ONE LATE EVENING IN ARGENTINA.
On the bridge.
I knew it was going to happen. I just didn’t expect it so soon.
The first part I remember now only in fragments: glow from the modern apartments reflected all kaleidoscope-like on the water. The smell of a cigarette, freshly put out. Some drunk man’s boot on the floorboards of the last boat that came in from the river for the evening. The bridge.
And, of course, I remember the lock.
It was in my hand, and my hand was in hers. Warm, nervous.
“Where’d you get that from?” she asked me.
“I know, it’s cheesy. Even worse I thought of this in advance, isn’t it?” She just giggled but waited for me to answer the question.
“Oh, I got it from my grandma,” I said. “Found it in an old trunk in her attic when she passed.”
“You think she used it with your grandpa?”
“God, I hope so. Would be worse if it wasn’t with my grandpa, wouldn’t it?” She thought that was true. I wasn’t paying much attention to anything besides her eyes. And her lips. And her hair. And her nose that, if you looked at it just right, would remind you of a gentle ski-slope.
“Well,” she said after a moment. “Are we going to lock it?”
Back in my apartment, later that evening. She’d come back with me, then gone home. It was later than late — the sun would be up in no time.
That’s when I saw it. Later, I’d be most confused that I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t jump, didn’t scream. I saw it and I knew what it was, and yet I sat there and just looked at it. Stared. Dumb-founded. I even spoke to it.
“Hello,” I said. “So soon? That was only our fourth date.”
It smiled at me with rows of teeth. Too many teeth, and not lovely teeth but razor-teeth, eating-teeth, murdering-teeth. Teeth the color of old pig’s fat, left in the mud for a few weeks and dredged up by a sick dog that went looking where he shouldn’t have. For a moment, it seemed as though it would laugh.
That cannot be undone, it said.
I sat silent on the bed, half-clothed. I did not know what to say. If I can remember correctly now, the main thing going through my mind at the time was that while this felt like how I’d imagined it — butterflies first then something stronger, sweeter, more honey-like, more permanent — this certainly did not look the way I thought it would.
It looked like a monster.
“Why should I care?” I said. “I’m in love. Welcome.”
Teeth, and a smile that was far wider than it should have been.
* * *
Today is my wedding day. Everyone we know is here, Melissa and I, at least everyone we (meaning, Melissa’s parents) had the budget to invite. There are nearly six-hundred people. I always thought weddings were performative but have never thought it more than I do now, standing on the podium, beaming to the crowd. I briefly wonder if this is what Freddie Mercury or Elvis Presley might have felt like, on the grand stage. I relish my time with the greats.
Now we are supposed to do our vows. She says hers. I hardly register them.
Then it is time for the kiss.
She leans in, and I lean in, and I kiss my wife. I close my eyes.
I am on the bridge, twelve years ago, with a twenty-two year old girl. Now it comes back to me clearly: we are in the bridge near Puerto Madero, in Buenos Aires. The tall apartment buildings are monstrosities, but the rich people like them, and the bridge connects this part of the city to the part that looks like alternate-universe Paris, in a universe where people made more barbecues and ate sweeter desserts and danced just a little bit more, and smoked just a little bit less. There is a couple on the other side of the bridge, and the man twists his boot to put out the cigarette. The haze curls around the two of them and I pretend they are not there. It is just us on the bridge. Her eyes are almond and her hair coffee-brown and I know in this moment that no matter what happens, no matter if I live or if I die or if she ends up with someone else or if I do, no matter if after too many fernet & cokes she forgets me, that we are no longer two strangers who met because I canceled another date on a whim — we are in love. And we will be that way forever.
I pull out the lock from my pocket.
It is past-midnight, now. My wife is asleep in the master bedroom. We leave tomorrow for our honeymoon. I stumble up, turn on my phone flashlight, look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are sunken and my eyes look hollowed-out. Just the light. I look at my wife once more, and I walk to the record shelf in our closet. I pull the custom one I had made of Ojalá, by Silvio Rodriguez, and the false wall pulls out. The stench leaks out from the other side, and I enter quickly so as not to wake my wife.
I walk into the middle of the room and light the candles. Write the proper words on the floor. I kneel down and put my arms above my head, pleading.
It arrives. And it smiles a smile that is far too wide.
“Please,” I say to it. “It has been twelve years.”
It shrugs.
I blow out the candles and close the secret room, willing myself to forget about it. I get back into the bed with my wife and pull the covers around both of us. I fall asleep, and I dream.
We are going out for a merienda in the south part of the city, and her arm is around my neck, and my arm around her waist…