Unmarked Cards

Norma yawned, sat up among her jewels, and walked to the staircase that would take her to the rooms. On the plastic table, on a bandana she had used as a tablecloth, there was a card that was one of the 22 Major Arcana of Marseille. At the top, inscribed in red Roman numerals, was the number 18. Below, a violet and red moon emitted thick, pointed rays. Jana caught her breath and focused her mind on the details and symbolism. Under the rays, small drops of white, yellow, red, and green fell on two animals that looked like dogs and could be wolves, sticking their tongues out in thirst. Behind them, in the background, were two modest fortifications. The one on the left was yellow, the one on the right, white. Both had a red strip before the openings where the lookouts rested their weapons.

One of the dogs was a timid light blue, and the other a shade that oscillated between the rosy color of piglets and snow white. They stepped on an intense green cord like the drops, and immediately after came a body of water that didn't seem like a river or a sea, but a crustacean appeared. In the center, with claws raised, was a lobster.

Jana had gone along with Norma as a game, but she felt that what she was saying was addressing her.

She had said that if that card appeared inverted, it meant lies, deception, hidden loves, conflicts with the maternal image, even cancer, and eating disorders like anorexia. If it appeared upright, it referred to ancestors, sea voyages, parties, past lives, reconciliation, and liberation from complex traumas. "Memory, it's the moon, dear, there's a whole world in it."

When Jana decoded the message, she left the comfort of the house protected by air conditioning and decided to step into the January inferno.

She paused for a second as her slender figure descended onto the chromatic drawings that decorated the walls and the steps of the pool. "Finally, all to ourselves," she thought.

The water first brushed her instep and then rose, invading the open pores of her smooth skin. Little by little, the catrina engraved on the upper part of her left thigh and then the outlined heart that peeked out from her bikini, became remnants of an unclassified underwater mythology.

When she finally sat her butt on the back of one of the steps, the small tiles, the size of a domino piece, left invisible, momentary indentations on her. Seeing them, she thought that was what love produced in her. Weren't they a metaphor for her history with N? It didn't matter; what truly disturbed her was being aware that at the slightest proximity to him, she felt excited and vulnerable. Imagine what the presence of that young man, who like a caiman, stealthily prowled among the shadows of the pool and the abandoned floating objects, produced, grotesque on the sway the water made as the bodies sank into it.

She now found herself like a Hellenic sculpture with her hair pulled back. From afar, you could see the oily base that Hawaiian Tropic left like rainbow stains... The silver pendant crowning her trachea seemed to signal lights reflecting off the sun. Although she now kept her eyes closed, he knew she was watching him. Not out of arrogance, simply understanding that this was a game of seduction that had developed over the years, and neither remembered well how it started, but they enjoyed it in silence.

One day, N asked if she could do him the favor of applying sunscreen on his back; another day, Jana thought to ask him to hold her from below to learn to float, and so on... One day it was Jana splashing water in his face to annoy him, another day it was him...

This whole story ended with him catching her and dragging her underwater along the length of the pool. Once that happened, he used his expert swimming skills and ended up positioning himself between her hips so that her back was in contact with the pool floor.

Many times they just got lost staring into each other's eyes. He enjoyed waiting for her feigned calm to turn into a desperate grimace due to suffocation. She tried to focus on some point in the evanescent sky that rose bubbling beside N's face.

Most times, he surrendered first and surfaced with a slight erection. Jana would come up, breathe deeply, and indulge herself with another lap underwater to the edge of the steps. There, she would climb, adjusting her suit that, like a tip, always got misaligned on her butt. But this nap was different; I don't know if it was Norma's reading or the chat they had weeks ago on WhatsApp, but Jana lunged at the young man who was against the wall closest to the main window of the house.

For the first time, they were invisible. Jana pushed off with her feet like a torpedo in the clear water. She dived with her eyes open and swam as close to the bottom as she could so the air pressure wouldn't lift her. When she reached N's feet, she grabbed his ankles for a second and, with a mermaid-like curve, clung to the double edge of his slip and thick swimsuit to lower them just enough.

He stayed still, holding onto the edge, and saw a school of bubbles slip just below his navel. He wondered if it was one of her many jokes, but seeing her emerge and then dive again after a few seconds, he began to lightly stroke her hair while watching her from above, distorted by the water.

N lowered his hand and pulled her mouth to the surface so she could breathe on his shoulder while he held her, caressing her. She had the skill to hurt him just enough to cause pleasure.

He used two fingers to dip into her bikini too and went for more. He positioned Jana so he could rest his wooden rosary on the young woman's shoulder blades. He started to move the bikini bottom, and while she guided him with her grip, she whispered the word "slowly" with a breathy moan. After a few minutes of frenzy, there was an explosion in the water. The copious semen burst out and, like whitish threads, dispersed among the small waves moving the grotesque objects floating in the pool: a hippopotamus, a huge whale, and several foam and polyurethane pool noodles.

Later, as the in-laws and the rest of the family woke up, they gradually submerged into the ecstasy of those young ones.

N made some mate and started reading. Every now and then, he saw those older people he so despised emerge and snort from the water, swallowing a secret that would die there at the bottom.

Jana claimed a headache and went for a nap. N did the same afterward, smoking in the sun on a Paraguayan hammock in plain sight of everyone.