The party

This happened in 1995, when I was seventeen. It was an ordinary Friday afternoon, and it was also Halloween. That was precisely why Felipe called: to invite me to a costume party that night. Nothing could be more typical of Mexico City’s middle class aspiring to the upper class than celebrating a gringo holiday that, back then, had little to do with our customs. The party was being thrown by a friend Felipe knew from the English classes he attended every afternoon. He had just left class and called me from a pay phone. Only after accepting the invitation and hanging up did it occur to me that I had no costume. What was Felipe going to wear? There was no way to call him until he reached home in half an hour or so. At the time, there were no costume shops that I knew of, much less money to spend in one. I started thinking. The idea of buying bandages at the pharmacy and dressing as a mummy crossed my mind, but once again there was the question of money. Besides, I had no intention of walking down the street dressed like an idiot—again, nobody celebrated Halloween back then. Rummaging through the suitcases my mother kept in the maid’s room, I found some clothes that had surely belonged to my late grandfather and managed to put together a costume: dress pants, a white shirt, suspenders, a tie, a jacket and a beret, along with my own black shoes. In my mind, the costume made me look as though I were dressed in the thirties or forties—because of the suspenders and beret, I reasoned with considerable effort. Fear of ridicule overcame me. Felipe ought to have reached home by then, so I called to ask what he was going to wear. I dialed; the phone rang for a few seconds and his sister answered. Felipe was not there, but he had left word that we should meet outside the house where the party was being held at eight. Where was he? I asked. “He went out to help his dad with some things,” little Felipilla replied. Nothing I could do about it now: I had already agreed to go, so I would have to wear my improvised costume.

I left home at around seven, giving myself plenty of time for a leisurely walk from the Narvarte neighborhood, where I lived, to Condesa, where the party would be. It had rained for a while that afternoon and the city was wet. I loved the cool air and the moisture all around me; everything looked better when wet. To me, the real Mexico City has always been cloudy and rainy. A sunny Mexico City is an impostor, the city disguised as the provinces. On the way I stopped at a liquor store and bought a tiny flask-shaped bottle of white Bacardi, a pack of Alitas rice-paper cigarettes and a phone card. I kept making my way there, taking an occasional sip of Bacardi. I opened the pack and brought it to my nose to smell the tobacco, lit an Alita and held it between my index and middle fingers, close to the knuckles—a habit I think I picked up from the leading man in some Italian film I had seen. The smoke I exhaled looked denser in the cool street air. I put on my orange-foam headphones and started my Walkman; I had brought a cassette by Aleks Syntek y la Gente Normal. In my jacket pocket was a Carlos Santana cassette, a musical inheritance from my father. I was running early, so I stood on a corner a couple of streets from the house and waited until five to eight, calculating that I would then arrive exactly on time. “…it’s me, stronger than I thought…”

The house at the address Felipe had given me was large and old. It seemed to have been an elegant mansion in its better days, but the passage of time was evident: it had fallen into some neglect, though it remained beautiful. It was larger than any of my friends’ houses, far larger than the apartment where I lived. As usual, Felipe arrived late, at eight forty. We rang the bell at the outer gate and a couple of minutes later Miguel came to greet us. Miguel was Felipe’s friend and the party’s host: a tall, fair-skinned, slim young man with dark hair and blue eyes, dressed in a fifties costume as though he had stepped out of the film Grease. At least I was not the only person dressed as a decade. I liked him from the start. Some people are simply like that—warm and kind, treating you as if they had known you all their lives and immediately putting you at ease. I complimented him on the house, which I assumed was the proper thing to do when visiting someone else’s home. Social conventions aside, though, it really was a beautiful, enormous house, merely a little battered by the years. Miguel thanked me and told us it had belonged to his family since the time of his great-great-grandparents. It had been one of the first houses built on land that had once formed part of a Spanish countess’s estate, from which the neighborhood took its name. Miguel knew a great deal about his family tree and told us a little about his French great-great-grandparents, whose surname was Pilloud. Newly married, they had emigrated to Mexico at the beginning of the century and built the house. I found all this impressive. Suddenly I felt as though I were rubbing shoulders with the European aristocracy. Had I been holding a glass of wine, I would have swirled it and pretended to savor it, of course raising my little finger to display my pedigree. Instead, I had my tiny bottle of Bacardi. When Miguel saw me take a sip, he told us there were more bottles and soft drinks in the kitchen. Everyone was in the garden; we should help ourselves and join them while he continued playing host. The inside of the house was dim except for the kitchen. Felipe and I each poured tequila and Coke into a disposable cup and went out to the garden. Half the guests wore costumes and half did not. I felt stupid in my improvised outfit. Felipe, incidentally, had not dressed up, so between us—one in costume, one without—we perfectly represented the thirty or so people filling the garden, chatting in little groups, each with a disposable cup in hand and treading on grass still damp from the afternoon rain. Among those who had decided—or rather, dared—to dress up were a cowboy who looked more like a northern Mexican rancher, an astronaut with a helmet made from a cardboard box, a classic Dracula, a nun whose habit was fashioned from black and white fabric, and the inevitable… Frankenstein, zombie or Creature from the Black Lagoon? He was simply a guy who had painted his face green. The Hulk, perhaps? Yoda? We ran into a girl from Felipe’s English class on whom he had something of a crush, and we chatted with her for a while. Nonsense—what else does one talk about at that age? We discussed music and films; Felipe and the girl made fun of the clothes their English teacher wore. Suddenly I felt rather excluded. Realizing I was the third wheel, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I asked someone where it was and was directed to the guest bathroom near the kitchen, then went back inside. It was occupied, and I had been cursed with a small bladder—a family curse, my father had once told me. I crossed the living room, the dining room, another sitting room and a hallway; surely a mansion like this had to contain another bathroom. It felt pleasant inside. The air was warmer, the dimness was inviting, and the music could be heard in the distance, muffled by the windows and walls facing the garden.

I failed to find another bathroom, but I found something better: a girl—and what a girl! She was a vision, or that is how I remember her. A doll-like face; very pale, with dark hair, blue eyes and vivid red lips. She smiled at me, showing her large teeth. I looked behind me just to make sure she was smiling at me, but nobody else was there. We were alone. It was as if we were the only two people inside the house; for me, the rest of the world had ceased to exist. I approached under the pretext—and with the genuine need—of asking her where I could find a bathroom, but I had barely taken a step toward her when she said, “At last, someone decently dressed at this party.” Of course, I thought: she too was dressed in the style of the thirties or forties. She wore a mid-calf dress covered in black sequins, low-backed and low-cut, along with a veiled headpiece, silk gloves, a pearl necklace and medium-heeled shoes. The costume suited her perfectly, right down to her haircut; she looked as though she had stepped out of a film from that era. Clumsily, I asked about the bathroom. Without a word, she took my hand and led me up a staircase to the second floor. “We’re not supposed to go upstairs,” I told her. “It’s fine,” she replied. She pointed out a bathroom door and I went in. I could not believe my luck. She was, I thought, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and our costumes matched. After relieving myself, I looked in the mirror. I felt intoxicated yet somehow hyperaware. I stared into my reflected eyes and told myself: this is the most beautiful girl you have ever seen, and you have to make her your girlfriend. You charmer. I summoned my courage and stepped into the hallway. Nobody was there. Why was my luck always so terrible?

I went back to Felipe and his friend for a while but immediately realized I was superfluous. I spoke with Miguel for a bit. Although we had only just met, we got along very well and agreed to go see a film together soon. I liked him and was glad I had come to his party. Eventually, nature called again. This time the guest bathroom we were meant to use was vacant. I felt more drunk and once again stared into my own eyes in the mirror. For the past hour I had searched everywhere for the blue-eyed girl, but she had disappeared from sight and had surely left. Encouraging myself once more, I opened the bathroom door—and there she was.

Perhaps because I was drunk, perhaps because she had made me stupid, I never understood how we ended up sitting together in one of the large armchairs in a sitting room. We talked for a long time; it felt like hours. The lights in that room, like most of the lights inside the house, remained off, and the only illumination came from the distant windows overlooking the garden. My eyes, by then accustomed to the darkness, never left her deep blue ones. She told me her name was Juliette. What an extraordinarily romantic name. We talked about a thousand things. To my surprise, she had never heard of Pablo Neruda or Jim Morrison. I would have been appalled by anyone else, but I could forgive her anything. Somehow we ended up holding hands. She had removed one glove; her hand was cold, and I tried to warm it between both of mine—her small white hand, perfect and delicate. I was in ecstasy. She asked how old I was. “Nineteen,” I lied. “And you?” “I’m twenty,” she answered. We sat in silence for a few seconds, simply staring at each other. Our gazes merged and our lips followed. The way we kissed—it might have lasted twenty minutes or twenty hours. As one grows older, one forgets how passionate a youthful kiss can be, how inescapably intimate, how ineffably profound. The desperation with which two young people of that age devour each other, leaving themselves breathless, as if each wanted to consume the other, to explore with the tongue every tooth and every inch of gum belonging to the person who, at that moment, contains the entire universe. And so, lost in the immensity of a kiss that seemed endless, I thought about all sorts of things. First, at last I would have a girlfriend, something I had longed for throughout the whole span of my short life. And what a girlfriend! Second, I now had a serious problem on my hands: at some point I would have to confess to this twenty-year-old that I was only seventeen. I still had about six months to go before turning eighteen; if only I could sustain the lie long enough to cross that unfathomable divide. I could worry about that later. Now was the time to enjoy this intense love, discovered only a couple of hours earlier yet somehow in existence for all eternity, waiting for me here tonight. When the palm of my right hand came gently to rest on her left breast, as though of its own will, as if possessed, she did not flinch. Now I was nervous. I was only a kid, a stranger to the ways of women, still quite innocent in many respects. Somehow, however, animal instinct takes possession of us. I discovered this when I caught myself trying to slide my hand beneath her skirt and between her legs. She immediately snapped them shut, trapping my forearm between her knees with tremendous speed and force, perhaps comparable to a bear trap. A woman’s ancient reflex, I supposed. Ashamed, I asked myself: what are you doing? I discreetly withdrew my hand as though it had all been an accident and caressed her cheek. The kiss remained unfinished; it was still infinite. Suddenly an electrical impulse crossed my brain—perhaps, in some strange way, I was conscious of a neuron firing. It was a thought. Everything seemed to fit: the porcelain-white skin, the dark hair, the deep blue eyes. Could she be Miguel’s sister? The idea was hardly far-fetched. I had found her inside the house, she had led me to the upstairs bathroom; come on, I did not know whether Miguel had a sister, but who else could she be? “Do you have any siblings?” I asked. “Just an older sister, but she’s spending some time in Paris,” she replied. Paris! How sophisticated. Once again, I felt as though I were in a salon at Versailles. Into what world of privilege and opulence had I so suddenly arrived? After the brief respite brought on by my question, we submerged ourselves in another kiss, in a deep and warm sea, that dark sea inhabited by unspeakable beasts, that sea older than time. Nothing could have been more perfect. Then the family curse struck again: once more my microscopic bladder betrayed me. I had to go to the bathroom. I postponed it with every ounce of willpower I possessed, but I had reached my limit. “Wait here a moment. I’m going to run to the bathroom. Don’t move.” Even I could hear the desperation in my plea. She promised to wait, to go nowhere, not to move a hair; she asked me to hurry. I rushed to the bathroom, closed the door and did what I had to do. I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered how I had managed this conquest. “You’re a champion,” I whispered to my reflection. I opened the bathroom door, switched off the light and returned to the sitting room. She was not there.

I estimate that I spent half an hour searching every corner of the ground floor and garden, checking the bathroom and kitchen, trying to find her. Felipe was in a corner of the garden kissing and kissing his friend from English class. He could not help me; I could not even go over and tell him of my good fortune and my misfortune. Where was she? Could she have left? But how? I could not believe it. Who do you think you are, woman, to take my heart in your hands and tear it to pieces? After my third circuit of the garden, weaving among the few guests who remained, Miguel came up to me. He asked what was wrong; he had seen me searching for someone during the past few minutes. I told him everything. Well, almost everything. Naturally, I omitted certain details out of discretion, and because it is impolite to wander through somebody else’s house making love on the armchairs of a darkened sitting room. Still, I felt I could trust Miguel and assumed that, as the host, he would know who she was. He told me he had no idea whom I was talking about and had seen nobody like her. He had personally greeted every guest, and he had not seen any pale, blue-eyed girl as beautiful as the one I described. He could see that I was utterly crushed. “Come on, I’ll give you a cognac—and the good stuff. Let’s go to my dad’s study.” We crossed one of the sitting rooms and passed through two large sliding wooden doors into a spacious room filled with books, portraits and artifacts. “My dad likes to play the intellectual,” Miguel told me. “He’s a lawyer, but he thinks he’s a philosopher.” In a corner stood a drinks cart with bottles and glasses. Miguel began pouring liquor from a decanter into two brandy snifters. “I’ll ask around among my friends. Don’t worry. Your future girlfriend must have arrived late as somebody else’s guest, without me seeing her. You’ll see—we’ll find her, I promise.” Miguel’s words comforted me. Good grief, he truly felt like an old and close friend. I was examining a table covered in old photographs, displayed in frames of different materials and designs, all of them seemingly ancient. Suddenly my heart lurched, as though from a shock. There she was. It was her, in a wrinkled sepia photograph, wearing a polka-dot summer dress and a headband. I felt my eyes were deceiving me. Miguel came over and offered me one of the glasses. “Who is she?” I asked. “Oh, that’s my great-grandmother. Her name was Juliette Pilloud, and she actually lived in this house.” With a teasing smile, he added, “Careful—the maids say she sometimes appears.”