The game's started right as I get onto the bus. The 114, uno-uno-quatro. It's already pouring too, and it's not light and misty, no, it's big heavy drops that drop plop on the brim of my hat, and splash off the shoulders of my coat as I'd waited on the corner for that damned colectivo. Then ten blocks to Constituyentes where I stomped back off into the rain in my long coat and my bucket hat.
The coat was the coat from that warehouse New Year's Eve party in San Francisco on the pier, a long black trench made out of sleeping bag. I'd thought the damned thing was water-proof, and still it might be, but even so, in that moment that I hopped off the bus and walked into that downpour again, I felt moisture, a wetness coming through the some of the seams on my back. Stomping through the wet, everything wet. It's a downpour sure, but I can feel the water hitting the skin on my face under the brim, like the water wasn't only falling down, but also falling up and side to side in this thick curtain air that I'm pushing through. Slushing through in my new leather boots. By myself. The sidewalk is nearly empty, and suddenly there's honking from car horns in the street, and a man drives by with his windows rolling down, yelling "¡gol!"
So I run up the next block to a cafe door on the corner just in time to see the replay on the shitty box TV inside, bolted up in a corner between two old walls. It's a beautiful volley from Higuain off a pass form di Maria. Over an over again on the grainy screen, and all the old-timers smiling and hugging each other and women clapping, with me looking in at the door. It's not even open, I just squint and peer through the fogging up glass.
They're only mid-cut and rubber-soled, these boots, but they keep my feet dry. A gift from the Reef sales rep at the shop, thanks Steve. I don't know what I'd do without them, if I only had Vans like I had in Paris. Still, one puddle does me in. Fuck, I gotta get to this place, I think to myself. I'm on my way to meet Solange, the girl from Couchsurfing, and some of her friends. My jacket's heavy with water, my hat's dripping wet when I come to a short brick building, 1855 Ceretti. Solange answers the door, she's sweet. She's a little older than me, a little older than Guada even, but she's young in the eyes, and she smiles like someone half her age. She says, "Hola, Brian."
I say, "Hola, Solange," and follow her in, down a hall and right, into the high-ceilinged living room of a home. It's not a flat, it a house. On the couch there's two men sitting, one with dreads and a fresh face, the other a little bigger with a beard. I feel young and alone, but I put that away somewhere quick and smile and hang my jacket on a peg over the heater and my hat too. It's a big room, with lots of space around the couch and the coffee table littered with joints and cups and glasses and beer and mate and a bottle of seltzer water, and the flatscreen by the wall. They're good people, we have a grand time, but no one else scores.
Then we drink yerba mate with coca leaves and smoke joints, and make cheeseburgers on the stove, and inspect the plants that the dreaded man has growing in his makeshift greenhouse upstairs.
