This morning I woke up and decided to make a continental breakfast, the kind you see in movies about rich people. I opened the refrigerator that I don't have and took out half a pound of imaginary ham; I took six nonexistent slices of cheese and a jug of orange juice that was a dream.
I poured the invisible coffee into the magic milk and added three tablespoons of sugar that I will taste one day. I skipped the toast, obviously. Bread is fattening, no need to exaggerate.
Full of vigor after so much nutritional abundance, I shaved with my favorite razor, a family treasure that belonged to Christopher Columbus.
I went down the stairs happy as a rabbit with amnesia and took my two-legged car to job.
The boss was waiting for me, sad-faced. She is a delicate and enormous woman, 7 feet width by height. If it weren't for her tiny eyes, which watch you suspiciously from the bottom of her skull, her big cheeks like little melons and her distinguished double chin, she would be a pretty woman. Of course, the Creator, compassionate, wanted to compensate her with a mouth that looks like a wound from ear to ear and a nose deformed like a wrinkled cucumber.
She brought me wonderful news.
"The book is not going to be published," she said and smiled.
The morning wind frolicked between the battlements of her teeth.
"What book?"
"Our star product"
Ah, no, I thought. 'Travel to hell without leaving home', written by our prime minister in collaboration with the president of Haiti... our star product was not going to be published! It would not be presented at the International Book Fair in Havana!
"It's not possible, I replied. Is it official?"
"Of course. Our janitor heard it said by the sister of the economics assistant, who is a cousin of a lover of the minister's secretary.
I put my hands on my head. "Ah, then it won't be possible."
Locked in my apartment, by candlelight, I had spent long nights editing 'Travel to Hell without leaving home'. I had removed entire pages and rewritten almost all of them, putting accents and commas in their place and giving clarity, making legible, the few 800 passages that were not understood. It was the work of my life. The dream of every editor. For such a sacrifice I would probably win the National Prize for Editing, the National Prize for Literature and the National Prize for Magic. That text had made sense!
But now it was not going to be printed, according to the trustworthy report of the publishing house's janitor.
Distressed, since my work was meaningless, I wandered around the city for hours and spent the rest of the day thinking about smaller, more manageable things like finding meaning in life.
Maybe love? Don't we say that love conquers all things?
I called my last ex-girlfriend and she wasn't there.
I called my second to last ex, and her father came on. He started with an "I told you...", which I hung up before he could tell me.
My second to last ex assured me that:
- She couldn't kiss me because...
- She had a boyfriend and was in love so...
- We could only have sex.
- Unless I was depressed.
I said no, I mean, yes, how nice. Wow, when do we see each other? Love conquers all things!!! And there was a long silence on the other end of the line.
"You called me because you're depressed?"
"Depressed? That word isn't in my dictiona...
"The book isn't going to be published, right?"
-How do you know that?
"A neighbor of mine who's a janitor and is a friend of the minister."
"So it's true?" I shrieked.
"So no.
"No what?
"We're not having sex. You're depressed.
"Me? Me, depressed?
"You're making continental breakfasts?"
"Me? I screamed. Me making continental b...?
She hung up. Then the ground opened up beneath me and I fell into Alice's bottomless pit.
And now I'm falling through the air as I type this, because well, you know, this is the way to Wonderland.