Lights On

Chapter 2

Máximo

I’m cleaning the grill when Sebastián comes to help me with a trash bag.

“You think it worked? He does seem better, he even ate.” he says.

I scrape up the leftover grease with paper towels. I like the cooking part, the cleaning part of asados is as annoying as my friend. “Of course he ate, boludo. Who wouldn’t eat an asado?”

“A depressed person? I don’t know man! I’ve never seen him like this. Not even when he quit working for his dad so he could do that Mercado Libre developer bootcamp.”

“He avoided that talk for weeks, I even thought he was going to work both positions at the same time.”

“I know. I think Pablo is convincing him to go out later. Look.” Pablo is in full salesperson mode, pitching going for drinks as if his contract as a friend depended on it.

“I asked around, I got called a weirdo a few times but I got confirmation. His ex won’t be at that bar.”

I nod and look at Sebastián with concern. The lengths he’s going to make Joel comfortable must mean he’s even worse than I thought. He would know since they’ve lived together since college. I throw the paper towel on the bag Sebastián is holding and go wash my hands. “Can you finish up cleaning? I’m going to order some dessert.”

Sebastián finishes cleaning while the rest of our friends make after-dinner conversation. Truth is, we’ve all been worried about Joel. I order ice-cream which arrives in record time.

I’m riding the elevator down, dreading the shower I’m going to have to take at Joel’s. My place is a twenty-minute car ride away—I should have grabbed more than just clean clothes before I left, but I didn’t.

The doors open and a woman steps in. She looks amazing. Long legs, tanned skin, the strap on her dress looks like it has slipped, and she doesn’t adjust it. I don’t think she’s noticed. Either that or she’s the kind of person who doesn’t fuss.

We exchange pleasantries, I notice her accent and I like it so much that I think of more than ten different lines, excuses and outcomes to keep talking to her. None of them are good so I decide against that. I try to distract myself with my phone so I don’t think about my I-just-came-from-a-grill look and smoke scent that’s probably filling the whole elevator.

Luckily for her nostrils the elevator opens and I let her go first. I try—and fail—to not look at her dress all the way to the door. By the time the bag is in my hand and I’m back at the elevators I hold it for her. I say to myself that’s what gentlemen do or what porteños do for visitors. The elevator ride up is quiet, and it doesn’t feel weird. It should feel weird, but it isn’t.

The shower at Joel’s is fine. The towels are not. I dry off with what feels like a kitchen rag and put on the change of clothes I brought—dark jeans, white shirt. Sebastián throws me a look on the way out the door that I choose not to interpret.

The bar is four blocks away. We walk it in the kind of January heat that makes you regret leaving the house and grateful you did, both at once. Pablo is still working on Joel, who’s letting himself be worked on, which I take as a good sign. By the time we get there, our group has a corner of the bar staked out and I’m two beers in before I realize I haven’t checked my phone in an hour.

That’s a good night, by my recent metrics.

Around midnight I peel off to the bathroom. The bar is packed; I weave through people with my hand on Joel’s shoulder briefly as I pass, the way you do without thinking. On my way back I take the long route to give the table a wide berth—Pablo is doing an impression of someone, I don’t need to know who—and that’s when I see her.

The woman from the elevator. Sitting alone at the bar, at the curve where the counter bends, an espresso martini in front of her.

I stop walking.

I don’t mean to. My body just makes the executive decision before my brain catches up. Don’t be the guy who stares, I tell myself and start walking again; more or less in the right direction.

She’s looking at her glass, not the room. Her hair is down. The dress is the same dress from the elevator, which means she came straight from there, which means she didn’t change for the bar, which means—what, exactly? I run three theories and discard them all. I’ve been standing at an angle to the bar for too long. I need to either go over or go back to my friends. Going back to my friends suddenly feels like the worse option of the two.

I rehearse so many options in the ten steps it takes to reach her that I’m amazed my head doesn’t set off a fire alarm. “Sorry, hi. I know this is a weird thing to say to a stranger, but I think we shared an elevator today.”

She turns. A faint smile, “I think we did. Are you here to let me know your elevator ride went okay?”

I relax and smile too. That’s a yes. Or at least not a no.

“It did. No need for hand holding or sherpas. I actually made it on my own.”

God, I must be the first person in the world to associate an elevator ride with sherpas, what’s wrong with me? I have so little game lately that I should be a case study.

“Sherpas? You really are from around here, aren’t you? You would perish in the mountains,” she huffs a small laugh and her dress strap slips again, my eyes go there and hers too. She leaves it like that. She’s not trying to make this easier than it is.

“And you’re not. Córdoba?”

“Yeah. What gave it away?”

We both laugh. Did I just win that one? Run the read. Open body, leaning slightly toward me, accent loose, eyes still on mine when she stops laughing. Green lights across the board. I nod to the stool next to her.

“Can I?”

“Of course,” she says and I sit. I order a whiskey sour when the bartender passes through. Her accent is so melodic it makes my chest buzz. I need to keep her talking. I decide to start with the most obvious question.

“So you’re visiting or you’re here for work?”

She fans her hair off her neck and shifts in her seat so she’s facing me a little, it’s loud in here so we need to lean in to hear each other, or maybe she just wants to be close? “Occupational therapist. I was here for a conference. And you? Porteño?”

“Born and raised. Totally different field, though. I’m QA. Software.”

Her brows raise a little, “Oh, that’s interesting. So both of us assess what needs attention and try to help fix it.”

“That’s actually pretty clever,” I laugh. “What would you fix in this setting?”

“The music is a bit loud. I know, I’m a grandma,” she smiles and plays with the stem of her glass before drinking. “What would you fix?”

My eyes go to her strap and I drag them back up. Twice is already too many. “I would rewind time and take a shower before going into that elevator.”

“What? No. Asado smell is the best smell in the world. Zero shame,” she glances at my clothes and I thank the heavens I wore something nice.

The bartender slides my whiskey sour in front of me without looking up, already on to the next order. The glass is cold enough to bead. I take a sip and feel her watching me do it. Not staring, just present the way she’s been present this whole conversation, like nothing is incidental. I set the glass down between us so it’s closer to her than to me. She doesn’t comment but she notices. I can tell by the smallest tilt at the corner of her mouth.

“Do you work on-site or remote?”

“Remote, I work for an American company.” I take a sip. “So, isn’t it weird that we know what we do and where we live, but not our names?”

She chuckles. Low and small, mostly to herself. I wonder if it'd be weird to send myself a voice message of her laugh.

“Why don’t we play a little before such big revelations?”

I raise a brow and sip my whisky, “okay, what are you thinking?”

She rests her elbow on the bar and looks at me, she smells of coconut and the espresso martini. “There’s a game called red flags. Two green, one red.”

“About ourselves?”

“Exactly. If we make it through still wanting to be sitting here, we earn names.”

“Should I go first?” I say and my grip tightens on my glass. I put it down.

“Go ahead.”

My mind starts to work. Should I strategize? It’ll kill the purpose if I do. Besides, she’ll like the honesty since she did before. I decide to go for it, “I’m here because my friend got dumped six weeks ago and we’ve been taking him out, slowly, until he stops looking like a ghost.”

“That’s one,” she says, picking a piece of lint from my shirt. Her fingers linger there. I guess she liked the honesty after all.

The jukebox starts up between sets and I recognize the song in about three notes. Babasónicos, Los Calientes, which means Sebastián has gotten to the jukebox terminal and is making a point. I don’t turn around. Whatever face he’s making across the bar, I don’t need to see it. I’m being observed, baby, I want to say. I don’t say it. Some things are funnier kept to yourself.

“My sister Marilina put me on a form as my nephew Nico’s emergency contact. He’s seven, it’s adorable and a lot of pressure, and honestly I’m still slightly amazed she trusts me with it. And I’m Máximo Cohen. That’s three. I’m being generous because I want this to go well.”

She blushes. Actually blushes. My stomach does something I haven’t felt in a long time.

“Okay, my turn,” she says and raises one finger up. “I keep my plants alive. Even the dramatic ones,” she lifts a second finger. “I’m thirty-three, and I know what I want, mostly… most of the time. I’m done with the version of myself that pretends not to. And I’m Alma Maffei. That’s three.”

When she lowers her hand I put mine close, she grazes her pinky with mine and I take that as a sign. I hold her hand and the contact is electric. Pace yourself, Máximo. This is good, I want to enjoy every second.

“So no running. Yet. I actually liked yours,” I say and put a strand of hair behind her ear. “I guess we should keep going with the bad things?”

She nods and holds my gaze, her eyes are warm. “See? It was a fun game, and I’m not at all regretting including the bad thing in there.”

I laugh softly and squeeze her hand a little. “You shouldn’t regret it. I’m having a good time.”

She squeezes my hand back and we both go quiet for a second. The reds. The greens were easy, anyone can show their best version of themselves; we both just did, and we both liked what the other one showed. The reds are what the game is for. I take a breath I hope she doesn’t notice.

“Let me go first again,” I look up, thinking of what my bad thing would be, then I continue. “I work for an American company so my schedule is broken. I’m online when most people are at dinner. I miss things. Birthdays, weddings sometimes. My friends have stopped being polite about it.”

She nods and takes her turn almost instantly, “I live seven hundred kilometers from here. I’m leaving tomorrow night. That’s not a personality flag, but it is the actual situation, and I think it counts.”

I’d already done the Córdoba math. I just hadn’t done the tomorrow math. Here’s what I notice, though: I don’t care. Or I care, but I want this—her—anyway.

“I already ran the Córdoba numbers,” I say, brushing her knuckles with my thumb. “Tomorrow night is the part I was hoping you’d lie about.”

“I’m not going to lie about it.” She holds my gaze. “I still want to kiss you tonight.”

I don’t let go of her hand but I move my other hand to her face. I brush her cheekbone and she closes her eyes. She looks so beautiful, with her mouth slightly open, that I stop thinking and just lean. I brush her lips with mine, her lips are soft and something in my chest unlocks. I move her hand to my waist and let mine slide up her arm to her shoulder, where I touch the dress strap I’ve looked at fifty times tonight. I am not thinking. This is, I notice distantly, a new experience.

She controls the rhythm, so at first our lips are just pressing against one another. But then she opens for me and her tongue finds mine. And that’s when the control I was trying to hold on to slips. Our tongues swirl together, slowly at first. She presses her hand against my waist and pulls me in. I deepen the kiss until she moans into my mouth. When we pull apart for air her lips are swollen, her cheeks are flushed, and the strap I touched has slipped further down. There’s only one option in my mind after this. I want to keep going. Keep talking to her, kissing her, walking her home, whatever she wants. I kiss her cheekbone and brow before nuzzling her temple.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” I murmur.

“Yeah, I’d love that,” she says and reaches for her bag. “Let me text my friends so they’ll know I’m okay. They’re here, somewhere.”

That’s a surprise. I thought she was alone, which now that I think about it, is a thing I probably should have wondered about.

“I’ll do the same with my friends. I think they know where I am, though.”

She looks up from her phone, smiling.

“Did they go past on the way to the bathroom or something?”

“I haven’t seen them but Sebas put Los Calientes on the jukebox earlier. That’s his not-so-subtle way of telling me he’s enjoying the show.”

Me: I know tonight was about Joel but I met someone. Is he okay?

Sebas: Oh we know. And we know you know we know.

Sebas: Joel is on his third beer. We’ve got this.

Sebas: On a scale of “low priority ticket” to “critical severity bug,” how much anxiety are you currently experiencing?

Me: Not going to answer that now. See you tomorrow.

I hold the door for her and the heat hits us both. She laughs, that of course laugh and slides her hand into mine like she’s done it a hundred times.

We start walking.