Paris

Dear Ana:

            Please excuse the delay. There are some things you keep putting off and in the end they don’t work out.           

            Many thanks for the gift. I know it was your idea. You told me to always keep it on my desk. It’s been nearly twenty years and the little frog is still there.

            I remember the drama group. I used to be counting the days till Saturday. It was at two o’clock, remember? And Buenos Aires went dead after one. In the morning I used to go shopping or fix things or help around the house. We’d eat around twelve thirty ‑ one o’clock. It was so different taking a bus at ten to two. Yes, I’d get to the club in ten minutes. The streets would be deserted, shops closed. A sort of peace between shopping hours and evening programs.

            At the club there would be you, Gabriela ‑‑remember her?–, Gabrielita, Beatriz, Nora, Cora, Marcos, Ruben. And what joy when Eduardo arrived because then we were sure of having a class.

            I enjoyed loosening up tense muscles after a week of school and parents to the tune of “Satisfaction”. And the exercises, improvisation sessions, the play itself. It was so hard to let go, I wanted to but it was so difficult (“Jump in head first, Daniel”, Eduardo would tell me).

            I recall my lack of experience, I remember when you came to my place that day (now I realize that it was easy to see through your excuse) and my parents were out. And you started playing around, physical games, climbing on me as if I was a horse. And I was so naive and I was afraid of you or in awe of you because you were three years older and I felt I was so young, who could want to love me? Only years later I realized how excited you were, how you were yelling to me to make love. And we didn’t.

            Do you remember how one October night in 76 I saw you drinking coffee in a bar? With your boyfriend, who was a fascist. I was afraid, fear of 76. I was about to leave the country. And I had a long face. You asked what was wrong. I lied to you that I’d just broken up with a girl. And do you know why I’m writing to you? To tell you it wasn’t true. But it was.

            I had just come from Marcela’s house. No, you don’t know her. And just as I hadn’t realized how you had wanted to go to bed with me, I didn’t realize that I loved Marce. And I had to leave. No, we weren’t going out at that time, but I wish we had been. And I lied to you, I hadn’t broken up with her, we had never been a couple.

            But I didn’t lie to you. Yesterday my wife asked me if she could give the frog to one of our daughter’s friends who had been eyeing it. “No, Marce,” I said, “there’s a story behind that frog.”

This story appears in Still…life, Mosaic Press, Canada. Copyright David Mibashan.