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50.
You do not waste time mourning his death.
You never did, really. You are far too intelligent for grief. It took only one night, the first night, a night of clutching his pillow and sobbing into your bedsheets, for you to realize the futility of sorrow, the way it accomplishes nothing.
He does not cross your mind anymore, really. Only rarely do you whisper his name against your wife's neck or wake up with phantom arms wrapped around your chest, a vague sensation, as though he's still there.
Since his death, you have stitched yourself back up well, made your heart infallible. You are not the type to grieve.
The only moments in which you even allow yourself to think of him, of his face or his hands or his voice, are the cold ones, in which you objectively arrange to avenge his death.
But you do not mourn. A man who allows himself to dwell, to cry, is a man who wastes his time.
23.
You first meet him at one of your father's parties, a dry black-tie affair where everybody talks too loudly and drinks too much and asks you how business school is going.
It's your father who introduces him to you, an awkward brown-haired boy with a soft demeanor and quiet voice.
He's a brilliant chemist, your father tells you, a boy he has taken under his wing and been preparing to work for Pinochet once he's out of college. His name is Maximino and he is to be treated as family.
You shake his hand and he smiles, in a way that's warm and genuine and like you have never seen.
His eyes are brown and you fall in love with him right away, right there, because you have not yet learned to be more careful with your heart.
44.
The nightmares are difficult to deal with. Are a challenge impossible to overcome.
They are the one thing you can't control, the way Max remains in your life, sticks behind even once he's become nothing but a pile of bones.
They come in many different forms, but you are always killing him or watching him die: Max, shot in the heart, bleeding to death; Max, head shoved underwater, drowning; Max, holding a knife to his throat, crying as he slits his own neck.
But the worst ones are the ones that mirror reality.
Where he gets shot in the head, where his blood sprays onto your face; the ones where you watch him fall to the ground and the pool water turns red and you can't look away from his dead eyes.
These are the worst, because you wake up feeling weak and out of control. Sweating fast and heart pounding even faster.
These are the worst because you expect release, wake up thinking he will be there and he isn't. These are the ones that make you miss him the most.
24.
The first time you make love to Max is the first time you enjoy your life, you're positive.
It's a stupidly messy, stupidly reckless affair, and you can tell that Max has no idea what he's doing, but you're happy and comfortable and you smile every time he kisses you.
And he kisses you everywhere, on every part of your body, like he could get lost in it. He touches every single part of you, from the tips of your fingers to the crinkled skin in the crook of your elbow, and you have never felt more loved in your life.
Afterward he falls asleep in your arms, but you stay awake and watch him sleep, the way his eyelashes flutter and his hands occassionally twitch, as though he's dreaming of something.
You hope it is not a nightmare. In that moment, you want nothing more than to protect him, to keep him safe.
This is the one thing about you which will never change.
35.
After his death, you learn to keep busy with your hands, as a way to distract yourself, as a way to recover, as a way to stitch yourself back up.
You begin to tie your shoelaces tighter, tie your ties tighter, more firmly iron out creases in your jackets and more neatly fold clothes for your dresser.
Cleaning becomes a hobby and an art, a form of release. You lose yourself in the straightening of chairs, the wiping of dust, the arragement of furniture, the placement of pillows on a bed.
And cooking opens up a whole world of opportunities in slicing vegetables, in opening and closing containers, in the chopping of meat, in the simple washing of one's hands.
You must learn to keep your hands busy, because they used to be his, to hold and to kiss.
Now you must devise new purposes, all from scratch.
30.
1986 is when things start to change.
The night when the Pinochet government begins to collapse, when your father is captured and interrogated and shot in the head, you suddenly have no choice but to leave.
It's around midnight, but you find Max anyway, knock on his door and rush inside and tell him your plans to escape to Mexico, create a new life.
In the pale light of the doorway, Max's brown eyes are soft and unquestioning. You think to yourself that you will probably never love anybody more in your life.
You take his face between your hands and promise you will keep him safe.
The tragedy lies in how easily he believes you, and in how easily you believe yourself.
54.
A single photo of Max is the only remnant of him you have allowed yourself to keep in your home.
And, really, it barely counts as a remnant at all. The photo is not much, just a simple picture of a younger you and a younger him, smiling in a context you can no longer remember, a time you have forced yourself to forget.
You only even look at the photo once or twice a week, when you lift it off the living room table to wipe the dust from the glass, the dirt from the metal frame; set it down quickly, give it no more attention than you would a vase or a photo of your children.
Sometimes, however, you gaze at it just a second longer than you should, and something shifts inside your chest.
Not love, of course, but a harsh, residual guilt. Like a kick in the shin, a sharp reminder of why you have changed, why you can no longer smile like the boy in the photo, the younger you, always could.
34.
On the morning of The Day, Max senses that you are nervous and, because he is who he is, devotes his energies to calming you down.
It's a good plan, Gustavo, he reminds you as he gently moves his hands across your chest, helps you button your jacket.
You're a smart man, he says as he locks the door to your apartment with his right hand, softly squeezes your shoulder with his left.
Then, finally, before the Thing That Changes Everything, in a total waste of the last words he will ever say to you, he tells you to trust yourself.
And, foolishly, you do.
x
His blood fills the pool and you're crying.
This is the second-to-last time you will ever grieve. You will cry once more, that night, and then you will never be reckless or weak again.
56.
Don Eladio's death is just as beautiful as you always imagined it would be.
You make it much cleaner than Don and his men did for Max. You are too clever for that. There is no violence, no bloodshed, no blue turning to red.
That does not mean it is any less poetic to watch Don's body betray him.
That does not mean it is any less wonderful to see the look on his face when he realizes he has lost at his own game.
And that does not mean it is any less satisfying to watch his limbs contort themselves and fall clumsily into the swimming pool, the same pool where Max's bloodied skull fell to the ground twenty years ago.
It's vengeance. It's power. It's closure. It's control.
The truth you cannot escape, however, the truth that gnaws away at your chest slowly but determinedly, is that it will never makes things fair.
33.
Max is fond of talking about the future.
He has always been a very sentimental boy, believes in things like true love and happy endings; somehow, he grew up in a slum, was raised from poverty only to cook crystal meth, but he still acts as though life is righteous, has never wronged him and never will.
He amazes you, really.
Often, at night, as he falls asleep in you arms, he whispers dreams against your neck, all his ideas about a bigger home and a warmer bed and a cleaner way to make a living.
Sometimes he even talks of children, and you'll laugh, press a kiss into his shoulder and tell him he dreams too much.
But you don't mind. His innocence and his optimism are the things about him which draw you to him most, the things about him which you have become determined to protect.
You cannot see it yet. How these are the very same things which the future intends to destroy.