“It’s hot,” said Gaspar.
The boy was sweating, his hair wet and his cheeks flushed. Juan touched his back. His shirt was soaked.
“Wait here,” he said, and went out to the car to get a dry shirt. Then he led Gaspar to the café’s restroom to wet his head, dry his sweat, and change his shirt, which smelled a little like diesel.
When they got back to the table, their breakfast and the woman were waiting for them; Juan asked for another glass of water for Gaspar.
“There’s a lovely campground near here, if you want to cool off in the river.”
“Thanks, but we don’t have time,” said Juan, trying to sound friendly. He unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt.
“You boys traveling alone? My goodness, the eyes on this child! What’s your name, son?”
Juan wanted to say Gaspar, don’t answer, but the boy told her his name and the woman pounced, asking in an insincere, childish voice:
“And where’s your mommy?”
Juan felt the boy’s pain in his entire body. It was primitive and wordless, raw and vertiginous. He had to clutch on to the table and make an effort to break away from his son and that pain. Gaspar couldn’t answer and looked to his father for help. He’d only eaten half a croissant. Juan thought he would need to teach the boy not to cling like that, not to him or to anyone else.
“Ma’am.” Juan tried to control himself, but it sounded threatening. “What the hell do you care?”
“I was just making conversation, that’s all,” she replied, offended.
“Oh, well, that’s just great. You get mad because you won’t get to have your idiotic conversation, and we have to put up with the stupid prying of a gossipy old lady. You really want to know? My wife died three months ago. She was hit by a bus that dragged her two blocks.”
“I am so sorry.”
“No. You’re not sorry, you don’t feel anything, because you didn’t know her and you don’t know us.”
The woman started to say something else, but then she walked away, sniffling loudly. Gaspar was still looking to Juan, but his eyes were dry. He was a little scared.
“It’s okay. Finish eating.”
Juan himself nibbled his cheese sandwich; he wasn’t hungry, but he couldn’t take his medication on an empty stomach. The woman came back looking contrite, her shoulders hunched forward. She was carrying two glasses of orange juice. On the house, she said, and apologized. I certainly never imagined such a tragedy. Gaspar was playing with his red toy car, a new model with doors and a trunk that opened—a gift from his uncle Luis, sent from Brazil. Juan made Gaspar finish his hot chocolate and then got up to pay at the counter. The woman was still apologizing, and Juan felt drained. When she reached out to take the money, he held on to her wrist. He thought about marking her with a symbol that would drive her mad, that would put the idea in her head to skin her grandson’s feet or cook her dog in a stew. But he held back. He didn’t want to tire himself. Keeping the secret up around this trip with his son was already wearing him out, and there would be consequences. So he left the woman alone.
Gaspar was waiting for him in the doorway, wearing his father’s dark glasses. When Juan tried to take them off him, the boy ran outside laughing. He caught up with him near the car and picked him up: Gaspar was light and long, though he would never be as tall as his father. Juan decided they would find a place to have lunch early, before the long stretch to Entre Ríos.
The day had been exhausting despite the utter ordinariness of the journey: light traffic, a delicious lunch at a roadside grill, and a nap in the shade of the trees, the banks cooled by a breeze from the river. The grill’s owner had also been curious and tried to make small talk, but since there were no questions about his wife, Juan had decided to chat while he drank a little wine. After his nap and during the whole drive to Esquina he’d felt bad: the heat was extreme. But now, as he asked for a room and tried to make the front desk worker understand that he needed a double bed for him and another single one for his son and money was no object, he realized that it was also possible he would need assistance. He paid up front and let someone else carry the bags up the stairs. Once in the room, he turned on the TV to entertain Gaspar and lay down on the bed. He recognized his symptoms: his arrhythmia was out of control. He could hear the murmur, that sound of effort, and felt the nausea of confused valves. His chest hurt, and it was hard to breathe.
“Gaspar, hand me the bag,” he said.
He took out the monitor and checked his blood pressure; it was low, which was good. He lay diagonally, the only way his feet could fit on the mattress. Before taking his pills and trying to rest—to sleep, if possible—he pulled a sheet of paper from the hotel pad on the bedside table and, using a pen that said on the side “Hotel Panambí—Esquina,” he wrote down a number.
“Son, listen closely. If I don’t wake up, I want you to call this number.”
Gaspar’s eyes widened, and then his face crumpled.
“Don’t cry. This is just in case I don’t wake up, that’s all, but I am going to wake up, okay?”
He felt his heart skip as if it were accelerating with a gear change. Would he be able to sleep? He brought his fingers to his neck. One-seventy, maybe more. He had never wanted to die as much as he did now, in this provincial hotel room, and he had never been more afraid of leaving his son alone.
“That’s your uncle Luis’s number. You have to press nine and then you’ll hear a dial tone, and only then you call your uncle’s number. If I don’t wake up, shake me. And if I still don’t wake up when you shake me, you call him. Him first, then the man downstairs in the lobby, understand?”
Gaspar said yes, and he clutched the number in his fist as he lay down beside Juan—close, but far enough away not to disturb him.
Juan woke up sweaty from a dreamless sleep. It was nighttime, but the room was dimly lit: Gaspar had turned on the bedside lamp and was reading. Juan looked at him without immediately stirring: the boy had taken his book from the bag and seemed to be waiting, the paper with the phone number on the pillow beside him. Gaspar, he called, and the boy reacted with care: he put the book down, crawled over to Juan, and asked if he was okay. Just like an adult, just like he’d heard so many adults ask him when they took care of him. Juan sat up and waited a minute before answering. His heart had returned to a normal rhythm, or to what was relatively normal for him. He wasn’t agitated, wasn’t dizzy. I’m okay, yes, he said, and he sat Gaspar on his lap, hugged him, caressed his dark hair.
Gaspar pointed to Juan’s watch.
“What time is it?”
“You know how to tell time, you tell me.”
“Twelve-thirty.”
There wouldn’t be anywhere to eat still open in that town. Sure, he could walk downtown, break into some closed shop or restaurant, and take whatever he wanted—opening locked doors was very simple. But if anyone witnessed him doing it, he would have to deal with them. And all those small acts built up until they became a long and exhausting chain of footprints to erase, eyes to shut, memories to make disappear. He’d been taught this years ago: it was better to try to live as normally as possible. He could do things that were impossible for most people, but every conquest, every exercise of will to achieve what he desired came with a price. In matters of little importance, it wasn’t a price worth paying. Now, he just had to convince whoever was working on the night desk to fix them some food. He didn’t feel hungry, and surely Gaspar didn’t either. But the boy hadn’t eaten, Juan had forgotten to take the sodas out of the car, and he had to behave like a father.