Argentines
by Jessie Marshall
I don't want to buy Argentinean underwear, so I drive to Wal-Mart. I get red, blue, and black. Nine pairs fold into my suitcase. A week and then some, if I changed every day, which I don't.
"Aren't the Argentines at war?"We eat dinner at an Italian restaurant. Together we are a logic puzzle: Two of the women at the table have children and two of them have husbands. They are not the same two women. If I have no children and no husband, which one of them is me?
"Is it Argentine? Or Argentinean?"
"Argentino!"
"And are they at war?"
"Chile is their neighbor."
"So, I believe, is Brazil."
The women nod and twirl forks of spaghetti in oiled spoons. They are from a small town along the Susquehanna, a nowhere town, millions of miles from battle. By the third glass their eyes have gone beady and soft. They laugh:
"Oh, to be young and free!"
"Oh, to be a bird on the wing!"
They are trying to make fun of me. If I end up in a ditch, weeks would pass before anybody heard. But so what? I am stringless. I am an open guitar.
"Vive la revolution!"
"Vive la freedom!"
I get up to go to the bathroom, but something's tugging at my jeans. Under the table sits a dusty man.
"We are a people at war," he says. His eyes are so white they look blue. "We are hungry," he says.
I look closer and there are hundreds of them, women and children and men, faces gone blank with a need that gleams like a bone. At first I think they're trembling, but it's just the restaurant's heater blowing through their clothes. The Argentineans sit perfectly still.
"What can I do?"
The man shrugs. "Nothing. I just overheard the conversation and thought you'd like to know."
The spumoni arrives. While the ladies are distracted I slide against the red vinyl and slip under the table with the Argentineans. The floor is cold. I can see the shoes of my friends. Someone's feet stink. I apologize for the smell.
"Yes," says the man. "We noticed that."
"It's hard," I say. "We are no longer at war but we still don't wash our feet every day."
"Ah," says the man. "We would."
I tell the man I have to go, but I'll be back. I have a ticket and nine pairs of underwear in my suitcase.
He waves goodbye. "Next time, bring food."
When I climb back up, the dessert is gone and the check sits in its dish. My friends take up cigarettes and spin straw-colored hair around their fingers.
"You have to tell us how it is."
"Wear condoms if you have sex."
"And bring us something nice."
Nice. Like a pen that says Argentina on it.
"But be careful. Promise you'll be careful?"
I close my eyes and try to see the future, but I can't. I want a difference so radical, things will need new names.
"Of course," I say. "I'm always careful." I smile at the women, showing my teeth, and put my money on the table.
After receiving an MFA at New York University, Jessie moved to Hawaii where she teaches middle-school English. Her fiction has appeared in the Mid-American Review and the Gettysburg Review, and she is working on a collection of short stories and a novel.