Eve of Christmas. Expected for dinner: divorced dads, out of work sons and the widow Adrienne. What to do. Let’s feel up the interior of this cabinet. Litres of gin: yes. Whiskeys of great age: four. Vodka: double. Tequila: acquired by Diageo, for seven hundred million. I groped the sherry, which rolled around like in the hold of an old ship, and plucked the vermouth. Red. The one from lunch by the cathedral, when Raúl said I needed new shoes, and another vermouth. Another vermouth.
On groceries we spent four hundred dollars. Paper sacks of wine and carrots and potatoes spilling down the driveway. What year is it. I brought inside my cousin’s bag of knives; we poured three whiskeys and watched him beat the steel faces. Jack was fridge-tall and spoke French like a New Yorker. He conducted his mise en place in an over-sized shirt, the colour of whatever he just chopped. The strength of two men lifted the pot of banane beurre blanc and left it outside to cool. I chewed a double-cup of soda and swept the pine needles off the porch.
The pleasures of getting ready for dinner. I trimmed my moustache, stood under the hot shower and cracked a cold beer. My tongue in the mouth of a blonde. From Belgium. She soaped my chest and wet my neck while my mother watched us from the door.
Company was upstairs. I could hear blue voices, the uncle who owned the apartment with dark walls. He was tan in December and dressed his nephews in Burberry, shirts that kissed the back of the neck and slipped out of bed before you woke up. I had rich sex inside the Burberry.
I kissed uncles like they do in Córdoba and felt the warm cheeks and big eyes. Ate some stinky cheese then lit the candle I bought two winters ago, when I knuckled on the vitrine, and the madame asked what I wanted. Plutôt de bois, multifacette. I ejaculated like a tourist, which she licked up.
My cousin was dressed in red, do you want a negroni no I want champagne. Dinner. Have some more soup. I’ll stick with the wine. Walked Adrienne to the car with her tiny hand tucked in my arm. Did I want money and in what currency. I love you. By midnight I was overdosed, asked my own mother why she wasn’t more like her sister, the younger one featured in Lonny. How much have you had to drink.
In the dark Ted was sleep-watching football and I yoinked the cigar from his shirt pocket. Went with cousins to the garden above the river. Champagne chilling in trophy water. Cut the Cuban, puffed and sucked. We all lived in sexy cities so I inquired about sex in the city. Last time you got laid. Let me see your penis. I took a piss in the creek, dripped into my stepfather’s study to the bureau that held all the whiskeys. Distorted pours. I fell by the fire and could write no more, face down in a puddle of drool.
London, twenty-first of January