Lying on the bed, the girl started to grate on Leandro. Her voice was too high-pitched, not very s.e.xy. It broke into an absurd, almost ridiculous, crowing, every sentence like the shriek of a broody hen. The girl was too skinny and he could see the outline of her bones. She ran her blond hair over his chest, nibbled on his nipples, and caressed the flaccid skin around his old belly.

After the days of abstinence during which he had resisted breaking away to the chalet, his visits had become almost daily. A relapse. On Sunday he stayed home out of an insurmountable sense of shame, and Aurora had a couple of visits that allowed him to lock himself in his room. Seeing Osembe again after two weeks was pleasant. She was affectionate, and asked why he'd been away. He explained that his wife was sick and Osembe didn't make him feel ridiculous, there, naked in bed at a brothel, talking about his wife's illness. Osembe devoted herself fully to his pleasure. That afternoon he returned home with his guilt tempered by the feeling that he'd had a really good time. Besides, he told himself, I won't go back for a good long while. But he returned the next evening. And the one after that. And Osembe went back to her old way of satisfying him. The latter half of each encounter turned into a brief chat where they each shared some private details.

On Monday they used the Jacuzzi again, even though Leandro was uncomfortable about its cleanliness and the fact that the tub wasn't white. He enjoyed being close to Osembe. The foamy water played off her skin and offered him stimulating glimpses. Back on the street, he felt the evening's cold go right through him. He thought he was getting sick.

He imagined himself in bed, feverish. Then he thought how there'd be no one to take care of him. Now it wouldn't be like those old bouts of flu or stomach virus that he spent in bed with Aurora anxious to offer him something to eat, his medicines at the right time, more heat when he needed it. Now he would be a neglected patient. And it seemed like just punishment.

But he didn't get sick. And after lunch the next day he left Aurora dozing with the murmur of a cheery afternoon radio program in the background. Before entering the chalet, from the sidewalk across the street, he saw a man bringing in boxes from the supermarket and then some bags from the dry cleaners. Maybe they were laundered sheets, he said to himself. He didn't go in until fifteen minutes after seeing the man leave in a dark van. The chalet presented its usual lowered shades like closed eyelashes, the same air of discretion, silence, almost neglect. But that afternoon he got angry with Osembe.

She received him sleepily but solicitously. She was almost naked; maybe she had just finished with another client. She washed him clumsily between giggles and Leandro thought she had taken drugs or was drunk. They lay on the bed and she was excessive. Sometimes she let out silly laughs and said affectionate things that sounded mocking with all her laughter. With two fingers, she shook Leandro's p.e.n.i.s for a while as if it were a talking doll. In its flaccidness it looked like a perverse, insulting puppet show.

Leandro felt exposed and ridiculed. He tried to control his desire, to convey his displeasure. But she applied herself in a laborious f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o. She nibbled on Leandro's p.e.n.i.s and several times he felt the border where pain and pleasure brush past each other. She filled her mouth with saliva and rinsed and dampened his half-erect member. The sounds were unpleasant and worked against her diligent efforts. What's wrong today? she said. Don't you like me anymore, darling? she asked. Then she just wagged Leandro's p.e.n.i.s with an aggressive hand, as if it were a tiring and absurd task, like shaking a dead bladder.

Leandro grabbed her hard by the wrist. Relax, he said. That's enough. She resisted, but he forced her to lie down beside him. He waited a second for their breathing to calm after the struggle.

I want to see you outside of here, Leandro told her. That's not allowed. Give me a phone number. You'll make more money. It will all be for you. Don't talk, Osembe told him, and moved her head as if warning him to be careful. Don't you see you'd make twice or three times what you are making? How much do they take out here?

Leandro traveled over Osembe's body. In response to his delicate nibbles, she laughed or let out m.u.f.fled screams. Leandro slid down to her s.e.x and tried to tame her. He felt he was failing in his attempts to give her pleasure, didn't notice her pink folds moistening. She seemed made of stone. I'm so stupid, he thought.

He stood up, dressed without his usual shower, and left the room without leaving a tip. Osembe didn't say anything and Leandro suspected she was dozing on the bed.

Downstairs he paid in cash. He answered with a concise yes to the madam's did everything go well? He had felt a desire to hit Osembe, to slap her, to make her mad or irritated, to finally see, maybe, a real glimpse of her as a person. But he was glad he hadn't. Any conflict in those places always ended unpleasantly.

Along the street, he struggled to contain his fury. The people he pa.s.sed seemed terribly ugly, unpleasant, awkward. The hedge of flowers seemed tacky and lacking personality, the sidewalk poorly drawn. He preferred the gray streets of old Madrid. The shape of cars seemed ridiculous; the climate, inhospitable; the chipped tree trunks, depressing. The city transmitted life, but a grotesque, obscene life. The stores weren't very tempting, with rickety signs or cheap neon. The advertising on bus stops was invaded by the same frigid beauty, and most of the cold faces he saw were demoralizingly common.

I'm not going back, he told himself. From the first day, he had been attracted to Osembe's haughty disdain, the cruelty in her empty and indifferent gaze. But the smoothness of her skin was addictive. He knew he would never have her, that she would never think of him or worry in the least about her dirty old customer, that the loyalty of his visits would never soften the absent heart of that chalet. The s.e.xual pleasure she conceded him was the product of an automatic professionalism; the hands that ran over his body only caressed the money it gave them. Money she'd spend on manicures, hair salons, cosmetics, clothes, jewelry, because from everything he could make out about Osembe, she was a girl removed from the seriousness of her destiny, the complacent survivor of a shipwreck.

If someday he let that stupid vice ruin his life, he would have the consolation of knowing he had done it consciously, that he hadn't been tricked into going to the chalet or into those arms. It was a chosen downfall, a voluntary and obsessive descent that deserved no mercy, that wasn't sustained by romantic justifications.

When he got home that night, his anger turned into peace and devotion. He read to Aurora beside the bed, he made broth for her, and he kissed her on the cheek when he said good night. He wondered if he would have done all that with the same disposition if he hadn't just come from staring his moral misery in the face, seeing how low he had sunk. He wondered if there had to be a fundamental contrast in life's events. If what was good was only good because of the lurking presence of the bad, the lovely beside the ugly, the right beside the wrong.

I'm going to get better, don't worry, Aurora said when she noticed Leandro was down in the dumps. He turned off the light. In the dark, he felt dirty and disgusted with himself. She was making a huge mistake in her interpretation of the reason behind his sadness. I'm not suffering over you, but over me, he thought, wounded.

Leandro went to sleep with Osembe's dried saliva on his skin. He wished to wake up dead, liberated. But he woke up healthy and hale, in good spirits even. And that same evening he was beneath the body of a flat, bony Ukrainian woman, who said her name was Tania and whom Leandro had chosen to get back at Osembe, even though he suspected she wasn't bothered in the least by this gesture. What was he expecting? Jealousy? He quickly regretted it as he watched himself fake it in order to seem like something close to a satisfied customer. At least with Osembe he didn't feel conditioned into a role.

Leandro had to focus to come at the end. I can dress myself, he says when she offers to help him with her horrible rook's voice. Leandro looks at his soft, pale body, the body of an old man, the age spots around his chest. Why do I do this? Why am I destroying myself this way? I didn't work all my life, read, study, live with a lovely, dynamic woman, struggle to have a decent, emanc.i.p.ated life to end up a despicable wreck in an uptown wh.o.r.ehouse. Am I going to ruin my life? he asks himself. He places his head between his hands on his knees, like a boxer who's been served a knockout punch, minutes before losing everything.

He senses the inner warning that keeps him from crying. The voice that reminds him that guilty lamenting isn't sincere, either. He is too familiar with resorting to guilt. He was old friends with remorse, but he dealt with it by remembering that everything is transient.

Outside a bird sings and the murmur of paid s.e.x in some nearby room arrives from the hallway. Tania had gone to the bathroom and was standing, waiting for him so they could leave the room together. No one should walk alone; everything was ch.o.r.eographed to avoid unwanted encounters. Would Osembe know he was there? And what would that make her feel? Indifference, surely. Maybe a stab of annoyance at losing easy money. But all the customers were the same, she had told him one day. Although he did have an unusual facet. His age, his decrepitude, this elderly l.u.s.t, the persistence in his ways, his guilt infinitely more p.r.o.nounced than in any other slave to an out-of-control s.e.xual appet.i.te. She'd have trouble finding someone worse than him.

He runs his fingers through his hair in front of the mirror. Again the sensation of being in a schoolboy's room. No one would suspect the immense desolation he hides. He sees a dead man at the back of his eyes. Leandro gives himself an intelligent stare that helps him control any emotion. Cold.

In the hallway between rooms, Leandro hears a door opening, something unusual. Osembe sticks out her head. She is wearing a cream-colored dress that ends halfway down her thighs, is tight at the hips, and opens into two wide straps on her shoulders, revealing cleavage. The dress is somewhat unpleasant in its artificiality, but it highlights her splendid body. Her eyes are filled with tiny red veins.

You're cheating on me today, huh? Leandro doesn't feel like answering. He starts to go down the stairs. She puts her long raspberry-colored fingernails on his shoulder. Tomorrow is my birthday. If you come we'll have a special party. Want to?

Leandro understands the scene as a pathetic triumph. He shrugs his shoulders. Is it a provocation? Or maybe a small victory?

The madam relieves Tania at the bottom of the stairs. She guides Leandro to the door. I hope there won't be any problems with the check, right? Leandro firmly a.s.sures her that there won't be. But she shows her smile with a twisted, worn tooth.

Don't let me down, old man, don't let me down.

The phrase has a dose of both disdain and threat to it. Leandro feels insulted and leaves the chalet with strength, without giving in. It is the end. He will never go back to that place. He even shoots a glance back at the metal door to fix it in his memory. At the large veiled window, too. Soon it will all be a shadow. He feels someone's gaze behind a venetian blind, senses a presence behind the strips. Never again. No one is so stupid as to let themselves be beaten when the enemy has showed its weapons and its obvious superiority. It would be suicide. He heads off with a lively step, reborn. He is fleeing.

And he knows it.

11.

On Sunday Lorenzo has lunch at his parents' house. He has made an overcooked rice dish that sticks to the spoon when he serves it. The two men have arranged themselves around Aurora's bed and when she praises the food after barely eating a few grains of rice, Lorenzo feels the need to insult his own cooking. Well, we could use it as paste and wallpaper the room, too. Sylvia is having lunch with her mother, who is pa.s.sing through the city. And, as always, Lorenzo felt a stab of jealousy. He feels awkward about not being able to take his daughter to restaurants except for the place downstairs where the fixed-price menu costs nine euros. He knows that Santiago will show up and try to win over Sylvia with the same air of power and confidence that captivated Pilar. His important manner, his chitchat, his gifts of books that she now reads in spite of never having shown an interest in reading before.

When Pilar announced she was leaving him and there was another man in her life, Lorenzo wasn't surprised it was Santiago. It's not that unusual, he said then, taking great pains to hurt her as much as possible, for a secretary to get involved with her boss. He didn't manage to offend Pilar with his comment. And maybe that irritated Lorenzo even more. In the days following, he did something that he's still ashamed of. He is not even sure if Pilar knows the story. Maybe Santiago never told her.

Lorenzo had barely met Santiago on the few occasions he pa.s.sed by Pilar's office near the Plaza de la Independencia. Before Santiago was her boss, Pilar used to joke at dinners with friends, I think I have the most boring job in the world. But Marta, oscar's wife, who worked at the Ministry of Justice, shot back, I'm the secretary to a subsecretary, where does that leave me? A sub-subsecretary? And they all laughed, as if their laughter would banish Pilar's endless job frustration.

Lorenzo waited one day near the office, and when he saw Santiago emerge from the building he confronted him. Do you want to talk? Let's have a cup of coffee. Santiago's civilized air only riled him up more. Lorenzo gave him a shove, which he received without response, holding on to the wall. He said something else. Something conciliatory. Lorenzo shouted at him. Why are you doing this to me? Huh? Why are you doing this to me? Santiago reflexively covered his face with his hands. What do you think, I'm going to hit you? Lorenzo recriminated. And he angrily slapped Santiago's arms as if he just wanted to make him feel inferior. It sent his brown plastic-framed gla.s.ses to the ground, almost by accident. They didn't break. Someone pa.s.sing by on the street stopped to look. Santiago picked up his gla.s.ses, put them on, and started to walk away, with firm steps but not running. Lorenzo didn't follow him. He only repeated, I'm not going to hit you. But Santiago didn't turn around to look at him, he was far away.

Lorenzo never understood what he had wanted to do, what he was looking for in that confrontation. He was only trying to force Santiago to notice the injury he had caused him. You are happy at my expense, because you stole everything from me. In time he was ashamed of his violence, his stupidity. It humiliated him. Santiago had to know the cost of his happiness, the price the other man had to pay. Lorenzo wanted to present himself to Santiago as something more than just Pilar's ex, as a real, wounded person.

But his discomfort that Sunday as he eats with his parents doesn't date back that far. It has more to do with the previous afternoon.

On the esplanade of the monastery at El Escorial, surrounded by groups of tourists on their way back to buses parked nearby, Lorenzo asked Daniela, did you like it? She confessed to mostly being impressed by how enormous and old it was.

Spaniards are crazy, right? Lorenzo thought to say. Something like this erected in the middle of nowhere just because some demented king wanted to purge his guilt.

He told Daniela about the origins of the monastery, Saint Lorenzo's martyrdom, the very building being shaped as a torture grill, Philip II's shame for winning the Battle of San Quintin on the saint's day, all Internet facts he had read hastily on Sylvia's computer.

Daniela told him she had felt the same feeling of smallness on a school trip to visit the Church of the Company of Jesus in Quito, in the middle of the city's historic center. The effect on her of the sun coming through the windows and the very explicit paintings depicting the fate of the infidels, which convinced the natives of the greatness of the Catholic G.o.d. Then she went back to visit after the fire, with the blackened walls, and it was even more impressive.

Lorenzo made general comments, mixing up dates and names, in some sort of well-intentioned speech that seemed more like a presentation by a flunking student. When he tried to say something about the Spanish arrival in Ecuador and the missionary spirit that erected enormous churches and convents, Daniela corrected him with a certain sweetness, Hernan Cortes didn't have anything to do with any of that, I think you mean Pizarro. Yes, of course, Pizarro, well, it's the same thing. He also pretended to know the names of Sucre, and the date of independence declared on the slopes of the Pichincha volcano. He even straight-out lied, insisting that of course he had heard of Ruminahui. A long time ago, in school.

He wasn't able to answer all her questions as they toured the site. Well, I think the king married several times, I don't know if it was three or four, he said in front of the sepulchers. Yes, of course he was very religious, look at the tiny bed he slept in. Once in a while, he managed to read the caption beside a painting before she did and then he would show off, this is his father, Charles V. But it was the Spanish entrepreneurial spirit, their enlightened madness, that Lorenzo highlighted in his aimless lecture, as if he wanted, in Daniela's eyes, to draw a parallel between him and those cruel but magnetic men filled with fruitful projects. And boy were they fruitful, Francisco de Aguirre had up to fifty children, she said, with an irony Lorenzo didn't quite get. The monastery soon closed its doors and they were pushed to the library. Lorenzo was pointing out, not quite accurately, Ecuador on an old globe when the beadle urged them to leave. That's so typical of functionaries, look at this schedule. How can they close such a popular monument at six in the evening, something that's a national point of pride?

They sat on the low wall that served as a fence to watch the sun set between the mountains behind the monastery. The view was lovely. Daniela told him about her days at school in Loja. She explained that she knew the history of Spain well because of an aggressive and authoritarian nun from Pamplona, her greatest teacher. She hit us with a thick missal, here, right on the crown of the head. But she also taught us how the light of G.o.d had led the Spaniards through the seas and jungles to spread their faith through the New World, naming the cities they conquered for saints. The soldiers had fatally strayed from their G.o.d and had given themselves over to the l.u.s.t for riches, to vice, madness, and s.e.x, and in the end they had perished sick and punished.

That woman, Leonor Azpiroz, said Daniela with a remarkably precise memory, once hit me in the middle of cla.s.s. As she pa.s.sed through the rows, she discovered that my book was in poor shape, it had been through many hands before mine. It was a Spanish catechism ent.i.tled He Is with You He Is with You. She made me stand up and then she slapped me. That is not how we treat school materials, she said. I remember being filled with rage, it wasn't my fault, I had gotten the book that way, and when I got home I stomped on the crucifix we had made in arts and crafts out of clothespins. But the next day she saw the bitterness in my eyes and she sought me out to hug me, she took my face in her hands and said, little Indian girl, you have the face of a saint, don't let that change over the first injustice you encounter in your life. She was a wise woman, a wise Salesian who could see inside you.

Lorenzo took the opportunity Daniela's confession afforded him to ask about her family. She told him about a sick mother who devoted herself to caring for all her brothers and sisters. Daniela had come to Spain and had the responsibility of sending money home. When they spoke on the telephone, her mother could hardly contain her emotion. I pray for you, she told Daniela.

I have a sister, a bit older than me, who makes my mother suffer in every way possible. She takes after my father, I think. We don't ever see her anymore. She came to Spain before I did, but she never calls or anything. She got in with a bad crowd. My mother was very generous with me about that, she told me go to Spain but don't do it for me, do it for yourself and earn honest money, even if it's not a lot. Be decent and G.o.d will reward you. What do you think, challenged Lorenzo, that I don't know how some people make money, even right in the neighborhood? It's very difficult to compete with people who break the rules.

Then Lorenzo remembered a T-shirt he had barely noticed the day he saw Daniela wearing it. HE MAKES ME HAPPY, HE MAKES ME HAPPY, it read. And he'd had the feeling it was referring to him. But now it was clear it was about her firm religious beliefs. He felt he should warn her that he didn't believe in G.o.d or go to Ma.s.s. Seeing her somewhat distant expression, Lorenzo launched into a confusing explanation, saying he believed in the existence of G.o.d, but not a G.o.d as understood by believers, but a more ethereal and personal one, like a G.o.d who lives inside each person. When he felt that his words might not be getting him anywhere, he decided to drop the conversation, saying, it's not that I think about these things very often. it read. And he'd had the feeling it was referring to him. But now it was clear it was about her firm religious beliefs. He felt he should warn her that he didn't believe in G.o.d or go to Ma.s.s. Seeing her somewhat distant expression, Lorenzo launched into a confusing explanation, saying he believed in the existence of G.o.d, but not a G.o.d as understood by believers, but a more ethereal and personal one, like a G.o.d who lives inside each person. When he felt that his words might not be getting him anywhere, he decided to drop the conversation, saying, it's not that I think about these things very often.

In response Daniela told him, this structure could only be the result of true faith, the desire to honor G.o.d above all things. And Lorenzo looked up to see the immense esplanade and the monastery catching the sun's last rays of the day. In his own way, he thought about the intrinsic Spanishness of its spartan construction, although he lacked the perspective to see it as a glacial leviathan of granite that broke with the pine-filled mountains surrounding it.

Daniela felt cold and Lorenzo put an arm around her shoulders. Should we head back? he asked her. It's probably best, she replied.

They walked along the side of the highway in search of the van he had parked on the far shoulder. On Sundays we go to a church near our house, Daniela told him, the pastor is very intelligent. Lorenzo took it as a veiled invitation, but didn't say anything.

They got into the van. Lorenzo drove along the street that bordered the monastery and at every speed b.u.mp he couldn't help but cast a sidelong glance at Daniela's b.r.e.a.s.t.s bouncing up and down. Meanwhile, she talked to him about the parish. Every day there are more Spaniards. Sometimes Spaniards think these churches are just for South American wetbacks, but now they come in, they hear us sing, and some of them join. Do you know what they tell me? That religion here was always sad. You celebrate G.o.d with happiness, laughter, Lorenzo dared to interject. The last Ma.s.s he had been to was probably at Lalo's father's funeral, almost fifteen years ago.

The highway back to Madrid goes through fields fenced with stone, and Lorenzo and Daniela stare straight ahead. Not looking at each other allows them to speak more honestly.

Your people are more cheerful in everything, Lorenzo heard himself say. And a second later he felt he had gone too far. Appearances can be deceiving, Daniela corrected. We suffer a lot. People only see the partying and dancing and all that, but there's another side to it. I bet you know a Colombian woman. Colombian? No, why? asked Lorenzo. You'd like them better than me, that's for sure, said Daniela, still looking straight ahead, as if she wanted to challenge him. They are shameless, nothing stops them. Well, I don't want to generalize...

Lorenzo felt a stab of anxiety. He was carrying a good bit of money in his wallet, thinking that she would want to go out dancing, or to a restaurant or somewhere for some fun. Now he realized his mistake.

A few days earlier, he had pa.s.sed by his friend Lalo's office to get paid for clearing out the apartment. Actually, he confessed to his friend, I left the amount blank, I don't know what to put. Lalo skillfully drew up an invoice on his computer and asked Lorenzo to peek over at it. Does that seem fair to you?

It's a bit more than what I was thinking, Lorenzo admitted.

Lalo printed the invoice on his computer and took the money out of a drawer in his desk. Don't worry, that was what we had antic.i.p.ated, I swear. They went for a cup of coffee. The morning was bright, but the cafe was dark, with windows only at the front. Lorenzo asked Lalo about the owner of the apartment. There are some personal objects that should maybe be given to him, but, of course, now that you've sent him to live under a bridge...

Lorenzo's statement sounded like a direct accusation. Lalo justified himself. Not at all, we set him up in a residence for the elderly. I don't really know him, it was all handled by a guy in sales. It's one of those things that when they tell you about it, about the whole mess with the neighbors, the police reports, you think it's going to be incredibly complicated, that it's best not to get involved, but then it turns out to be really simple. In barely two weeks it was resolved. You know what I thought afterward? That actually n.o.body had offered to buy the guy's apartment and really he was wanting to sell. It's simple, right? The best place for him is in a home. I don't know, seems like a guy who lost his marbles. Somebody talked about an accident...

Do you know what home he's in? Sure, in the office I have all the information, you want it? No, well...Lorenzo didn't want to show too much interest. When you empty out a house like that you feel kind of sorry about it, you think you're destroying someone's life, everything they've acc.u.mulated in a life.

In my job, Lalo explained, you see things that break your heart in two. Think about it, a lot of times their apartment is the last thing people have. My boss always says something brilliant: your monthly installments can't be paid in pity. And it's true, life is a cycle, in the end...No matter how bad you feel about it. A living person moves into a dead person's house; when things are going bad for one person, they're going better for somebody else. That's life.

He walked Lalo back to his office. His friend explained that after the renovations in the apartment they could sell it, in that neighborhood, for four times what they'd paid. It's just one of those things that worked out well for us, he confessed to Lorenzo. Then he got the information on the home where the former owner was now living. Jaime Castilla Prieto, the name is completely normal, he remarked. And don't feel like you have to bring him anything, the guy is totally cuckoo, and Lalo made a vague gesture with his hand. Lorenzo shrugged his shoulders.

It was the money he'd gotten from Lalo that was burning in Lorenzo's pocket on Sat.u.r.day. The heat in the van smelled of fuel. When Daniela told him she hardly knew the outskirts of Madrid, Lorenzo told her how, just a few years ago, it had been pastureland for sheep and cows.

Daniela confessed that going anywhere made her panicky. She didn't have papers and she didn't want to meet the police in a train station or on some trip. They keep you locked away for two days and then they write you up an order of expulsion. She had come to Madrid two years earlier on a tourist visa, her only plan being to send money to her mother. Someday I want to have my own house, but not one of those enormous homes that other immigrants build with money from Spain, I don't want to show off like they do, just something simple, pretty. Lorenzo asked her what her first steps were when she arrived in the country.

You already know Nancy. She helped me a lot. At first I took care of an elderly woman. You know that gray-haired man who has an interview show on TV in the afternoons?

Lorenzo nodded vaguely, but it took him a while to figure out who Daniela was talking about. Well, I took care of his mother. They didn't give me any days off. Not even Sunday afternoons. The family hardly ever came to see the woman. And I had nothing to eat. Do you know what I lived off of? You know those chocolate cookies, Principe brand? Two or three a day, that was it. I had terrible anemia and one day I fainted in the woman's house. They put me in the hospital. And the TV host came right over and without even asking how I felt, he started threatening to make my life impossible and that he'd have me kicked out of the country if I said anything. He even went so far as to tell me he was a friend of the king. Right there in the hospital, he fired me.

All you ate were chocolate cookies? You could have died, said Lorenzo, shocked. No way, I got fat as a cow. Look at me. You're not fat, not at all...My mami sees the photos I send her and she writes back, hey, fatty, you ate my daughter, where's my daughter? They both laugh.

Then I took care of a family's three children, but the oldest one, a nine-year-old, was hyperactive. He abused me, he insulted me, he pulled my hair, he kicked me. One day I just didn't show up, I didn't even have the guts to quit. I didn't want to tell the kid's parents the things he did. One day he told me I was his slave and that I had only come to Spain to clean up his p.o.o.p. It was wrong, but I just left. He had the devil inside him, I swear that kid had the devil inside him.

Lorenzo said something to console her, it's not the kid's fault, it's the parents' fault. Then she told him about her current job. They're a young couple, good people. And the boy is delightful. He's like my own son to me. I barely know them, I just say hi on the stairs, confessed Lorenzo. I think he's an administrative a.s.sistant at a company or something like that.

Daniela shrugged her shoulders. In Spain people live really well, they like to go out, be on the streets. One day the woman I work for explained it to me: we don't want our son to steal our social life from us. That's why I stay some nights until they come home from eating out or going to the movies. They are sweet. They seem happy.

Yeah, well, just like you said, Lorenzo replied, there are all kinds. But here people are happy, I do think so...Except on the metro, Daniela smiled. On the metro everybody's so serious, they don't look at one another, they don't say h.e.l.lo. They all read or look at the floor like they're embarra.s.sed. Like when you'd get onto the elevator with me, and you'd lower your head and I'd think, what shoes am I wearing? Ay, I hope they're clean.

After they laughed, there was a silence. Daniela asked Lorenzo about his separation, about how he manages to handle his life and take care of his daughter, if he misses his wife. Lorenzo responded honestly, but not without a slight tinge of self-indulgence.

I made a mistake, he admitted. At one point I thought my life would always be the way it was then. With my wife, my daughter, my work. I couldn't conceive of it changing. And maybe I wasn't careful enough. It was a mistake.

The silence that followed seemed to end the conversation. Soon the highway emptied out into an expressway. The faster cars pa.s.sed Lorenzo's van on the way to Madrid. When pa.s.sing the exit for Aravaca and Pozuelo, Daniela told him she had a lot of friends who worked around there. Lorenzo told her that in Aravaca he had met the last shepherd in Madrid. Mr. Jorge. Every Christmas we used to buy a lamb from him for New Year's dinner. They put up a block of terraced housing behind his pen and the city government forced him to get rid of the sheep. When I was fifteen years old. You weren't born yet.

Don't exaggerate. Daniela smiled. I'm thirty-one. I'm not so young anymore. Well, you look it, said Lorenzo. Look, this is where the president lives, he pointed as they pa.s.sed the Moncloa Palace. Do you like the president? Daniela asked him. Bah, all politicians are the same...No, no, corrected Daniela, in Ecuador they're worse. There isn't a decent one there...They're four families, they all have to go. They're rats. Rats? Corrupt.

As they entered Madrid, Lorenzo suggested they go out for dinner. Daniela said, you've already spent a lot of money. And then added that she was tired. You don't want to go out dancing? I bet you're gonna go out dancing with your friends now, joked Lorenzo. No, no. Really, no, she added. And he couldn't get her to change her mind.

When they arrived at her door, Lorenzo turned off the engine and the headlights. Thank you so much for the trip, Daniela said to him.

The combination of the two long lines of her eyes with the line of her mouth was lovely. Her hair fell over one side, breaking the almond shape. She put her hand on the door handle and Lorenzo leaned over, governed by a force he couldn't control. He took her by the shoulders and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she only offered her cheek, no-man's-land. But the kiss lasted until she moved her neck away.

I knew you were going to do that, Lorenzo. It was the first time Daniela had spoken his name. I didn't come for this, I don't want you to think...

It was Daniela who apologized, as if she judged herself for having aroused Lorenzo. He felt uncomfortable, he tried to be tender. I like you, forgive me if...but I like you and I...Men only want one thing, Daniela told him, and then they cause a lot of pain...

Daniela spoke sweetly and her features became more beautiful to Lorenzo's eyes. When he kissed her, his forearm brushed her breast and it gave him a shiver. Lorenzo wanted to hold her, to rea.s.sure her, but she took control of the situation with an authority that left Lorenzo paralyzed.

I'm not upset, I just want you to know that I...

And Daniela's silence seemed to explain it all.

Thank you for a very nice evening, she said, and hopped out of the van. She walked toward her doorway. Lorenzo felt a stab in his chest, like a cruel pinch. He was slow to start the car up and drove like a sleepwalker toward his house. When they had gone through one of the rooms at the monastery, among the biblical tapestries woven in gold, Daniela had turned toward Lorenzo and said, in a very soft voice, like a whisper, thanks for what you've done for Wilson. Then, feeling her breath very close to his face, Lorenzo had wanted to sleep with her, take off her clothes, make love to her.

He understood his mistake, his precipitation. He sensed wounds in Daniela that he had been oblivious to, but the rejection still made him feel bad, desolate.

It was Sat.u.r.day night, but Lorenzo went home early. He felt he was driving in the opposite direction from the rest of humanity.

When he got home, the soccer game was already over. He watched an American movie beside his daughter for a little while. Her Sat.u.r.day got screwed up, too, he thought, but he didn't ask any questions.

Sunday ended with the same feeling of emptiness it had started with. On Monday he sleeps in. He finds a note from Sylvia underneath two oranges placed next to the juicer. "I won't be home for lunch." He hears chairs moving in the apartment upstairs and thinks it's a coded message from Daniela, communicating her disdain.

Wilson calls while Lorenzo's having breakfast. He's got a moving job and asks if he wants to join him with his van. Yeah, sure, great. Tomorrow at eight, then. Lorenzo writes the address down on Sylvia's note. You'll have to get up early, sorry, because I can see now that you're not an early riser, says Wilson on the other end of the line. I got up a while ago, says Lorenzo in his defense. Your voice is weak, you sound like you're still in bed. You know what my old lady used to call it? Pillow voice.

Lorenzo showers and shaves listening to the radio. In the news they don't mention him. In front of the mirror, he says, I am a murderer. It's strange how easy it is for him to forget it, leave it behind. Buried in the day-to-day. I am a murderer. Looking at his freshly shaved face, he wonders, have I changed? And he repeats it to himself.

Have I changed that much?

He has gas. He'd had a bad night. He squats to try to release the air. He lies down on the floor and ma.s.sages his belly. He lifts his legs up. Then he thought, I'm not the man I once was, am I? In that absurd position, with his back on the damp bathmat, he hears the doorbell. The noises in the apartment upstairs have stopped and he is confident for a moment that Daniela had come down to see him, maybe to apologize. I was abrupt with you the other night.

But when he looks through the peephole, his heart starts racing. Detective Baldasano is accompanied by four policemen. They're here to arrest me, it's all over. For a second he's glad. The anguish is over. Then comes the insecurity. Losing it all. He doesn't want to take too long to open the door and he ends up opening it brusquely. The detective speaks in a rea.s.suring tone. Good morning, forgive the intrusion. Lorenzo invites them in while he checks to see if any neighbors are peeking from the stairwell. We have a search warrant. It'll be a few minutes. Are you alone? Lorenzo closes the door behind them.

Yes, I'm alone.

12.