The Tuna Sandwich

Barrio Carpintero is not what you would precisely call an affluent neighborhood in the city of Caracas. In spite of not being one of the worst slums around, there's no way you could confuse it with the Caracas Country Club. I have no idea why they named it after a carpenter and everybody I've asked is as dumbfounded as I am.

Through 9th Grade of Elementary School, William would walk every morning by the bus stop in which Iraida would wait. He hadn't noticed her until his pal Juan Carlos shoved his elbow into his rib to alert him of the black eyes beaming his way. Following the standard procedure of young men who want to leave an ounce of mystery in their first contact with a girl, William pumped up his chest, smiled at her and kept on walking. Luckily for William, this strategy actually worked. Although not yet an adult, he had developed enough muscle by helping his father, a mason, lay bricks across the shacks that littered the barrio. For the record, Iraida noticed the boys as they walked by, although on that specific day, William never knew if she was smiling back at him, at Juan Carlos or at Cheo, who was walking some steps behind.

The next weeks were all about corner-of-the-eye glances and direct smiles when the observation became too obvious. The stained glass of the lottery ticket store was an excellent mirror for looking at other parts of Iraida's ever-improving anatomy. One day Cheo broke the unusual silence by leading off with tried-and-true ice breaker.

- Hey Miss! My friend William wants to meet you.

As usual, this forced encounter was unexpected for both William and Iraida but it still allowed him to say something nice enough to zero the clock of their fledging relationship.

The next years flew by as fast as they do in retrospect. William's first conversation turned into an invitation to a party. The party turned into a place in which he could present his theories on how the dark-haired Iraida reminded him of a silent cat; one that listens and smiles. A cat that shows comfort with the person in front of her by slowly closing and opening its eyes. Cats would usually keep their claws hidden in lieu of using them as self-defense, an instance that the young man was expecting to never occur with Iraida. William was able to get away with comparing his girlfriend with an animal thanks to the excitement he put into describing the beauty and mystery of the common house cat. Once when walking down the stairs that connect a vertical row of shanty houses in his neighborhood, he heard a distant meow. After uncovering some corrugated boxes, he found a black kitten that had been dumped some hours earlier. The cat's coat was still shiny and his overall health intact. William grabbed it and raced upstairs to present Iraida with the living proof of his otherwise forgiving poetry.

High School graduation brought William and Iraida to the fork in the road that their young minds had not anticipated. Although he was admitted in an elite public university, the needs of William's family forced him to choose the short-term rewards of working with his father in his masonry business. As expected from most painfully beautiful women in Venezuela, Iraida was eventually offered a modeling career that interrupted her journalism studies. All kinds of photo shoots, the Miss Venezuela beauty pageant and a string of beer billboards turned the silent and sweet Iraida into a celebrity of sorts. Whenever the truck with bricks passed by such a billboard, the driver could only smile at his co-pilot and tell the stories of a youth well-lived.

It was not long until the multiple events and cocktail parties led Iraida to the man she would marry. A businessman with a keen sense of humor and enough confidence to fill a small room, Alberto would eventually make Iraida the Mrs. González that would never again have to wait for a bus under the sun. Life became a constant trip between photo shoots, special events and vacations with her husband skiing in the snow of Bariloche or in the waters of Margarita. She was additionally equipped with a personal trainer to help her tone the parts of her body that needed the additional firmness and a nutritionist to recommend the right amount of tuna sandwiches to avoid putting on the excess weight.

It was one morning while "enjoying" such a sandwich that a cat jumped onto her windowsill. For minutes, the cat just stared at Iraida. He stared and stared. Iraida opened the window for him and shared the rest of her tuna sandwich. While he separated the tuna from the bread, she started thinking about the simpler times of her youth. The times when a kiss was a kiss and not something she would give her husband to remind him that she was his. She thought about the time when the only requirement to meet and love somebody was your interest in that person, when there was no talk about the future, about career paths, budgets nor cash, just the present. It was the time before spontaneousness and affection turned into loyalty and acceptance. Somebody had sent me this cat to haunt me, she thought. Or maybe it was a test. Whatever was the cause of her moment of doubt, her determination had reigned supreme. With the doorbell ringing in the background, she swore once again to herself that although she missed some aspects of life, she was never again to return to her pre-marriage status. The doorbell rang and rang. In a distant room, Iraida's husband was resting unaware of his wife's encounter with the flashback cat.

- Alberto! Honey! - she shouted - Can you please open the door for the mason? he came to install a fountain. I'm quite busy.

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I'm very sorry. Please accept my apologies. I do recall I had promised you a happy ending to this story. On the other hand, you still haven't let me describe the tuna sandwich. It was the most delicious dish I had tasted in any of my nine lives. Oh, yes, the girl was OK, too.