Divorce Is in the Air: A Novel by Gonzalo Torné Read Free Book Online Page B

interested in; we’d been true friends, and then his father was ravaged by a fast kind of cancer. He had to give up his sleepaway camps and English lessons, and the fact that he stayed on the team and at that school was thanks to scholarships that all the other families subsidized, and which required him to get the best grades. To me it was normal for a housekeeper to heat up my milk at breakfast—I couldn’t imagine what it meant to grow up poor, trying hard to be grateful, with all the exhaustion that entails. Jacobo was a bit dense, but he made up for it with tenacity. He started passing everything, and in exercises that required only perseverance he was unbeatable. On the court we understood each other; he was short, wolfish, well developed for his age, and he ran around like a dervish. Every time I caught a rebound I knew he’d be there, hounding the rival defense. He was the kind misfortune can’t cut down, the kind who ends up bowed but tougher.
    When I got home I looked up Jacobo on Facebook. I hadn’t found him before because he used his first initial and his father’s aristocratic last name. In his profile picture he was wearing a suit and showing off his watch. Three weeks later we ran into each other by chance. Jacobo was coming from his dentist; his face was so numb his voice sounded padded. He shook my hand warmly. He was still in good shape—short guys are really made for the gym. I guessed he made fourteen payments of about 4,500 euros, plus a company car and expenses: that’s the kind of security he exuded. Something masculine drove me to present myself on his level, and I told him about my cheese business. I got a little too into it, and then I had to listen to myself reciting selected fragments of the ruin of my most recent marriage. I remember it well, because I illustrated the tale with a passport-sized photo of you that I don’t think I’ve ever taken out of my wallet. I think I bored him. If it had been up to me we would have met up again. I suggested it but he didn’t show much interest.

    Pedro-María also updated me on Veiga, on Lacayo and on Portusach…that nutter had looked up relationship and work information on every one of our classmates I could think of. I don’t remember what lie I made up when he asked me what I did for a living.
    “You have no idea how happy I am to know that you’ve stayed true to our spirit.”
    I took a deep, reckless gulp of wine. We’d been schoolmates, we’d ascended the podium together to have medals hung around our necks (though if you passed him the ball in the low post, he’d spin with the grace of a pro at the speed of a paralytic, then they’d take the ball from him and block him—he had a silken wrist he could barely shoot with). Together we learned about the rich array of sexual possibilities (he told me what condoms were all about, I explained to him why it was cool to smile when the teacher said “sixty-nine”), and we were still there, together, seated and tense, the first time we shared the classroom with girls: the soft features, the sweet perfume. We went to buy our first jackets together, felt the first sways of drunkenness, commented on the international news in the paper, simulating a virile interest in the world. What I mean is, he was no alien to me, we’d grown from the same vine, and not enough time had passed nor would life last long enough to exhaust that shared memory.
    “I opened a Facebook account to find interesting people, Johan, and I can really talk to you.”
    Saw just sat there looking at me with that cloying smile. I waited for one of those automatic replies that can save a situation, but I couldn’t string together a coherent phrase. I think that’s called blanking, and it’s an odd feeling.
    How do people lose each other?
    It’s not deliberate. You don’t know if you want to hear from them, you don’t know if they’ll want to hear from you.
    You go traveling, you change neighborhoods, you have a