Marcelo Birmajer’s new story: Strangers in the night

He had not yet finished the glass of red wine when he discovered, Roco, to the wrong party. On his own, his original hosts were slightly unknown to him, two businessmen who accompanied him in sending out an invitation to the inauguration of a content company.

But shortly after searching for a familiar face, and listening to the dialogues and looking at the signs, he realized that he was at a wine tasting and a meeting of colleagues themselves, unrelated to his self.

He climbed to the second floor of a building, above a Mexican restaurant, mistaken that one street in Puerto Madero was another. He tasted until the very end and could not take his eyes off a woman with an angular face, bare shoulders and distressing reliefs. He had a second glass and dared: – I had the wrong party, he confessed.

– How did you know? He answered with a metallic voice and a mysterious tone.

“Because I don’t know anyone,” Roco explained.

– The important thing at a party is not who you will meet when you arrive, but when it is over.

After that answer, Roco considers the possibility that, in a twist of fate, maybe that’s really the right party: not the one to which he was formally invited, and to which he had only tried to go because of his desperation as a newly separated man.

Talking to strangers reaches the point of exchanging names; strictly speaking, his revelation, because he didn’t ask.

“Amelia,” reports a companion.

“Unusual,” Roco commented.

She accepted with a smile.

“You are my only ground wire in this meeting,” Roco explained.

Amelia never stopped smiling.

-I’m worse -he accompanied him-, I’m on the wrong planet.

Roco spontaneously shook his hand. He left it to her. Roco felt cold so he added one. Without deciding, they simultaneously left the area and walked aimlessly on the pedestrian streets. They talked Roco’s difficulty in organizing the work: the manufacture and sale of awnings for commercial premises.

Perhaps that difficulty in growth and lift within the company prompted his wife to finally give him the olive tree. Amelia laughed at Roco’s reflection, and their bodies moved closer and away in a continuous zigzag. Amelia was never married; in fact, Roco seems to have understood, for him there is no concept of marriage.

For some reason that statement struck him as lovely obscene, even at this point tonight.

When they arrived at Roco’s small apartment, she asked to go to the bathroom as if everything had been said. But after a few minutes, a certain concern reached Roco. I did not go out. Did he commit suicide in the bathroom? A madman? Will she be imprisoned on her first single date, after 15 years of marriage?

It would be a good result to the great showmanship of his existence. He couldn’t take it anymore: he peeked at the lock. This is a lizard. Amelia, naked, is a lizard, with her head down. It’s exactly the same as the reptiles in V, Alien Invasion.

Roco fell on the bed, rolled his eyes and picked up the cellphone. He would call his friend Carradilla, who worked as a night watchman at a club: the closest thing he knew to someone related to security. But Amelia opened the door before she could enter the number. Roco is completely pale, is he human againin appearance.

– What’s the problem? Amelia asked, regaining sensuality.

“No, no,” Roco lied. You took a while.

“I wanted to prepare myself well,” Amelia whispered back.

But when he approached her, and he was pale and still confused, he suspected loudly: – You are spying on me.

Roco nodded quietly, and said goodbye to himself.

“The truth is I have to ride to another planet,” Amelia revealed. I know nothing, like you. Not all of this is bullshit. Happened to me like Colén … what’s his name?

“Columbus,” Roco pointed out.

– Looking for the Indies, he came to America. I was looking for a planet with minerals called Giasto, but I ended up with land and water. Conclusion: unfortunately we will take over the Earth. I am a hero. Laugh, if you like.

There is one unexpected event that favors you: we met by chance, but you are the most prepared man to betray this abominable planet. Your husband leaves you, your business partners despise you. In your career, you know that those more connected to government receive more benefits. What do you owe your peers?

-I am part of this species -explained Roco-. I have no idea what you are.

– Is there anything worse than the human race? Amelia’s rhetorical question.

After a silence, Roco thought:-Perhaps, in the endless diversity of the universe … But we have to see.

“My proposal is simple,” Amelia concluded. The aggression is clearly not going to be lightning and lightning. A rigid civilization becomes a soft power. We will attack invisibly, by pretenses such as you have witnessed, hiding our appearance. But I need to spend an evening with you, in this sense, so that I can give the command to begin.

“I don’t understand,” Roco replied confused.

-The signal for the start of the attack is a code that is activated when … My human body works like a satellite in that aspect, but it can only be activated … with that.

Rock looked at him. Now that he was back in his human form, the lizard’s sight seemed distant, as if he were not. On the other hand, he offers her a sneaky night. As a porteño, what would happen to you if the people in the neighborhood, of the city, of the country, in other words, in the circumstances, of the galaxy, found out that you avoided that challenge?

True, he is an alien reptile, intended to dominate the Earth and oppress humanity. But My partner became worse. How can a man not be on a night of love? He prepared himself as if leading the fight. Thrown die.

wd