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Martha Bátiz Zuk 23 The First Cup of Coffee There’s nothing more bitter than the first cup of coffee. Early this morning, I realized that. Don’t let my saying that surprise you: it’s the honest-to-God truth. Lies have never appealed to me. I tried coffee for the first time today. I’d seen it, of course, and smelled it many times. I liked the aroma a lot, but I never imagined its taste would be so bitter. Tobías wouldn’t let me drink it, because he’d promised my papá. My father always said it stained your teeth—I mean, come on. As if at this stage of the game that would matter. He thought ladies should never drink anything but tea, Greta, and milk. Wouldn’t you just know, with this Indian-looking face of mine, he named me Greta. It sounds like a joke. He was stubborn, the wretch, and strict. I never dared disobey him. Then he forced me to marry Tobías and ruined my life for good. I don’t know how I put up with so much but, well, it was my fault for being a doormat. A doormat and a dimwit. Could you serve me a bit more? Excuse me for telling you all this, but since there’s nobody else here . . . I’m tired. Eight hours it took the bus to get here, and since noon I’ve been looking and looking for Claudia, my friend, and can’t find her anywhere. Where her house used to be before, there’s a park now. I could understand ifsomeoneelsemovedinandtookoverthehouse,orifitbecame a grocery, a convenience store, even an office, anything: but I can’t see why they would knock it down, why it’s a park now. What there’s plenty of here is open spaces, and air. Dry, dusty air, that still smells of goat and cow shit. It’s always been like that. “That’s the problem: people live on air and fill up with air and then they don’t think like people any more, but like animals,” Claudia used to say. And also that breathing shit damaged your brain, and that I should leave before that happened to me and I stayed here till I died. But for me, leaving was worse than staying. Now I know. I was so sure I was going to find her at home today. I could imagine the surprised look on her face when she saw me turn up after who knows how many years, and so overweight. Don’t start thinking I was like this when I went off with Cloudburst 24 Tobías, no way. But what can you do; if you have money, unhappiness makes you fat, and the bad thing is that my husband had a lot of cash. He never stopped showing it off. As a matter of fact, I brought Claudia the presents he gave me, because I don’t want anything of his. I need to give them to her, but nobody knows where she is. They say the park’s been there for a while. The people I used to know have left, or died, you see. I discovered that because I went to the cemetery to see if by any chance I could find a gravestone with Claudia’s name on it, just to clear up my doubts and not have them weighing on my mind, but instead of hers, I came across a lot of others I wasn’t expecting. It’s as if death has been dogging my footsteps these last few days. I hate policemen: that’s why I didn’t want to stay there. They always ask a lot of questions and bring charges against you at the drop of a hat. What happened with Tobías wasn’t my fault, and I only took what was mine so they couldn’t pin anything on me. Sooner or later things were going to backfire, and I told him so. The game he was playing was dangerous. Now the only thing I regret is that it never occurred to me sooner to help him along to his destiny. Both of us would have suffered less, I think. I couldn’t finish the coffee before leaving the house. I left the cup half full on the table. It was the first time since I married Tobías that I was able to leave a dirty dish...

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