Everything You and I Could Have Been If We Weren't You and I

  www.megustaleer.com

  PROLOGUE

  «The Fascinating Boy»

  our tigers drink milk

  our falcons go on foot

  our sharks drown in water

  our wolves yawn in front of open cages

  No, I didn’t write it, but every time I think of him this poem comes into my head and I feel happy and brave, I feel safe, comfortable and in peace. It makes me smile widely, the number 3 smile, one of my favorites that he knows so well. He has the gift of knowing how many faces you have, how many looks, breaths, gestures and smiles and the meaning of each one. Another of his gifts is being able to distribute humility, happiness, sincerity, love and life to the people who surround him and whom he loves. He always finds the right words for each moment and the faces to go with them. He is fascinating and surprising.

  When I saw him for the first time, I didn’t know who he was, just that he moved at an advanced pace for a human being, that he was a teenager fascinated by life in the body of an older boy, who always expressed himself with 5 points, taking more time to explain and make himself understood to the other person in the 1st and 2nd points, then go directly to the 3rd, 4th and finally the 5th; accompanying that explanation with drawings and scribbles on the corners of pages, newspapers and napkins.

  The first time you meet he will greet you with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek, although when that first meeting is over it will surely end with a huge bear hug.

  I haven’t known him for long, but during this intense time we’ve shared—filled with work, laughter, magical moments and words, hugs, gifts and the occasional sob—I have gotten to know him better. To the point where just by hearing each other’s voice on the telephone we know what is going on with the other; it is the beginning of a long and immortal friendship. One day, swimming underwater through this vast sea that is life, I opened an oyster and found this fascinating, brilliant and multicolored pearl called Albert Espinosa.

  Albert has managed to write a novel filled with magic and love where people’s lives have no limits for being with the person they want to be with. A world of fascinating people able to stop dreaming but never to stop loving: Everything You and I Could Have Been If We Weren’t You and I.

  According to him, life is turning doorknobs; I only hope, throughout my life, to find myself in front of many doors that transport me to new places, paths and experiences. I know that every time I’m in front of each of those doors, I will have a trusted friend to take my hand and go through it with me, and if at some point he can’t come with me I will ask him for advice. Don’t ever let go of my hand, Albert.

  ROGER BERRUEZO, your first stranger

  Actor

  1

  DEER WITH EAGLE HEADS

  I like sleeping, it’s probably what I like best in this life. And maybe I like it so much because it’s so hard for me to fall asleep.

  I’m not one of those people that conks out as soon as they get into bed. I can’t sleep in a car, or in an airport chair, not even lying out on the beach half-drunk.

  But after the news I’d received a few days earlier, I really needed some sleep. Ever since I was a kid I’ve thought sleeping distanced you from the world, made you immune to its attacks. People can only harm the awake, the ones with their eyes open. When we disappear into dreams, we are safe.

  But I have a hard time falling asleep. I have to confess that I’ve always needed to sleep in a bed, and it has to be my bed. That’s why I’ve always admired those people who are deeply asleep two seconds after putting their head down on any surface. I admire them and I envy them… Is it even possible to admire something you don’t envy? Or envy something you don’t admire?

  I always need my bed, I think that’s a good definition of me, well, maybe of my sleeping habits. I’d even go so far as to say that your bed, wait, I mean your pillow, is the most important element in a person’s life.

  Sometimes I’ve asked myself that ridiculous question: What would you take with you to a desert island? And I always think: my pillow. Even though, I don’t know why, I always end up saying: a good book and an excellent wine, using those two adjectives that have lost almost all meaning.

  And the truth is that you take years in making a pillow yours; hundreds of nights to give it its special shape that is so enticing to you and lulls you off to sleep.

  In the end, you know how to fold the pillow to get the perfect night’s sleep, how to turn it so that it doesn’t get hotter than your perfect temperature. You even know how it smells after a good night. If only we could know the people we love so well, the ones who sleep beside us.

  I have to tell you, I don’t believe in love, I’m going to lay it out there, so that there’s no doubt whatsoever. I don’t believe in falling in love, I don’t believe in dying for love, I don’t believe in sighing over someone, or in not eating for some special person.

  But what I have always believed is that pillows hold a part of your nightmares inside them, part of your problems and your dreams. And that’s why we put those cases on them: so we won’t have to look at those traces of our lives. Nobody likes seeing themselves reflected in an object. Our cars, our cell phones, our clothes, they all say so much about us.

  I think I’d been sleeping for four hours that night when they knocked on the door. I almost never leave on any “open sound” while I’m sleeping.

  There are many sounds open in our lives when we disappear into dreams: the telephone, the cell phone, the intercom, the alarm clock, the dripping faucets, computers… They are sounds that never rest, that are always alert. And either you turn them off or they invade your sleep.

  I don’t know why I left the intercom on that Sunday. Well, I do know why, because I knew a package would arrive that would change my life. And I’ve never been a patient person.

  Ever since I was a kid, if I knew that something good was going to happen the next day, I couldn’t get a wink of sleep. I’d leave the blinds all the way up so that the dawn would smack me in the face and the new day would arrive so quickly that my dream would be as short as a commercial. I’ve always thought that dreams are advertisements; some long, like paid programming, others short, like movie trailers and other teasers. And they all speak of our desires. But we don’t understand them because they seem shot by David Lynch.

  But getting back to the subject, I’m impatient, I know it and I like that about myself. Even though at some point impatience became some horrible defect, I think we all know that really it’s a virtue. Someday, the impatient will inherit the earth. Or at least I hope so.

  The intercom rang again, entering my deep sleep. I remember that I was dreaming that day about deer with eagle heads. Yes, I love mixing concepts, feeling a bit like God in my dreams.

  Creating new creatures by mixing parts from other ones or having the feeling that friends who don’t even know each other get very chummy, and I even love dreaming that people who I barely know are a very intimate part of my life. And sometimes I think people use dreams to violate: to violate privacy, to violate the language they use to express themselves, to violate images at whim.

  How many times have I had sex with people in dreams and the next day not even dared to say hi to them, thinking that in my “good morning” they would hear a “what a good night we spent together.”

  Maybe the world would be a better place if we told our erotic dreams to the people who had starred in them.

  Although in the period I was living in that was impossible. Not even I could have imagined that on that day my world would change, along with everyone else’s. Maybe those kinds o
f days should be marked on the calendar in hot pink. We should have some indication of those moments after which nothing will ever be the same again, moments that punch a hole through the entire world in a similar way, creating collective memories. That way we can decide if getting up on a hot pink day is worth the trouble.

  My uncle lived through September 11, 2001; he was twenty-two years old when it happened. He says that the really shocking part was watching the second plane crash on live TV. He always wondered: “Did the second plane wait to crash just long enough for the television to have time to broadcast the collision of the first plane? Or was it supposed to hit at the same time, but arrived late?” That bothered him enormously. He wanted to know if the people behind those attacks had wanted the whole world to turn on their televisions and see the second impact, or if it was a ghastly coincidence. Sometimes, he answered himself: “If it is the former, human evil has no limits.” And I swear that then I saw his eyes flood with deep sadness.

  But going back to that night, the night the package arrived, I was dreaming about deer with eagle heads. I woke up because one of them was looking at me with its eagle head and its deer antlers, as if it were studying me and was about to attack me and rip out my eyes with its deer/eagle hooves…

  Then, all of a sudden, a red light interrupted my dream, blinking in the animal’s eyes and sounding a lot like my intercom. It took me fifteen seconds to realize my mistake and wake up. Although maybe it was less, I can’t say for sure. Time in dreams is a mystery, it’s so relative…

  But I think we should be grateful that dreams have those jumps in continuity. Although sometimes you discover one and you keep on dreaming anyway, because you don’t want to wake up. Which shows that a lot of people prefer sleeping to real life, even though they know that what they’re enjoying isn’t real.

  I’m not one of those; I don’t like to realize that what I’m feeling isn’t a dream. If I sense a glitch like that, I wake up immediately.

  The intercom rang again, but this time it didn’t interrupt my dream; I was already waking up. I looked at the clock: three in the morning, exactly when they said they would arrive.

  I got up without slippers; there are times in life when you should answer the door barefoot, to make the moment more epic.

  And this was one of them, they were bringing me the medication that would put an end to my sleeping, that would allow me to live twenty-four hours a day without having to rest…

  And as it should be, its arrival had interrupted my rest. It had ripped straight through my imagined world.

  After all, from that moment on, it would interrupt it forever.

  2

  MY MOTHER LEFT ME AND I DECIDED TO LEAVE THE WORLD

  I went over to the intercom, and through the viewfinder I saw a Thai man, about twenty-five years old, dressed casually, with an older man that looked Dutch, around seventy and wearing a gray suit. Although it could be that they were twenty and sixty, I’ve never been good at judging ages, but I am good with feelings, and at telling where people are from.

  I am totally gullible when it comes to age. If you tell me you’re 30 and it’s reasonable, I’ll believe it, even if you’re pushing forty. I think that age means little in this life. My mother used to say that your real age was in your stomach and in your head. Wrinkles are only a result of worrying and eating badly. I’ve always thought that she was right, so I’ve tried not to worry much, and eat a lot.

  I’ve noticed that people usually feel good when they tell me their age, because I answer: “I took you for less.” And people flip over that. That and commenting on their tan is what people love best. If you tell someone: “I thought you were younger and you’re very tan,” they’re over the moon.

  My cousin’s son, who’s six now, is a strange kid. Every time you ask him to guess the age of someone over twenty, he looks at them, observes them carefully and answers: “You’re ten.” Whether you’re seventy, fifty or twenty, to this kid everybody’s ten years old. That you are in double digits means he sees you as really big. It makes sense; when you only have one digit, two is the end of everything.

  When I see someone really old, I think: “he must be 100 years old,” the three digits being the be-all and end-all for someone with only two. We don’t change that much as we grow from kids to adults; the only difference is an extra digit.

  I felt my feet getting cold. But I didn’t go back to my bedroom to look for slippers; when you decide that you’re going to be epic you have to hold your ground. Otherwise, really, what kind of an epic hero are you?

  I waited impatiently for the elevator to arrive at my floor. The elevator’s red light blinked, and I was reminded of the deer with eagle heads. Their eyes sparkled too. I felt nervous. I touched my left eye lightly. I always did that when I was nervous or lying; which is why, since I realized it, I almost never do it in public.

  I felt very alone as I waited. The truth is I didn’t expect to be spending that epic moment alone.

  I think that when you are changing some essential part of yourself, in this case giving up sleeping, you shouldn’t live the moment alone. There should be someone by your side, somebody telling you, “It’s gonna be great, this is your big day.”

  Isn’t that what usually happens when you make an important decision in life? At weddings there are always people around you saying things like that. Even when you sign a mortgage at the age of thirty-five, there is somebody there to cheer you on. And, above all, right before the nurse wheels you away for an operation, there is always somebody wishing you luck.

  But I didn’t have anyone at that moment. I’ve always been a loner.

  Well, I think I should tell you about something that happened to me a few hours before. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it sooner…

  Actually I do know why: sometimes you beat around the bush in order to avoid going straight to the root. Especially if the root is painful and could bring the whole bush down.

  My mother died yesterday.

  They called me from Boston, where she was on her last tour. She was a famous choreographer who had always spent more time away than here. Always creating, always imagining worlds, always living for her art… Sometimes when I couldn’t understand why she worked so much she reminded me of a James Dean quote about life in the theater: “I don't even want to be just the best. I want to grow so tall that nobody can reach me. Not to prove anything, but just to go where you ought to go when you devote your whole life and all you are to one thing.”

  And that was what she did. The truth is that when I found out yesterday that my mother had left me, I realized that I would leave the world.

  I decided that the world had lost its best asset and I stopped believing in it, because nobody had held on to her; the world didn’t stop or even seem shocked by its loss.

  I don’t mean I want to commit suicide, or disappear from the face of the earth. Just that I needed something to change, I needed something to be different, because I could no longer live in the world as I knew it.

  My mother was gone and the pain was unbearable. I swear I had never felt anything like it.

  But don’t think that this was the first time I’d experienced death. Sometimes, the first time a loved one dies it is so intense that it seems insurmountable. I have been through several in my life. My grandmother, who always loved me deeply, died three years ago and that was also a heavy blow. She barely remembered anything in her final years, but she would get so excited when I came to visit her. She was so happy to see me that she shouted with excitement. I felt so loved… I cried a lot over her death.

  I remember how one night, on Capri (I love islands; I only vacation on islands, the smaller the better; they make me feel alive), my girlfriend at the time woke up in the middle of the night and saw me crying inconsolably, remembering my grandmother. It had only been two months since her death. My girlfriend looked at me with a tenderness that I wouldn’t see again in another human being for quite a long time after. She hugged me tig
htly (it wasn’t a sex hug, or a friend hug, more like a pain hug). I let myself go limp. I was so devastated that I let her squeeze me tightly. Even though I usually never let that happen; I like to be the hugger, not the huggee.

  But she hugged me tightly and whispered, “It’s okay, Marcos, she knew you loved her.” That made me cry even harder.

  I burst into tears. I love that expression. You don’t say someone has burst into a meal or burst into a walk. You burst into tears or into laughter. I think it’s worth bursting into pieces for those feelings.

  I couldn’t get back to sleep that night on Capri. She did, she slept in my arms, as I held her. My tears dried and a few months later it was our relationship that ended.

  I thought that on the day we broke up she would mention that moment, when she held me and calmed me down. If she had I would have stayed with her for six more months. I know that sounds cold and calculating. An embrace for disconsolate sobbing on Capri equals six extra months of a loveless relationship? The truth is that that’s what it is worth to me; I calculated it. Not mathematically, but emotionally. But she didn’t bring it up and I was grateful.

  I’ve always thought that I lost her because I was stupid, although I never told her that. I know that later she got married on Capri and I felt that somehow she was giving a nod to me, but maybe it was just a coincidence.

  But I never told her that she was the person I had loved the most, and that was why I lost her. There are so many things that if said out loud would reveal secrets so intense, we might not be able to own up to them.

  I still haven’t been able to tell anyone that once in a while I cry inconsolably over the loss of my grandmother. I don’t know if people would understand it; I don’t know if people would try to understand it.