Fajita Night

Last night, Sara Blaylock invited me (and others) over to her house for Fajita Night. She and her friend Maria, an Ecuadorian with a Southern accent because she moved to North Carolina when she was 12, cooked a whole spread of Mexican food, including guacamole. It was a real Mexican feast including El Fenix hot sauce that Sara’s mom had mailed her from The States. And either it has gotten spicier, or my taste buds have gotten weak from bland food and tonsillitis. (I’ll have to strengthen them in Austin.) But the food was really good. I was in heaven, even though I ate one and a half empanadas a couple of hours before. I tried Jenny’s favorite, Pizza Yermin, but I forget that Jenny hates vegetables so our tastes are quite different. Capresse is supposed to be mozzarella with tomato + basil, but at Yermin it’s greasy cheese and what appeared to be whole garlic cloves. I doubt I’ll go there again. Anyway, dinner at Sara’s was fun and it was nice to have a night with American company. The group included Warner Lewis and Andrew Warin, whom I met at the door when I realized I had forgotten to write down Sara’s apartment number to be buzzed up. Warner pushes 3E. We greet each other with bags full of Quilmes and bottles of wine. Warner asks me how I’ve been (I haven’t seen him since the last time I was at Rumi) and I tell him I’m good but recovering from tonsillitis. He snickers, “Didn’t Nico have tonsillitis?” “I’m pretty sure you can’t catch tonsillitis, I think it was from the smoke,” I tell him. (He and Nico are good friends and he totally called me out on hanging out with him that whole night. Touché, Warner. Your time will come.) Soon after this charming little exchange, Sara comes to the door in a green Mexican muu-muu. “So we’re not going out after,” I think to myself. (Yes!) I notice Warner holds Catchphrase in his hands. (Again, yes!) So we head upstairs and Maria and Sara are still putting together a few last things but say they don’t need help, so I open my Chinomart wine and sit on the couch with the boys. They’re both from DC and went to UVA. They’re both working. Warner at a legitimate office job and Andrew as a freelance English teacher with a few institutes down here. He asks me my story. I say I’m just traveling for a couple of months, but as of a couple of days ago I just got into grad school and might try to stick around for another month or so. They congratulate me with clinking glasses and I realize I’ve never really celebrated this achievement with any sort of acknowledgment, not even a hug. Andrew asks what I do all day I tell him I go to cafes and write, sit and read in the park, go to museums, wander around and get lost. Warner asks me what kind of stuff do I write? I tell him mainly observations. You know, fodder for the novel I will some day write… Yeah, that novel. They seem to know what I am talking about. The kind of people that go to another country after college always do.

So we sit down to dinner: Sara, Maria, Warner, Andrew and me. No clue where Sara’s roommate Ariel is, and the other one, Kate, is eating dinner at Kansas (a Houston’s spin-off in Buenos Aires.) Kate arrives later with more Quilmes and a lollipop from her kiosko boyfriend, and joins in on Catchphrase. Then comes Truman, another DC boy. This allows for uneven numbers, but the boys play Catchphrase so often they know how to alleviate the problem. If my ears weren’t so stopped up I’d have been better at the game, but it is a word game so I am still pretty good. And I have experience playing, just not with Andrew’s “no charades-like gestures allowed” rules. After three rounds we stop. The other team (Warner, Maria, Sara, and Truman) has won the tournament, and we’re all worked up from the competition. We sit and laugh and talk. Leandro had been calling about Jet and Crobar and Piano Bar. I tell him I’m still at dinner and don’t think I’ll make it out. I’ve got to take him up on an offer soon so he doesn’t think I’m blowing him off. I told him about last weekend and the tonsillitis…

Maria has to print something out for her morning flight to Brazil, so the boys and I walk her to a 24 hour locutorio and grab a cab home. Warner and Andrew (and maybe Truman, too) live at Charcas and Araoz, so I’m on the way to their place, and we split a cab. The boys talk about hitting up Liquid, or “The ‘Quid,” but I decide it’s best for me to put my tonsils to rest at 2 am.