Limerence

María-Clara was awake in Medellín. John knew this because, before he headed out to  work, he had sent her a meme about Donald Trump. He had timed it for when he knew  she would be asleep in the little apartment in El Poblado. She had the habit of turning her  phone on airplane mode while she slept and this meant that when his messages were delivered and opened, he could check the delivery report and see when she had risen. Two  blue ticks and no emoji, no thumbs up, no laughing icon. No heart. He swiped out of his  messages and checked to see the weather she would encounter that day. It rained often in  Colombia; she hated how frizzy it made her curls. Though it had been a year, he still had  Medellín on the weather app on his phone. He checked it hourly. It helped him imagine  the rays of early morning sun streaming through the window of her kitchen and he could  see Gabo her tabby cat, stretching on the balcony, could smell the coffee as she pottered  around in bare feet.  

Early morning in Medellín, lunchtime in Cork. Exactly five hours time difference  between the cities. He looked at the screen for another few seconds, willing it to light up  with a response before pushing his phone across the desk and taking a limp sandwich  from his lunchbox. He chewed slowly and deliberately. He tasted nothing.  

After a minute or so, vibrating and illuminating, the phone jolted into life. He  stuffed the sandwich in his mouth and lunged for it. False alarm. Only Cormac. Another  plaintive ‘U ok?’ message. Cormac’s third such text to him in as many weeks. Let him stew  another while, John thought. And then, with sudden decisiveness, he stuffed the phone in  his pocket, grabbed the jacket slung over his chair and moved quickly through the open  plan office. He popped his earphones in as he walked and nodded to two women laughing by the water cooler before striding purposefully down the back stairs of the office  block and outside into the cool air. And then he walked. And walked. Walked past all the  other Minecraft-style office buildings in the business park, past the stricken trees, the  whitewashed November sky and he turned up his music as loud as his ears could take it,  drowning out all thoughts of her with steps and sound.  

María-Clara had been jealous when he told her the floor of his office was mostly women. They had been laying in the tangle of a bedsheet, her head on his chest, breath hot on his  neck, the fan whirring above them.  

‘No, no. It’s not like that!’ he protested. ‘They’re like dinosaurs!’ 

She propped herself up on her elbow, her forehead furrowing slightly. ‘Ah, you  mean they are old.’  

He traced her dark eyebrow with his thumb, following the line of it to the tiny  crater of a chicken pock scar.  

‘Not like me’, she said, relaxing back beside him.  

‘No. Not at all like you. There is no one at work like you. No one in Cork like you,  actually.’ 

She’d closed her eyes and smiled. ‘I’m glad.’ 

‘I mean your ears! Your perfect little ears! I have never seen the like. Shells!’  He lifted a seaweed tangle of curls and bit her earlobe softly, dragging it a little with  his mouth. She shivered at this, moved her body closer to his and he caressed the short  length of her with his arm in one fluid motion.  

A year ago now. He still could not quite believe it had happened. That she had  seemed as captivated by him as he was by her, hadn’t seemed to mind the pockmarked  skin on his cheeks, his sloping shoulders. Instead, there had been hours lazing around at  siesta time before she would reluctantly leave for her afternoon stints in the gallery. Time  spent comparing pale nipples to brown ones, marvelling over the differences in their complexions (‘Your penis, your everything… it’s all so… pink! My god!’), tracing tattoos ( his:  a crudely etched Celtic cross, a Chinese symbol of unknown meaning, two acts of rebellion  aged eighteen) and freckles ( hers: six on her face, all the sweeter for their scarcity and one  large one on her hip bone, his mouth would linger there often). 

In the evenings, after traipsing around with the tour group, he would collect her at  the gallery, as if he were a boyfriend. She would tuck her body into his, her nose in the  armpit of his t-shirt, gripping on to him in a way that had made his chest swell, and he!d kiss the top of her head as she trotted next to him, taking two steps for every long, loping  stride of his. He found that he made her laugh easily and it quickly became his favourite sound. They talked about everything. They talked about nothing. John had never talked so  much to anyone. 

Every day for a month, they walked and talked through the parks of Laureles,  where the raindrenched Banyan trees, sweet and musty, towered all round them, branches  bending low as though eavesdropping on their conversations. Trees and ferns sprouted  everywhere in Medellín and this gave the city its own whispering, whooshing soundtrack,  which triumphed over the noise of car horns and salsa music. It was a city of trees, a city  of women. Before he met her, two different tour guides had told him ‘The women of  Medellín are the most beautiful in the world.’ When he had recounted this to María-Clara  over dinner one night, she was sceptical. 

'Ay, ay, did they tell you that it is also the plastic surgery capital of South America? That some girls are gifted a boob and butt job for the quinceañera by their fathers? To  make sure that they have the right shape for their future husbands?’ She had sighed an grily.  

To appease her, he had told her funny things about Cork. About the mechanical tree  machines on Patrick Street, the “South American” restaurant on Bridge Street (‘Jajajajaja,  because we are all the same!’) About how Colombians boasted about their women but  Corkonians just boasted about Cork. They had been sitting out on a street corner eating bandeja paisa, faraway lights winking down at them, a scattering of blinking jewels in the  night sky.  

 When John admired these mountains of stars all around, María-Clara was dismis sive. ‘Those are the lights from the slums, where the poor people live. But yes, they do  look like stars I suppose.’ She changed the subject and looked at him a little shyly. ‘I’m all  natural you know. I haven’t had a boob job, nose job… nothing.’ She looked at him so  earnestly then, it made his throat tighten.  

‘You’re beautiful.’ The words came out in a halting croak. He was afraid that,  though true, they would sound cheap or desperate.  

She smiled wisely, a little sadly and fiddled with the plastic menu. ‘Cork sounds  funny. Maybe I could come there some time.’ But she had looked away from him quickly, not waiting for his response and began chattering about something else entirely, while his  heart thundered with the sudden thought that she, in fact, liked him very much too.  

She got her period on the third week. John had forgotten about periods, the strange mechanics of womanhood, the four seasons in one month.  

‘It is my time, you know, to bleed,’ she’d told him, tucking and retucking a stray  curl behind her ear, blushing a little. She searched his face carefully. They were standing  under the trees by her apartment, long shadows of branches at their feet. 

‘Ah, ok,’ he said uselessly. But he pulled her into his chest and when she looked up  at him afterward, he felt as though he had passed a test.  

That night, they watched a film on her laptop instead. She curled on the couch with  her head on a cushion pressed up against his thigh. He put his hand on her lower stomach  and rubbed it gently; he remembered that an ex of his had liked that once. Gabo, her cat,  who had always regarded him with flat-eared disdain, pawed at his other leg for a few  seconds before leaping up and settling on his lap. And there, the three of them stayed. She  fell asleep within an hour, snoring gently, her mouth open. He muted the sound of the  film. His leg had gone dead and there were pins and needles in his arm but he didn’t dare  move. The sound of her snoring, the scratchy rasp of the cat purring and the light rain out side—he was soon asleep.  

He woke up at 3 am. The cat had departed but she was still there, curled up beside  him, her face squashed in the cushion, a silver sliver of drool escaping the corner of her  mouth. And in the lonely months that followed, it would be this little vignette that would  replay in his mind again and again and again. 

When he returned to Cork after the trip was over, she added him on every social media  site she used. He downloaded them all to his phone and now his home screen looked like  a teenager’s. He found that, desperate to catch glimpses of her, he learned to navigate the  apps quickly. And then, he entered a world of María- Clara dancing at a salsa night, María-Clara laughing with friends over cocktails on the rooftop at El Téatro, María-Clara nestled with Gabo pretending to read a book while getting the perfect selfie. This online version of her jarred him at the start. It was like looking into a hall of mirrors where reflected back to him was a grotesquely exaggerated version of the girl he knew. She filtered  out her freckles and the chicken pock scar. But there were daily video calls when it was  dark in Cork and bright in Medellín, when the ache to reach through the screen and touch  her was almost unbearable. And there were the surprise nudes she sometimes sent to his  phone, deliberately and cruelly timing them for when he was at work, her body contorted into various positions to please him, sending him hurdling into the office toilets.

But then, everything changed. He blamed Cormac. “Cormac O’Hagan, S.C” as he  went by now. Cormac O’Hagan, giver of unsolicited immigration advice. Cormac O’Hagan, John’s oldest friend. They’d finally gotten around to a game of squash. John didn’t  like squash. He always felt a schoolboy pang of nerves whenever he entered the club house and the unmistakable, sweaty PE Hall smell assaulted his nostrils. The sounds were  aggressively affronting too –– the squeaking noise of trainers sliding across the floor and their voices amplified to phantom-like screeching in the enclosed space. But Cormac still  made an effort to meet up with him so John obliged. Of the five Ballinacurra lads, John  was the only single one left––the rest drifting further and further away into the world of  wives and babies. His schoolfriends now had family memberships to Fota Wildlife Park  and trained the Under-7s on Saturday mornings. He had a subscription to PornHub and  some weekends went by without him speaking to another soul. He had been excited to  tell Cormac about María-Clara. It wasn’t often he had news of a romantic nature to share. 

‘A package trip was it?’ 

Thwack. Cormac, still warming up, had blasted the first shot at the wall.  ‘Sort of.’ John, already panting slightly, narrowly returned the ball. ’It was a group  trip for solo travellers.’ 

‘Oh yeah?’ Cormac kept his eyes on the wall and sent an easy shot for him to re turn. ‘ Meet anyone interesting?’ 

‘Yeah, I did actually.’ John could feel the colour on his face rise. ‘I met a girl.’

‘A fellow traveller? I know what those trips are like!’ Cormac chuckled. 

 ‘No. Actually, a local. A Colombian. From Medellín.’ John volleyed back neatly.  He looked over to see Cormac swinging his racket redundantly, the ball escaping and  rolling away to the corner.  

‘A local?’  

‘Yeah, she works in an art gallery there. I met her on the second night. She was out  celebrating a sale with her work crowd.’ 

Cormac turned his back on John and jabbed at the ball with his racket.

‘What age is she?’ 

‘23.’ 

Cormac emitted a long, low laugh. In the enclosed space, it haunted the room with  its echo. ‘You dog.’ 

‘Ah, it’s not like that. Ditched the tour group in the end, stayed behind in Medellín.  We actually spent every day together.’ 

‘I’m sure you did!” 

‘We’re still in contact. She’s thinking of coming over.’ 

Cormac stopped before serving again. ‘Right.’  

They didn’t speak of her again. Cormac turned the conversation to the latest case he  was working on, ranting about some High Court judge in Dublin on a deportation spree,  complaining about how little sleep he had all week what with his youngest child teething.  John relaxed then and his game improved. They were back on solid ground. John some times thought their friendship only worked if he was a willing sounding board, like a  squash wall to bounce off.  

But later in the locker room, Cormac had brought up María-Clara again. 

‘About this girl..’ Cormac towelled his head, his fine ginger hair standing up with  static electricity.  

John, sitting on the bench below him, looked down and concentrated on tying his  shoe laces. ‘Yeah..?’  

‘Just be careful, I suppose.’  

John looked up at him quickly. ‘What do you mean by that?’  

‘Well, look. Ninety per cent of the population of Colombia is below the poverty  line, right. And it’s not that easy for them to get out, to get working visas. They struggle.’

‘What are you saying exactly?’ 

‘Just…Just don’t be a mark.’ 

‘Meaning?’ 

‘Ah, come off it John! She’s 23, what…like…16 years younger than you? ‘ ‘So?’ 

‘Look, you’ve got a good job, a house. A European passport. You’d have to wonder…’ 

‘Wonder what?’ John said hotly. 

‘You’d have to wonder what her motivations are.’ Cormac, in full lawyer mode, had  begun to swagger a little.  

John silently finished the other lace of his shoe. And then he muttered, so quietly,  that Cormac almost missed it. ‘Fuck you. ‘ 

He grabbed his sports bag, banged through the double doors of the changing room  with Cormac looking stupidly after him, for the first time ever, seemingly, with nothing to  say.  

But later that night, John had struggled to sleep. He recalled his first night in  Medellín, when he went out with the tour group to Parque Lleras, and gangs of sleek  haired girls in bodycon dresses had called out softly to him giggling, ‘Ay, Papacito! Mi guerito !’  

Stevo, a miner from Perth had grabbed him in a headlock, his beer-breath in John’s  ear. ‘Christ mate, they really cream their undies for tall white guys. Lucky us, eh?’ 

At the time, John had been baffled by the attention. Women in Cork barely looked  at him. But back home, with Cormac’s words echoing in his mind, it seemed suspicious.  He tossed and turned all night mulling it over. Even if María-Clara wanted to leave  Colombia, if that was why she was interested in him, did it really matter? If in return, he  got to have her? Wasn’t there always something a little transactional in relationships be tween men and women? And the trade off for him was what ? Her beauty and youth for the future security he could provide her? If that was true, wasn’t that just basic biology? Was it so wrong? 

The following day, he had a video call with María- Clara and he told her about his  conversation with Cormac.  

‘And is that what you think? Is that why you are telling me this?’ 

‘No, obviously, I just..’ 

‘That I’m just using you to ‘get out’ as he said?’ 

‘No. I.. ‘ He stopped short. He had panicked then, unsure of how to proceed, un sure of what he had hoped to achieve in mentioning it to her at all. 

She had stopped talking but through the screen he could see her liquid eyes flashing. They regarded each other for a moment, her: sunlit and luminous, her cat pawing at a  plant on the bookshelf behind her, him: hunched in his work-from-home space, in the  darkness save for a desk lamp that hurt his eyes. 

‘You know, this isn’t really working for me anymore,’ she had said slowly, not look ing directly at him. 

‘ María…’ 

‘You are too far away, the time difference… ‘ Her voice had begun to crack a little.  ‘Cork sounds wet and cold anyway.’  

‘Please, I didn’t mean anything by it. Those were his words not mine.’ ‘But you thought it too, though. I know you did.’ Her eyes had fixed back on him.  He felt like an insect under a microscope.  

‘By the way, not that it matters, you remember I’m half-Argentinian, right? That my  Dad is a judge in Buenos Aires. Did you know that? That I am of Italian descent?’ She had  spoken quickly, anger tripping out her words. ‘ I could get an Italian passport like that!’  She clicked her fingers. ‘I don’t need you. I don’t need your stupid little Irish passport. I  just liked you. I …’ She had begun to cry then.  

He had looked on, mute with the shock of what he had caused. And, then, unable  to form his words into sentences to undo it all, he began to stammer. ‘Nnnno! No, No!’  

‘I think we should just be friends. You are too old for me anyway. That is what my  friends, my family think. Goodbye, John.’ Thousands of miles away, an ocean between  them, she had slammed her laptop shut. 

The next day, she limited his access to all her social media. When he clicked on her  smiling avatar, he was hit with the question, ‘Add María-Clara Sabella?’ Sleep didn’t  come to him for a week. He fell into the routine then, of checking the weather, checking  when her phone was on, checking her friends list to see if they had posted a new photograph of her. This was all he had now, broken-mirror fragments of her life to piece togeth er, to get a picture of her day. He could spend his whole lunch break at it: translating bits  of Spanish from the art gallery’s website, diligently going through every google image of  her, typing and retyping her name into search engines to see if it would conjure her up.  Her one concession to him was that she had not blocked his number. He rang everyday.  Sent her memes and funny stories to make her smile. She never answered. Four months  since he had last heard her voice. 

Today was the first time in months he had left his desk at lunchtime and hadn’t spend the  break trawling for scraps of her online. He walked the length of the Airport Business Park, his hands balled fists in his pockets, his head bent against the blustery wind. Every  so often, a plane roared over his head. He turned up the volume louder on his ear phones,  took out his phone to do so and, on autopilot, swiped into his messages to see if she had  messaged him back. Nothing. Four months of nothing back from her. Four months of his  own one-way stalking. Enough, he decided. Enough. He would remove her from his con tacts, block her from his search engine (if such a thing was possible). He would erase her  from his digital life and maybe the memory of her would start to erase also. He put his  phone back in his pocket and propelled himself forward. He was energised now, anxious  to get back to his desk to begin the clearing of his search history, the great purge of María Clara. But as he rounded the corner back to his office block, the music in his earphones  died away. A ping. New message.  

No emoji, no laughing icon, no thumbs up. No heart. Words instead. Two words.  Spanish ones: Te extraño…