"Guess, good guesser."

Dissolute, unruly, strewing the same destructive actions no matter where he was or whom he was with, at home or outside. The news had arrived: He was the same as always. Thirty-four forgotten years returned at one stroke, making Don Luis Albarran's extended hand tremble as he wavered between opening the door to his house or saying to the suspect phantom, "Go away. I never want to see you again. What do you want of me? Get away. Get away."

2. Reyes Albarran had been given that name because he was born on January 5, a holiday that, in the Latino world, celebrates the arrival of the Santos Reyes, Melchor, Gaspar, and Baltasar, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the stable in Bethlehem. Centuries before the appearance of Santa Claus, children in Mexico and Chile, Spain and Argentina, celebrated the Day of the Kings as the holiday with presents and homemade sweets, culminating in the ceremony of the rosca de reyes, the ring-shaped kings' cake inside which is hidden a little white porcelain figure of Baby Jesus.

Tradition dictates that whoever cuts the piece of cake that hides the baby is bound to give a party on the second day of the following month, February, and every month after that. Few get past the month of March. n.o.body can endure an entire year of Christmas parties. The last time he saw his brother, Don Luis received from him a rosca de reyes with twelve little dolls of Baby Jesus, one next to the other. It was a treacherous invitation from Reyes to Luis: "Invite me every month, brother."

Matilde said it: "On top of everything else, he's a scrounger. I don't want to see him again. Not even as a delivery boy."

When Luis Albarran, moved by an uncontrollable mixture of blameworthy argumentativeness, buried fraternity, seignorial arrogance, unconscious valor, but especially shameful curiosity, opened the door of his house on that December 24, the first thing he saw was the outstretched hand with the little porcelain doll held between thumb and index finger. Don Luis felt the offense of the contrast between the pulchritude of the doll and the grime of the cracked fingers, the broken nails edged in black, the shredded shirt cuff.

"What do you want, Reyes?" said Luis abruptly. With his brother, courtesy was not merely excessive. It was a dangerous invitation.

"Lodging, brother, hospitality," a voice as cracked as the fingers replied from the darkness. It was a voice broken by cheap alcohol: A stink of rum lashed the nostrils of Don Luis Albarran like an ethylic whip.

"It isn't-" he began to say, but the other man, Reyes Albarran, had already pushed him away to come into the vestibule. Don Luis stood to one side, almost like a doorman, and rapidly closed the door as if he feared that a tribe of beggars, drunkards, and sots would come in on the heels of his undesirable brother.

He repeated: "What do you want?"

The other man guffawed, and his Potrero rum breath floated toward the living room. "Look at me and you tell me."

Don Luis stood outside the bathroom listening to his brother singing "Amapola" in a loud off-key voice, splashing with joy and punctuating his song with paleo-patriotic observations: "Only-Veracruz-is-beautiful, howprettyismichoacan, Ay! Chihuahua! What! Apache!" as if the guest wanted to indicate that for the past three and a half decades, he had traveled the entire republic. Only because of a trace of decency, perhaps, he did not sing "Ay Jalisco, don't brag."

And if not the entire republic, Reyes had traveled-Don Luis said with alarmed discretion-its lowest, most unfortunate neighborhoods, its black holes, its spider nests, its overgrown fields of bedbugs, lice, and chancres, its maw of ashes, mud, and garbage. It was enough to look at the pile of dirty, frayed clothing riddled with holes, and its grayish tone, with no real color or form: Reyes Albarran had left all this-the rags of wretchedness-at the bathroom door. With repugnance, the master of the house smelled his acrid armpits, the crust of his a.s.shole, the bitter intimacy of his pubis.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the handsome, intelligent boy who, at the age of twenty-four, ruled over the most exclusive bar in Mexico City, the Rendez-Vous, facing the traffic circle of the Angel of Independence, when the capital had two and not twenty million inhabitants, when all the known people really did know one another and would meet at the Rendez-Vous, where, with luck, night after night, you would see one of the many celebrities who, in those days, frequented the exotic Mexican metropolis-John Steinbeck, Paulette G.o.ddard, Aaron Copland, Virginia Hill. The so-called most transparent region, still wearing the halo of the recent glories of European exile and the distant fires of the Mexican Revolution.

Reyes Albarran not only made c.o.c.ktails. He was a c.o.c.ktail. He mixed languages, references, gossip, jokes, he played the piano, he sang Agustin Lara and Cole Porter, combed his hair with pomade, imitated Gardel, introduced surprising mixtures of alcohol with irresistible names-the Manhattan, the sidecar, the Tom Collins-attempted to bring together necessary and dissimilar couples, urged h.o.m.os.e.xuals and lesbians to show themselves without complexes, impelled boys ruined by the Revolution to fall in love with girls enriched by the same event, deceived the Hungarian princess dispossessed by Communism into marrying the false rogue without a cent posing as a petro-millionaire from Tabasco. Between drinks, he imagined them all, learning on their wedding night that between the two of them-the princess and the rogue-they couldn't put two eggs in the refrigerator.

"My specialty is launching penury in pursuit of wealth," he would say, the sophisticated Reyes Albarran with his elbow on the bar and a gin fizz in his hand.

But the clientele-helas!-began to understand that the owner of the Rendez-Vous was a mocker, a gossip, a cruel and talkative man, even if he tended bar with burlesque religious solemnity, serving each drink with an "ego baptiso te whiskey sour" and closing the establishment at the hour prescribed by law with a no less mocking "Ite Bacchus est."

He loved, in other words, to humiliate his clients while pretending to protect them. But since the clients eventually saw the light, rancor and suspicion acc.u.mulated around Reyes Albarran. He knew too many secrets, he laughed at his own mother, he could put an end to many reputations by means of gossip columns and whispered slander. They began to abandon him.

And the city was growing, the fashionable places changed like serpents shedding skin, social barriers fell, exclusive groups became reclusive or inclusive, the names of the old families no longer meant anything, those of the new families changed with each presidential term before they retired to enjoy their six-year fortunes, engagements to be married were determined by distances, the new Outer Ring dictated debuts, dates, angers, punctual loves, lost friendships . . . Luxury and the places that were frequented moved from the Juarez district to the Zona Rosa to Avenida Masaryk, right here in the Polanco district where the shipwrecked survivor of the postwar period, the pomaded and seductive Reyes Albarran, had been tossed up one Christmas Eve to knock on the door of his solid old brother, the punctual and industrious Don Luis Albarran, a recent widower, undoubtedly in need of the fraternal company of the equally needy bartender who had ended as a drunkard, forgetting the golden rule: To be a good saloon keeper, you also have to be a good abstainer.

A drunkard, a pianist in an elegant boite who ended up pounding the keys in the brothels of the Narvarte district like Hipolito el de Santa, a pomaded seducer of European princesses who ended up living at the expense of rumberas in decline, a waiter in funky holes and, with luck, dives close to the Zocalo, the Plaza Mayor where, more than once, he was found sleeping, wrapped in newspapers, awakened by the clubs of the heartless Technicolor gendarmerie of the increasingly dangerous metropolis. Cops, blue, tamarind, all of them on the take, except what could they put the bite on him for except hunger? Stumbling through the entire republic in search of luck, not finding it, stealing bus tickets and lottery tickets, the first bringing more fortune than the second, carrying him far and sinking him into being broke until the doctor in Ciudad Juarez told him, "You're no longer the man you were, Senor Albarran. You've lived a long time. It isn't that you're sick. You're just worn out. I mean exhausted. You can't do any more. The wind's gone out of you. I see that you're over seventy. I advise you to retire. For your own good."

If some buried tenderness remained in Don Luis Albarran toward his older brother, Reyes Albarran (the "Don" didn't come off even as a joke), the implacable Chilean Dona Matilde Cousino had kept him from bringing it to the surface: "That filthy beggar doesn't set foot in my house. Don't let yourself be ruled by affection, Lucho. Your brother had everything, and he threw it all away. Let him live in his shanties. He doesn't come in here. Not while I'm alive. No, Senor."

But she wasn't alive now. Though her will was. That night Don "Lucho" Albarran felt as never before the absence of his willful wife. She would have thrown the discomfiting brother out on the street with a sonorous, very Chilean: "Get the h.e.l.l out of here, you d.a.m.n ragged beggar!"

3. As tends to happen to most human beings, Don Luis Albarran woke up in a bad mood. If sleeping is an antic.i.p.ation of death, then it is a warm, comfortable, welcoming announcement. If dreaming is death, then it is the great open door of hospitality. Everything in that kingdom is possible. Everything we desire lies within reach. s.e.x. Money. Power. Food and drink. Imaginary landscapes. The most interesting people. Connections to celebrity, authority, mystery. Of course, an oneiric counterpart exists. One dreams of accidents. Dreams are dimensions of our circulation, and as Dona Matilde would say, "Lucho, don't be an a.s.shole. We're nothing but accidents of our circulation."

Except that accidents in a dream tend to be absurd. Walking naked down the street is the prototype. Or they can be mortal. Falling from the top floor of a skysc.r.a.per, like King Kong. Except at that moment the angel sent by Morpheus wakes us, the dream is interrupted, and then we give it an ugly name, pesadilla. pesadilla. Borges, said the very southern and well-read Dona Matilde, detested that terrible word and wondered why we didn't have a good word in Spanish for a bad dream, for example, Borges, said the very southern and well-read Dona Matilde, detested that terrible word and wondered why we didn't have a good word in Spanish for a bad dream, for example, nightmare nightmare or or cauchemar. cauchemar.

Don Luis recalled these ideas of his Chilean dreamer regarding dreams, and he prayed as he was falling precisely into the arms of Morpheus: "Get away, pesadilla. pesadilla. Welcome, Welcome, cauchemar, cauchemar, hidden sea, invisible ocean of dreams, welcome, hidden sea, invisible ocean of dreams, welcome, nightmare, nightmare, nocturnal mare, mount of the darkness. Welcome to you both, drive the ugly Spanish nocturnal mare, mount of the darkness. Welcome to you both, drive the ugly Spanish pesadilla pesadilla away from me." away from me."

Don Luis awoke that morning convinced that his bad mood was the usual one upon opening his eyes and that a good Mexican breakfast of spicy huevos rancheros and steaming coffee from Coatepec would be enough to return him to reality.

The newspaper carefully opened on the table by Truchuela, the butler, noisily displayed news much worse than the worst personal dream. Once again the world was on its head, and the pesadillas, cauchemars, pesadillas, cauchemars, or or nightmares nightmares of the previous night seemed mere fairy tales compared to ordinary reality. Except that this morning the austere face of Truchuela, as long and sour as that of any actor cast in the role of a butler with a long, sour face, of the previous night seemed mere fairy tales compared to ordinary reality. Except that this morning the austere face of Truchuela, as long and sour as that of any actor cast in the role of a butler with a long, sour face,1 was more sour and longer than usual. And in case Don Luis didn't notice, Truchuela filled the cup to the brim with coffee and even dared to spill it. was more sour and longer than usual. And in case Don Luis didn't notice, Truchuela filled the cup to the brim with coffee and even dared to spill it.

"The Senor will please excuse me."

"What?" said a distracted Don Luis, bewitched by his effort to decipher the tongue twisters of high Mexican officials.

"Excuse me. I spilled the coffee."

No expression of Don Luis's justified what Truchuela wanted to say: "The Senor will forgive me, but the unexpected guest in the blue bedroom-"

"He is not unexpected," said Don Luis with a certain severity. "He is my brother."

"So he said," Truchuela agreed. "It was difficult for us to accept that."

"Us? How many are you, you, Truchuela?" Don Luis replied with a growing irritation, directed at himself more than at the perfect servant imported from Spain and accustomed to waiting on the superior clientele of El Bodegon in Madrid. Truchuela?" Don Luis replied with a growing irritation, directed at himself more than at the perfect servant imported from Spain and accustomed to waiting on the superior clientele of El Bodegon in Madrid.

"We are all of us, all of us, Senor." Senor."

From this it appeared that Reyes, installed in the blue bedroom in less than a morning following the return of the staff, had demanded: a) That he be served breakfast in bed. A request fulfilled by the chambermaid, Pepita, whom Reyes ordered to let him sleep postprandially (Truchuela's preferred expression) until noon before returning (Pepita) to run the water in the bath (tub) and sprinkle it with lavender salts.

b) That the cook, Maria Bonifacia, come up to the top floor (something she had never done) to receive orders regarding the menu to be followed not only today but for all breakfasts hereafter (marrow soup, brain quesadillas, chicken with bacon and almonds, pork in wine sauce, and also pigs' feet, everything can be used, yellow mole, mole, stuffed cheese from Yucatan, smoked meat, jerked beef, and ant eggs in season. stuffed cheese from Yucatan, smoked meat, jerked beef, and ant eggs in season.

" 'Senor Don Luis eats simpler food, he isn't going to like your menu, Senor-?'

" 'Reyes. Reyes Albarran. I'm your employer's brother.'

"Yes, Senor Don Luis, he said everything 'in quotation marks,' " the butler affirmed.

"And what else?" Don Luis inquired, certain that no new petro-war of Mr. Bush's would be worse news than what came next from the mouth of Truchuela.

"He ordered that the gardener, Candido, be told that there are no roses in his bedroom. That he is accustomed to having roses in his bedroom."

"Roses?" Don Luis said with a laugh, imagining the p.r.i.c.kly pears that must have been the habitual landscape for his unfortunate vagabond brother.

"And he has asked Jehova the chauffeur to have the Mercedes ready at three this afternoon to take him shopping at the Palacio de Hierro."

"Modest."

" 'I'm totally Palacio,' said your . . . brother?" The impa.s.sive Truchuela broke; he could contain himself no longer. "Your brother, Senor Don Luis? How can that be? That-"

"Say it, Truchuela, don't bite your tongue. That vagrant, that b.u.m, that tramp, that beggar, that clochard, clochard, they exist everywhere and have a name, don't limit yourself." they exist everywhere and have a name, don't limit yourself."

"As you say, Senor." The butler bowed his head.

"Well yes, Truchuela, he is my brother. An unwelcome Christmas gift, I admit. His name is Reyes, and he will be my guest until the Day of the Kings, January 5. From now until that date-ten days-I ask you to tell the staff to treat him as a gentleman, no matter how difficult it may be for them. Put up with his insolence. Accept his whims. I'll know how to show my grat.i.tude."

"The Senor does honor to his well-known generosity."

"All right, Truchuela. Tell Jehova to have the car ready to go to the office. And to come back for my brother at three."

"As the Senor wishes."

When he was back in the kitchen, Truchuela said, "The Senor is a model gentleman."

"He's a saintly soul," contributed the cook, Maria Bonifacia.

"He's nuts," said the gardener, Candido. "Roses in January are only for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Let him be happy with daisies."

"Let him go push them up," an indignant Pepita said with a laugh. "A b.u.m dying of hunger."

"Push them up? What, the daisies?" Candido asked with a smile.

"Yes, but not my b.u.t.t, which is what he tried to do when he asked me to dry him when he got out of the tub."

"And what did you do?" they all asked at once, except for the circ.u.mspect Truchuela.

"I told him to dry himself, dirty old man, jerk with big hands."

"He'll complain about you to the boss."

"No, he won't! He just laughed and shook his wrinkled dried-up p.r.i.c.k with his hand. It was like the ones on those old monkeys in the zoo. 'Keep your chipotle pepper to yourself,' I said to the indecent old creep. 'Little but delicious,' sang the old son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"Pepita, don't risk your job," said the prudent Maria Bonifacia.

"I can have plenty of jobs, Dona Boni, I'm not ready to be thrown away like you."

"Respect my gray hairs, you stupid girl."

"Better if I pull them out, you miserable old woman."

The three men separated the women. Truchuela laid down the law: "Don't let this unwanted guest have his way and make us enemies. We're a staff that gets along. Isn't that true, Pepita?"

The chambermaid agreed and bowed her head. "I'm sorry, Maria Bonifacia."

The cook caressed Pepita's dark braided head. "My girl. You know I love you."

"So," dictated Truchuela, "we'll serve Don Don Reyes Albarran. No complaints, kids. Just information. We obey the boss. But we let the boss know." Reyes Albarran. No complaints, kids. Just information. We obey the boss. But we let the boss know."

Unusually for the month of January, a downpour fell on the city, and everyone went to tend to duties except the gardener, who sat down to read the crime newspaper Alarma! Alarma!

4. Don Luis Albarran had decided that the best way to dispatch his discomfiting brother was to treat him like a beloved guest. Charm him first and then dispatch him. That is: January 6, bye-bye, and if I saw you, I don't remember. This was the grand plan of the master of the house. He counted on the patience and loyalty of the servants to bring his scheme to a successful conclusion.

"I have no other recourse," he said to the spirit, accusatory from the grave, of his adored Dona Matilde.

Certainly, Don Luis tried to avoid Reyes as much as possible. But an encounter was inevitable, and the discomfiting brother took it upon himself to have his supper served in Don Luis's bedroom in order to have him captive at least once a day, in view of Don Luis's daily flights to the office (while Reyes slept until noon) or business lunches (while Reyes had himself served Pantagruelian, typically Mexican lunches) or his return from the office (while Reyes went "shopping" at the Palacio de Hierro, since he had no money and had to content himself with looking).

Until Don Luis saw Jehova come in with a outsize tower of packages that he carried up to the bedroom of Don Don Reyes. "What's that?" an irritated Don Luis inquired. Reyes. "What's that?" an irritated Don Luis inquired.

"Today's purchases," Jehova answered very seriously.

"Today's purchases? Whose?"

"Your brother's, Senor. Every day he goes shopping at the Palacio de Hierro." The chauffeur smiled sardonically. "I think he's going to buy out all their stock." He added with singular impudence: "The truth is, he doesn't buy things just for himself but for everybody."

"Everybody?" Don Luis's irritated perplexity increased.

"Sure. A miniskirt for Pepita, new gloves for the gardener, a flowered Sunday dress for Dona Boni, Wagner's operas for Truchuela, he listens to them in secret-"

"And for you?" Don Luis put on his most severe expression.

"Well, a real chauffeur's cap, navy blue with a plastic visor and gold trim. What you never bothered to give me, and that's the d.a.m.n truth."

"Show some respect, Jehova!"

"As you wish, Senor," replied the chauffeur with a crooked, mischievous, irritating little smile that once would have been the prelude to dismissal. Except that Jehova was too good a chauffeur, when most had gone to drive trucks across the border in the era of NAFTA.

In any case, how did he dare?

"How nice." Don Luis smiled affably when Truchuela brought him his usual light meal of chocolate and pastries, and for Reyes, sitting now across from his brother, a tray filled with enchiladas suizas, roasted strips of chile peppers, fritters, omelets, and a couple of Corona beers.

"Sure, give it your best," replied Reyes.

"I see you're well served."

"It was time." Reyes began to chew. He was dressed in a red velvet robe, blue slippers, and a Liberty ascot.

"Time for what?"

"Time to say goodbye, Luisito."

"I repeat, time for what? Haven't I treated you like a brother? Haven't I kept my Christmas promise? You will be my guest until tomorrow, the Day of the Kings, and-"

"And then kick me out on the street?" The discomfiting brother almost choked on his laughter.

"No. To each his own life," Don Luis said in a hesitant voice.

"The fact is, I'm having a fantastic time. The fact is, my life now is here, at the side of my adored fratellino. fratellino."

"Reyes," Don Luis said with his severest expression. "We made a deal. Until January sixth."

"Don't make me laugh, Guichito. Do you think that in a week you can wipe away the crimes of an entire life?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. We haven't seen each other in thirty years."

"That's the point. You don't keep very good accounts." Reyes swallowed a chalupa and licked the cream from his lips with his tongue. "Sixty years, I'm telling you . . . You were so solemn as a boy. The favorite son. You condemned me to second place. The clown of the house."

"You were older than me. You could have affirmed your position as firstborn. It isn't my fault if-"