2017–2018 · Christian Ives Solis
RECORD II — 2017–2018: the trio as device
Claudio was cutting lemons on the counter. Aracely was leaning against the doorframe, talking about something I no longer remember, with that steadiness in her voice that never needed permission to occupy a room. I was washing the glasses. The water ran, the ice cracked against the glass, and for the first time in months my shoulders were down.
No one was evaluating me. No one was asking me to be different. We were three people in an orderly kitchen, and I felt the physical relief of not having to anticipate the next problem. That was the mistake. Mistaking the calm of one night for the foundation of a home.
I kept looking at the glass of pisco. The ice was melting slowly. I did not drink. I only watched. Moisture ran down my fingers, and the glass was so cold that for a moment it seemed more stable than I was.
The real reconnection with Claudio came in 2017, after years of remaining suspended in that ambiguous category of people one remembers but never quite recovers. We ran into each other again in Bellavista, in that nightlife circuit of Illuminati and Soda, where repetition often disguises itself as coincidence until it no longer can. Claudio had already broken up with his partner, had moved in with other friends, and the context had changed enough for the conversation not to arrive already burdened.
We started seeing each other more often. Going out. Talking. Laughing at the same things. Claudio remained the kind of person who builds groups with almost organic ease. He liked to gather people. To know who could coexist without the space falling apart.
The first sign that this was no longer just about the night was the invitation to his new apartment.
I went with a friend. Not out of shyness. Out of strategy. I still carried memory of the previous ecosystem: entering a new house could also mean entering an old discomfort. If the atmosphere turned, I wanted a quick moral exit.
It was not necessary.
The first thing that disarmed me was not the people. It was the order of the house. Nothing spectacular. Just that kind of order that makes you think that, for once, the space is not going to turn against you.
The visits became frequent. The apartment began to feel like a meeting point. Claudio gathered people, they arrived, conversations lasted longer, and adulthood—or something like it—began to take the shape of a shared routine.
It was at one of those parties, for an eighteenth of September celebration, that Aracely appeared.
The first thing I thought when I saw her was simple and brutal: the face of a limit.
Not because she had done anything. It was the impression. The firmness in her face. That day, besides, I was already twisted up inside. I had had a bad day with Diego, another one of those episodes of defective communication in which no one decides anything, no one ends anything, and the relationship turns into a slow administration of uncertainty.
I went in anyway. Said hello. Smiled. Functioned.