9
Several days passed between my most recent medical tests and the phone call from my doctor giving me the results. I breathed easily once I learned I had nothing to worry about. No STDs. Everything was in order.
I thanked him, hung up, and felt relaxation flow through my body.
I looked up at Matías. We were having a coffee outside at the Starbucks on the Plaza del Callao. “Good news?” he asked.
“Yes. My vagina is still a perfect little garden. No crabs, no syphilis, no nothing.”
Matías burst out laughing, his cup to his lips, and splattered coffee all over the table. I looked down with horror. I had a pile of résumés sitting there. It had taken me forever to get them right, the printer wasn’t what you’d call cheap, and now he’d spit all over them!
“Shit, Matías! You ruined them.” I sorted through them, pulling out the decent ones as he kept chuckling. “Is me saying ‘vagina’ really that funny?”
“It’s the ugliest word ever.”
“Sure, and I guess ‘penis’ is music to your ears.”
“Now that you mention it, yes it is,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes maliciously and started repeating, “Vagina, vagina, vagina, vaginaaaaa…”
A woman frowned at me from the next table over, but the man with her, who I assumed was her husband, grinned, looking past his newspaper.
With an innocent look on my face, I told the woman, “He’s my gynecologist.”
Matías was cackling now, bent forward with tears in his eyes, resting his head on the table. He glanced up and said, “You’re crazy.”
“And you’re a child. Apart from paying for the coffee, you owe me five euros for the résumés.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” He kicked me under the table. “But whatever. What do you want to do now?”
“I don’t know. Some window shopping, maybe? You can hand out a couple of those CVs.”
Matías offered me his hand, and as we stood, I gave him a hug, feeling like a baby koala as he kissed me on top of the head. What would I do without him? He was my one constant in the midst of so much uncertainty.
We spent the rest of the morning stopping at shops, restaurants, and cafes, and at lunchtime, my feet hurt and my cheeks were aching from smiling at all the people I hoped might hire me.
“Do you think anyone will call?” I asked him as he left me at my place.
“You’ll see. Something will come up.”
“I hope so. I’ll need to start squirreling away now if I’m going to make it through the winter.”
Brushing a hair out of my face, he said, “Talk to an adviser or something. Maybe you can collect unemployment or disability or something.”
“Sure, I will.”
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I promised Rodrigo we could have lunch together.”
“You and Rodrigo sure have been spending a lot of time together.”
“Of course we do, we live together, Maya.”
“And you don’t seem to mind.”
Looking a little embarrassed, he told me, “He’s not interested.”
“His loss.”
