final look at my packing list: passport, wallet, guidebooks, thinly disguised last-minute trip to avoid dealing with . . . things. Check, check, check, check.

Everyone from everywhere who comes to Buenos Aires eventually heads south to Patagonia, with its breathtaking snow-dusted mountains and whales frolicking in the ocean. But there’ll be mountains and whales enough for me when I’m home in a month—not to mention plenty of cold. So I’ve convinced Jamie to come north with me to the deserts of Salta. I’ve never been to a desert. They say there’s snow-white sand as far as the eye can see, and I like the sound of that.

We have to fly into Mendoza, the famous wine region that Mateo once raved about, and rent a car from there. I don’t know much about wine, except that I like to drink it, but Jamie is excited to see this popular Argentine vacation spot.

“There are vineyards that date back hundreds and hundreds of years,” she says enthusiastically, scanning my guidebook’s section on the area. “Just think of how fantastically drunk we can get!”

The last thing I want to do is sit around getting drunk every day and thinking about the kind of things I’ll no doubt think about if I sit around and get drunk every day. “I read that there are white-water rafting tours,” I counter.

Jamie sticks out her tongue and turns back to the book. “You’ll love it,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say. “So I’ve heard.”

Driving in from the airport, we ask the cab to stop at an ATM. “Lie loose,” he tells us, pointing at the ceiling and shaking his head. I ask again, thinking he didn’t understand my Spanish. “Lie loose,” he repeats. “Lie loose.”

“Do I seem particularly uptight, or do they say this to all the tourists?” I whisper.

Jamie laughs and shakes her head.

“What’s so funny?” I ask, frowning. She points to a page in her Spanish dictionary.
La luz
means “the light,” a slang term for a blackout. The cabbie isn’t telling me to lie loose. He’s telling me there’s a power outage.

I’m not in a very lie-loose kind of mood when we roll up to the hotel I booked online—I’m worried about how we’ll register without computer access—but the lovely old converted house puts a smile on my face. Inside, Jamie flits from wallpaper to rug to banister, oohing and aahing at things. Luckily, the power outage doesn’t faze the proprietors, who use good old-fashioned paper. No need to worry, they tell us. The power will come back soon.

We take a short power nap—seems fitting—then take turns showering. I put on a cotton dress and flip-flops and try to get in the spirit.

It doesn’t take long. Mendoza is an oasis created for the sole intent of its citizens’ enjoyment. What else should one expect from winemakers? This must be the most restful place on earth that isn’t beside an ocean. Outside the hotel doors, the world is in calm repose. Other travelers are difficult to spot, for everyone seems to take on a slow pace here, strolling the streets, it seems, with no other purpose. The weather is sunny and warm and pleasant. The trees, lush and plentiful, bend happily over the wide tiled sidewalks to offer much-needed shade. At some point in the falling dusk, the power comes back on, but there are no sudden noises or glaring lights to mark its return, nor is there the familiar collective cheer that accompanies the end of a power outage in Seattle or anywhere else in America. As Jamie wisely points out, “You don’t need electricity to open a wine bottle.”

I give in. We spend the next few days touring vineyards and the next few nights getting drunk on Malbec. (The key, I’ve discovered, is to drink so much that thinking about anything becomes virtually impossible.) We meet locals and dance until the vine-loving sun comes up and we can start all over again. Consulting Dan’s list, we indulge in a spa day at a luxury American hotel where all the products are made from grapes. We eat more than we need, sleep longer than we should, and stay two days longer than intended. By Tuesday, we are plump, polished, and dangerously close to never leaving. I am doing such a good job of forgetting what it is I came all this way to forget that when it comes back to me, it comes back so hard it nearly knocks me to the ground.

Jamie is ordering clams in white-wine sauce in very poor Spanish when a table is seated behind us on the sidewalk. They are a young raucous bunch, and if my language skills were better, I would be glad to listen in on what sounds like a fun conversation. As it is, I pick up only snippets, such as “They’re too hungover to come out tonight again” and “I don’t want too much cheese on mine.” While Jamie goes to survey the salad bar, I piece a silly conversation together in my head, filling in the gaps between their jumbled words.

Do you think the octopus is good here?

Well, I haven’t seen it sing, but I hear the dance number is spectacular.

Good. I’m bored of beef.

Yes, he really should have retired years ago.

I am thus amusing myself when several of them look up and exclaim, “Mateo!”

I swear, my heart stops for a second. It’s not him, of course. Turning around slowly, I see a short young man with long shaggy hair approach the table. I shake my head and laugh at myself. What did I think? That he found out I had run off and flew across the country to track me down?

I don’t want to think about it, but the table makes that difficult. The next few minutes of their conversation go something like this: Blah blah blah Mateo blah blah blah blah Mateo blah blah Mateo blah. The memory of him standing in his doorway that night, so angry and cold, floods my mind.
You shut out everything and everyone that isn’t on some spreadsheet.
It isn’t true, is it? I don’t shut people out. I tried to be his friend, didn’t I? I wanted to let him in. Just because I take control of my life doesn’t mean I have control issues. I’m a strong woman, and I guess Mateo doesn’t know how to deal with that. If he’d rather hide away in his house, lock up his feelings, who’s stopping him?

“Oh, Mateo!” a pretty young woman with long dark hair squeals, throwing her arms around her shaggy-haired friend. “
Te quiero,
” she coos.

“
Te quiero,
” he says back with a big smile. He takes a thin gold chain out of a small box in her hand, and she lifts up her hair while he threads it around her neck. They lean in and kiss. Their friends clap enthusiastically.

Jamie returns with an empty plate. “I was about to get a massive salad when I saw this woman chowing down on a huge plate of pasta,” she says. “Suddenly, it’s all I can think about.”

“Must be nice,” I mumble.

“What?”

“I need to go somewhere else.” I stand up, looking around for my cardigan. I need to get away from here. Really, really far away.

“Okay, I think I saw another nice-looking restaurant at the end of the block.”

“No, I mean I think we should leave tomorrow.”

She looks at me for a moment. I don’t blink. “All right,” she says, grabbing a piece of bread from our table and tossing down a couple of pesos. “There’s only so much fun one person can stand, anyway.”

The next morning we rise early for the first time in days. I rent us a Jeep and buy a detailed map book of the region that’s as thick as an atlas. Later, Jamie will have a good laugh at the fact that there’s only one road all the way from here to there. Still, we manage to get lost. Twice.

The first time we end up in a town that, except for a modern bank and a billboard advertising a new Wal-Mart being built in Mendoza, looks like part of a Hollywood set for an old Mexican town. As I think this, a man rides by on a cart pulled by a real, live donkey. “We’re straddling two centuries here,” I say to Jamie, who’s captivated by the tiled sidewalk.

“Do they tile everything in this country?” she asks rhetorically. She’s traded a pair of rubber flip-flops for a gas station attendant’s straw cowboy hat. It sits low on the back of her head, poised to fall off. Out here near the desert, we’re easing comfortably into our Thelma and Louise personas.