SUN STORIES: "How Gina Learned To Bathe Alone"...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | Gregorio Lopez was gone. Seven months and he was smoke. Didn't say much, except that he was tired, of what, he did not say, and that there had to be a better town down the road. His mother always said Gregorio was a man of few words when angry.

Gina Salinas was broken-hearted. No more accompanied meals, no more warm bedtime companion. She would miss that, but she would miss more the times she and Gregorio had showered together. There was something all-too-human in bathing with your mate, cleansing each other with favored soap, Gina her perfumed and Gregorio his Hai Karate soap-on-a-rope.

Gregorio had insisted on it early-on, back in initial dating, when he had been mesmerized by her naked body. Time and access had cooled that to almost zero. He'd not had an ounce of romantic interest in Gina by the time he decided to split for San Antonio, where his kid brother owned a motorcycle repair shop. He'd land a job there.

What kinda chunky Gina did not quite know just then was that her untethered happiness always had been headed towards this sort of ending. Men simply cannot love the same thing forever, is what Gregorio had said in a cursive-written note he'd left folded inside a glass on her kitchen table. She had found it while changing the Bed, Bath & Beyond tablecloth, sat down to read it and placed it on her chest in a moment of genuine sadness.

At nightfall, she walked into the quiet bathroom and reached for the shower's glass door, opened it and stepped-in to cool water splashing as happily as ever, and then she stood languidly under the waterfall for long minutes before releasing a miles-long sigh.

Gina reached for the loofah and felt comforted in knowing that it was still there...

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