Brendán Godínez explained his situation to Benet, without hiding details from him.
He listened to him attentively for a long time, hardly introducing subsections;
he only mumbled something unintelligible from time to time, halfway between "Uah" and "Beh", while outlining a smile between amused and exasperated.
After finishing Godínez's story, he pronounced: “First of all, I don't know why you get involved with a Catholic.
With the aggravating circumstance that she is not a Spanish of my youth, whose fervor was almost forced, but an American of today.
You have put your foot in a good puddle.
Second, you've ignored the scholar's undeniably flippant air.
After three hours with her, it became clear to me that she liked nothing more than feeling desired, and that this need knew no limits.
Do you know if she has been with more men this season?
"I want to believe not, but I can't rule it out," answered Brendán.
"Thirdly," Benet continued, "before the alarm of a possible pregnancy, he proposes to you with exaggerated anticipation a series of consequences that are still hypothetical, and you go and admit that hypothesis that is currently unfounded."
"And what do I do, Don Juan?"
That's what his friends and even his children used to call him.
Benet poured himself half a whiskey more, lit another cigarette, put his thumb under his armpit as if it were a small whip and answered, smoothing his mustache with an English comb: “You'll know.
But, having been as stupid as you in my youth with women, I can tell you what my current self would do now;
My old self would probably be just as gullible and distraught as you are now."
"I'm worth the opinion of your you now, please."
“Tu tú' sounds terrible”, thought Godínez as soon as he let it out, but Benet corrected you if you claimed to be “self-absorbed”, alleging that this was an inconsistency and that if anything you would be “self-absorbed”, that is, “absorbed”.
Better not to enter with him on the path of precision, because that was a path without end.
Before giving him the floor, the not-so-young man added with the confidence he had in him: “Although sometimes it seems to me that your current you is still naive with women.
You don't usually notice anything."
"Oh no?" Benet replied, amused by the impertinence.
“It may be, salty, it may be that I do not realize what is mine.
But I assure you that of yours yes”.
"Well, come on," Brendán urged impatiently.
“That young scholar, scholar as she is, has no idea if she is pregnant and most likely she is not, neither by you nor by Saint John Chrysostom.
She's probing you, and if you go with her, she'll ruin your life for a few years.
I don't think she wants to marry you (you're not that much of a catch, either).
He wants to test how far you would be willing, if only to inscribe another notch on the stock."
"Notch?
Notch of what?
We've already gone to bed, at a bad time."
“How clumsy you are, Godínez.
If it's as traditional as you say, I'm sorry that her notches are not female Casanova.
Thousands could be added, the truth is that she is very pretty.
She but of individuals who have proposed to her, regardless of the circumstances.
A diplomat on her list will seem like a great achievement to her.
And so she will tell herself and her friends in Philadelphia or wherever: 'A Spanish diplomat went crazy for me and wanted to lead me to the altar.'
How was it for you in bed?
Is she finicky or the opposite?
Many Americans are finicky."
Godínez made him participate in a significant detail, to which Don Juan sentenced: “Did he do that?
In what perversions do you incur those of your generation.
Well, then, one of two things: either he liked humiliation a lot or he pretended like the Evil One”.
"So?"
Godínez yearned for clear instructions.
“If I were you — the you and me now — I would run away and put her on an intercontinental plane.”
“What if she ends up pregnant?”
“The same thing, and there Del Biombo manages with the false child.
You'll see how there won't be."
How was it for you in bed?
Is she finicky or the opposite?
Many Americans are finicky."
Godínez made him participate in a significant detail, to which Don Juan sentenced: “Did he do that?
In what perversions do you incur those of your generation.
Well, then, one of two things: either he liked humiliation a lot or he pretended like the Evil One”.
"So?"
Godínez yearned for clear instructions.
“If I were you — the you and me now — he would run away and put her on an intercontinental plane.”
"What if she ends up pregnant?"
“The same thing, and there Del Biombo manages with the false child.
You'll see how there won't be."
How was it for you in bed?
Is she finicky or the opposite?
Many Americans are finicky."
Godínez made him participate in a significant detail, to which Don Juan sentenced: “Did he do that?
In what perversions do you incur those of your generation.
Well, then, one of two things: either he liked humiliation a lot or he pretended like the Evil One”.
"So?"
Godínez yearned for clear instructions.
“If I were you — the you and me now — he would run away and put her on an intercontinental plane.”
"What if she ends up pregnant?"
“The same thing, and there Del Biombo manages with the false child.
You'll see how there won't be."
Well, then, one of two things: either he liked humiliation a lot or he pretended like the Evil One”.
"So?"
Godínez yearned for clear instructions.
“If I were you — the you and me now — he would run away and put her on an intercontinental plane.”
"And if she ends up being pregnant?"
“The same thing, and there Del Biombo manages with the false child.
You'll see how there won't be."
Well, then, one of two things: either he liked humiliation a lot or he pretended like the Evil One”.
"So?"
Godínez yearned for clear instructions.
“If I were you — the you and me now — he would run away and put her on an intercontinental plane.”
"And if she ends up being pregnant?"
“The same thing, and there Del Biombo manages with the false child.
You'll see how there won't be."
Brendán Godínez left Pisuerga Street convinced, and decided to walk home.
However, in the Castellana doubts returned.
He did not see himself capable of disregarding the creature, which Del Biombo would give up for adoption if he did not remedy it.
Maybe a horrible family of biblical farmers like the one in Fatal Saturday, a movie he liked, with Victor Mature and Lee Marvin.
He was already in a hurry to call Catherine when he saw her leaving the Hilton Hotel, or whatever she was called at the time.
She was not going alone, but hugging a guy with hideous expensive clothes and appearance of harboring a dirty spirit, which she knew.
It took him a few seconds to recognize him: he was the famous columnist Pírfano de Lerma, whose gossip devoured gossips and perverts from all walks of life.
Knowing his fame as a voracious womanizer, and even more so,
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