Godínez did not sneak away with a view to later catching Del Biombo in a big lie, but, like a cuckolded husband at the beginning of the century, he approached the unexpected couple.
Catherine, seeing him, got rid of her arm that Pírphano was passing around her shoulders and smiled at him as if nothing had happened.
The columnist didn't know Brendán, but he guessed from his angry face and stayed a little behind the scholar, just in case.
Godínez couldn't explain his own attitude: he wanted to lose sight of Del Biombo, and there was nothing better for that than to screw her over to someone else, even better if it was a subject he literarily despised.
And yet he judged that the spectacular scholar was still his girlfriend or something similar, and that as long as they did not formally sever their relationship, it was inadmissible for her to leave a luxury hotel in male company,
So to speak.
He also thought that she was carrying his child in her womb, whose future would have been violated by repulsive coitus.
So to his treacherous lips came this stupidity:
"Gives you no shame?
You're pregnant and yet you come from a room with this guy.
What do you think the creature must have thought?
That if her mother does this when she is not yet born, what she will not do in the future.
She'll imagine you being able to leave her alone in her crib and walk away…” She hesitated.
"To the bowling alley".
Brendán was still guided by the common places of American movies, in which the frivolous characters go bowling every evening.
"I'm not pregnant.
The delay has come to an end.”
Brendan didn't know whether to embrace her with joy or what, because he felt her lift a terrible weight off of her, such as she had never experienced in her healthy young life.
“And why didn't you tell me right away?” She reproached him.
“I just found out.
I went to the bathroom and then I checked."
He said this in English so that Pírfano would not understand.
And so it was,
because the theoretical professor of translation knew how to read several languages, but was unable to speak and understand them.
He was able to understand Proust in French and the final three novels of Henry James in English, but if someone greeted him with a simple “
How do you do
?”, he was speechless, because that phrase, pronounced, could not be associated with the same written phrase.
In any case, when observing the thick vein that Brendán had sprouted on his forehead, and realizing that his constitution was athletic, the cowardice that had accompanied him since childhood prevailed over everything and he hastened to give explanations. :
“Hey, kid,” he said, feigning condescension, “don't get me wrong.
We come from the bar, where Catherine has given me a high level interview”.
From his column he was a verbal pimp, but his violence or threat filled her with dread.
As soon as she said "boy", she repented, in case the following was a slap from the athletic veiny.
He did not deign to speak to him, but he escaped: “Now, the interview is horizontal, right?
Or vertical but in the sink, come on”.
He turned to his girlfriend who was not pregnant with him: "What, are you coming with me or are you staying with that chincharelo?"
Catherine took his hand and they began to walk towards the roundabout of Castelar.
As she walked away, she turned her head and with one finger made the gesture of “I'll call you later” to Pírfano.
Once the two of them alone, in a cafeteria on Miguel Ángel street, Brendán couldn't help it: "I've seen you make the phone gesture, don't think so."
"Sure," she answered.
“To apologize for the scene.
You are a miscreant.
Of course I have interviewed him.
His success is a case in point, it's exceptional, and he's an interesting man."
Godínez exploded: “How are you going to be interested in Benet and that jacket at the same time?
They are incompatible.
And you hadn't even told me to read that plagiarist."
“Do I have to inform you of what I read?
I like to keep up to date with Spanish literature, and that columnist is a phenomenon, that is undeniable.
There are already works by very serious professors about Nicolás”.
“Ah, Nicolás, what intimacy, when most people don't know their first name”.
There was a long silence until she broke it:
“Don't you have more to say to me?
Are we just going to talk about Lerma?”
Godínez remembered and his face lit up.
"So, are you sure you're not pregnant?"
“As sure as I have had to ask a bellhop to go to a pharmacy.
Luckily I knew Lerma and she has gone like lightning.
I was going to put it all lost.
I see you are happy."
“Well yes, the truth.
You do not?"
Catherine kissed her teeth with that gesture that irritated him and answered: “A little yes and a lot no.
If I'm honest, I didn't rule out that this would lead us to get married, sooner or later."
She tried to put on a loving look—her weird blue eyes didn't work out well—and added, “You know?
I think I'm in love with you."
Brendán got scared again and was about to phone Pírfano on the spot to throw her into her arms and ask her for a thousand pardons.
He lit a cigarette to think about a response that would leave no room for doubt and would not be offensive either.
The nightmare had returned and at the same time he was pleased.
“I don't think so, instead.
That, that, that… That is too much to say.”
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