Baez's two words floated above the table for a second before they evaporated and silence returned. I didn't reply, but I understood whom the policeman meant. He wasn't talking about Romano or Gomez or himself or me. He was talking about Ricardo Morales, who lost every time a hand was dealt, every time the dice were rolled, every time the wheel was spun. I tried to imagine his face when I told him the news. Should I go to see him at the bank, or should I make an appointment with him at the cafe where we'd met on previous occasions? The cafe sounded like a better idea. But in any case, how was I going to answer him when he asked me, "What can be done now?" Should I tell him the truth? Should I simply say, "Nothing"?

I dropped a cube of sugar into the coffee dregs at the bottom of my cup and entertained myself by watching the white lump slowly grow saturated and fall apart. "Poor guy," I said as well. It was the only conclusion I could reach.

30.

"If you don't mind telling me, I'd like to know how it was that he got released," Morales said, sounding as if nothing could hurt him anymore.

I looked at him before responding; the boy continually surprised me. I kept thinking of him as a boy, I don't know why, because that particular characterization no longer applied. Maybe it was just for the sake of convenience. I'd always thought of him as very young, ever since the first time I saw him, in the Capital branch of the Provincial Bank, where he worked. Back then, he was twenty-four, and clearly little more than a boy. But now, five years later, it was impossible to look at him that way. Not because his dirty blond hair was much thinner-which it was-or because people whom we don't see very often seem more clearly marked by the pa.s.sage of time, although that appears to be true as well. Morales was no longer young, even though he hadn't yet reached thirty. On either side of his mouth, unremitting grief had dug deep furrows, which his precise blond mustache did nothing to conceal; his forehead, too, was indelibly scored. He'd always been skinny, but now his thinness had become almost skeletal, as if not even eating could accommodate any desire, however slight, or procure him any pleasure, however brief. His cheekbones were prominent, his cheeks hollow, and his gray eyes deep-set, as though taking refuge. When I saw Morales sitting there in front of me on that June afternoon in 1973, I understood that the brevity or longevity of a human being's life depends most of all on the amount of grief that person is obliged to bear. Time pa.s.ses more slowly for those who suffer, and pain and anguish leave definitive marks on their skin.

As I've said, the young man surprised me. In the preceding days, I'd pondered whether I should summon him to the cafe or seek him out at his bank, but the memory of our first interview, when Baez and I had gone to tell him what we told him, had remained so vivid that I didn't feel capable of devastating him again in the same way and in the same place. So I called him up and arranged to meet him in the cafe at 1400 Tuc.u.man Street. I expected my call to surprise him. For one thing, we'd had no communication for nearly a year. What could the deputy clerk from the examining magistrate's court be doing, calling him at his work? Wishing him a happy birthday? And why would we be meeting in that same bar? Morales knew perfectly well that it was going to take two or three years before the final verdict in the Gomez case could be handed down and the dossier turned over to the sentencing court. If I wanted to fill him in on some minor detail of the case-the formal completion of the indictment or something like that-it wouldn't make sense to arrange a face-to-face meeting. How would any normal person react to such an unexpected and mysterious telephone call? He'd request more information, solicit details, ask questions along the lines of Is it serious? or Can you tell me a little more, just so I can rest easy? Morales did none of that. He listened to me, hesitated a few seconds over whether he could leave work early the following day or would Thursday be better, spoke very briefly with a colleague, and then declared, "Tomorrow's fine." And now there we were, sitting at one of the tables in the back on a chilly Wednesday afternoon.

I'd decided to come to the point as soon as possible, so I said, right away, "I called because I have something serious to tell you, Morales." How could I be so foolish as to feel guilty about what had happened? What did I have to do with the way things had turned out?

"If you called me here so you could tell me they released Gomez, don't bother. I'm already informed."

"What do you mean, 'informed'?" was my ridiculous reaction. I found it uncanny and incredible that Morales already knew what I had planned, uselessly enough, to break to him. But I didn't back off.

"Yes, I already know about it," he reiterated.

I kept quiet then, but I longed to learn how he'd found out.

"It's not such a mystery, Chaparro," he added matter-of-factly. "A few days after the amnesty, a list of the released prisoners was published in the newspaper."

"And what made you think that Gomez's name could be on such a list?"

It was Morales's turn to hesitate for a few moments before answering, as if the question had surprised him. Eventually he made an ironic face and spoke: "Do you want me to tell you the truth? I simply applied the existential principle that governs my life."

I glanced at him quizzically.

"It's my maxim: Everything that can go bad is going to go bad. And its corollary: Everything that seems to be going well will turn, sooner or later, to s.h.i.t."

Wasn't that the first time Morales had allowed himself to use bad language in a conversation with me? Maybe that was a way for me to gauge the depth of his misfortune. I yielded to an absurd distraction: I imagined Morales's parents addressing their son with raised index fingers and saying something like "Ricardito, no matter what happens, don't ever use bad words. Not even if a bad, bad man rapes and strangles your wife and then goes free." I reined in my imagination and refocused on his words. How could I argue with his axioms? I'd known him for five years, during which time many things had happened to him, and they all appeared to demonstrate that he was thoroughly and incontestably right.

"But seriously," Morales went on, "when you told me Gomez had been caught, and then when you said he'd given himself away and confessed his crime, I thought, 'Well, all right, now at least that's over; he'll rot in prison.' But after I got home, or after three or four days had pa.s.sed, I asked myself, 'So that's it? Really? As easy as that?' No. It seemed too simple, even after all the c.r.a.p we've gone through in the last four years. So I asked a lawyer friend-maybe friend's an exaggeration, let's say acquaintance-to tell me what it meant to be handed a life sentence. When I heard that the guy could get out in twenty-five years, at the most, including whatever accessory sentence he might have received, even for an 'indefinite period of time,' I thought that was still pretty good. Obviously, a sentence of life in prison for Gomez would have been too much to expect, considering the way things usually went for me. But I got used to the idea of twenty-five years. I figured that was a whole lot of time, it was the maximum prison sentence you could get in Argentina, and I talked myself into being quite happy with it. Until I realized precisely that, that I was happy with it. 'Look, Ricardo,' I said. 'If you imagine you're satisfied, you're dreaming, because any day now, you're going to find out that not even what you've talked yourself into being satisfied with is going to happen.' You see what I mean?"

I saw what he meant. His point of view was intolerably pessimistic. But he wasn't saying anything that wasn't in complete accordance with the facts.

"And so, when I found out that a whole bunch of political prisoners had been granted amnesty on May 25 and released from Devoto Prison, and when I went on to discover that none of them could be tried again for any of the crimes they were doing time for at the moment when they were amnestied, I asked myself the million-dollar question: 'Say, Ricardo, as far as you're concerned, how could the whole state of affairs with that son of a b.i.t.c.h Isidoro Antonio Gomez get worse?' And my answer to myself was, 'It could get worse if the man who raped and murdered your wife appeared in the lists of the prisoners who've been granted amnesty, even though he's not a political prisoner and has nothing to do with politics.' And you know what? Bingo! There he was!"

By the end of this rant, he was practically shouting. A couple of tears shimmered in his wide-open eyes. Then his face grew rigid again, and he looked out at the street. I did the same. It was only after a good while, and in the neutral tone of voice of a man who knows he's beyond harm, not because he's been saved from it but because he's succ.u.mbed to it, that he said, "If you don't mind telling me, I'd like to know how it was that he got released." I told him what had happened just as Baez had related it to me. I also explained that Sandoval and I had found out only when the official letter from the Penitentiary Service came, and I described Sandoval's reaction, too. I'm not very sure why. I suppose I imagined that knowing how upset a couple of honest guys like Baez and Sandoval were might make Morales feel less abandoned by G.o.d, or by fate. When I finished, there was another long silence. The waiter brought the check to a nearby table, and I took the opportunity to order another coffee. When asked if he wanted another one as well, Morales shook his head.

I hesitated. I'd been deliberating about the next step, but I hadn't managed to persuade myself to take it. But since I feared that it was now or never, I forged ahead. "It's very difficult for me to tell you this, Morales," I began stumblingly. "I mean, I ... a man in my position ... what I'm about to say isn't something I'm even supposed to think about, but ..." I went on, chasing my tail like a puppy. "I'm referring to the possibility that ..."

"Better not say it. Stop right there. I know what you're referring to."

I hesitated again. Did he really understand what I meant?

"Let's suppose you say, 'Look, Morales, if I were you, I'd find him and put a bullet in him,' and I listen to you and I go and do it. Wouldn't you feel guilty?"

I didn't reply.

"And bear in mind, when I say guilty, I don't mean because the son of a b.i.t.c.h winds up dead. I think we agree he's a worthless rat. What I mean is I believe you'd start feeling guilty for my sake. You understand me?"

I didn't reply to that, either. I didn't know what to say.

"It would be funny. Say I go and kill Gomez; two minutes later, I bet, I get put in jail for life. Do you have the slightest doubt about that?" He turned toward the door. A very young couple, a man and a woman, were coming in. "I don't. No doubt at all."

He gazed distractedly at the young people. They looked as though they hadn't been together long; the electric pleasure of recently discovered love radiated from both of them. Was Morales envying them? Did they perhaps evoke for him his own past with Liliana Colotto?

"No, Chaparro," he said, finally picking up the thread again. "Nothing's so simple. Because aside from ..." Morales seemed to be having difficulty finding the words he wanted, but it also seemed that he'd thought the matter over again and again. "Let's suppose I kill him. Do I gain anything? Do I settle anything?"

After a pause I said, "Maybe you get your revenge."

What would I do in his shoes? I genuinely didn't know. But the fundamental reason why I didn't know was that I'd never felt for any woman what Ricardo Morales felt for his deceased wife. Or perhaps I had, but for a woman I don't intend to say a word about in these pages. Perhaps if I'd thought about her, about this other woman-my only secret worthy of the name-I would actually have been able to comprehend Morales's love for his wife. I'm sure I would have been capable of anything for her sake, for the one I loved. Then again, she'd never belonged to me the way Morales and his wife had possessed each other, so my story wasn't really comparable to his. His wife had been real, palpable, his own, and she'd been wrenched from him. And because the thought of that was so horrific, I reiterated what I'd said: "Maybe killing him would be vengeance for you."

Morales maintained his silence. He reached into the pocket of his sports coat and pulled out a pack of Jockey Longs and a bronze cigarette lighter. He must have noticed my surprise at seeing him smoke. "I'm a man who makes decisions slowly," he said with a slight smile. "You didn't know I was a smoker, right? Before I met Liliana, I used to smoke like a chimney. I gave it up for her. How can a man light a cigarette if the woman he loves asks him not to, for their sake and the sake of the children she wants to have with him?" He emitted the choked snort that was his version of laughing. "As you'll agree, it doesn't make much sense for me to keep my lungs clean now, does it? I'm smoking like a vampire, just like before. a.s.suming, of course, that vampires smoke a lot. Anyway, until today, I hadn't started doing it in public again, I didn't dare smoke in front of anyone. You're the first. Take it as a sign of friendship." Once again, I made no reply.

"And as for killing him ... what do you want me to say? It seems too easy, doesn't it? I had a lot of time to think about that over the years, with all the hours I spent looking for him in train stations. Suppose I'd found him-what would I have done? Shot him full of holes? Too easy. Too fast. How much pain can a guy feel after someone's emptied a revolver into his chest? Not much, I think."

"At least that's something."

Why did my side of our conversation feature arguments that sounded so stupid, so meager?

"It's something, but very little. Too little. Now, if you can guarantee that I shoot him four times and don't kill him but leave him a bedridden paraplegic and he lives to be ninety, then I'm all for it."

Something in his tone sounded false, as if he were a man unaccustomed to exercising cruelty, not even hypothetical, purely verbal cruelty, but still he wanted to impress me in his new role as Morales the s.a.d.i.s.t.

"But let's go back to my maxim, Chaparro," he said. "Most likely, I'd send him to h.e.l.l-presuming it exists-with my first shot and miss him entirely with the other three. And then I'd be sent to jail for life (it goes without saying, I wouldn't get any probation) and live past ninety. Gomez gets off easy, he's free from everything before he hits the ground, and I'm in the joint for half a century, envying his luck. No, seriously. Dying can be too easy a path to take, believe me. Things are never simple."

He stubbed out what was left of his cigarette and, with automatic movements, lit another one, the last one in his pack.

"That's why I thought prison, all things considered, was the best possible outcome. All right, it wasn't going to be for life. It wasn't going to be for fifty years. But thirty years or so, the idea of him p.i.s.sing in a prison cell for thirty consecutive years-that didn't seem so deplorable, don't you agree? But ..." He gave a resigned sigh. "That didn't happen either. And look, it wasn't the ideal punishment, we're in agreement on that. It was, at most, the best possible one, given the circ.u.mstances. And here's where the corollary of my maxim comes in. Since sooner or later, everything has to turn into s.h.i.t, G.o.d moved a couple of pieces and let that son of a b.i.t.c.h get away scot-free."

He was talking so loudly by the end that the young lovers paused in their conversation and looked at us. Morales fixed his eyes on the tabletop and brought himself under control.

"I don't know how to help you," I said. It was the truth. "I sincerely would like to make things easier for you."

"I know that, Benjamin."

It was the first time he'd called me by my given name. A few days before, it had been Baez. What strange channels of solidarity did that horrible story open up?

"But you can't do anything. Thanks all the same."

"No, don't thank me. Because I'm serious: I don't know how to help you."

Morales shredded the silver paper of the cigarette pack he'd just finished. "Maybe you can on some other occasion. For now, I'll say good-bye." He stood up and took a few bills from his pocket to pay for his coffee. Then he held out his hand and said, "Seriously, thank you for everything you've done. I'm truly grateful."

I shook his hand. When he'd left, I sat back down and gazed for a long time at the loving couple, who remained heedless of everything that was not themselves. I envied them profoundly.

More Coffee.

For whatever reason (and Chaparro has no intention of investigating whether that reason is just an old friendship or something deeper, more encouraging, more personal, and more a great many other things), Irene takes pleasure in his company, and not solely in his descriptions of the fledgling writer's trials and tribulations. And so, for some reason, they're face to face again, with her desk between them. For some reason, she's smiling a smile different from her common, ordinary smiles, which in fact, Chaparro thinks, are never either common or ordinary. But they're not like this, not like these, which she bestows on him when they're alone together in her office and evening is coming down.

Because he fears he's dreaming uselessly again, he gets nervous, looks at his watch, and starts to stand up. Irene proposes another cup of coffee, and he, with the utmost awkwardness, points out that they've already drunk all the coffee, that the pot in the electric coffee-maker is empty, and that the machine itself is off. She offers to go into the kitchenette and make some more and he says no, although in the next instant he regrets being such an imbecile. He could have said, "Sure, thanks, I'll go to the kitchen with you," but he didn't, and he reproaches himself so fervently for missing his cue that he sits down again, as though that might be a method of undoing the gaffe. But then he thinks there may be no harm done; maybe she simply wants more coffee, that's all, maybe there's some piece of gossip she wants to pa.s.s along, that's all, because when you consider it, there's nothing unusual about drinking coffee with a friend and colleague of many years in the court, nothing unusual whatsoever.

But as it happens, they both sit back down, and their conversation revives, a piece of flotsam he can cling to in the midst of all these uncertainties. Without knowing how it happened, Chaparro finds himself remarking to Irene that he spent the other day reading and correcting his drafts; it was raining outside, he tells her, and he was listening to Renaissance music, which he very much enjoys. He stops in embarra.s.sment precisely when he's on the point of saying, as he looks her straight in the eyes, that the only missing element, the addition he needed to consider himself saved and in a state of perpetual grace, was her, her in the armchair next to his, or maybe reclining and reading at his side, and his hand, his fingertips, gently caressing her head and leaving shallow furrows in her hair. Although he didn't say that, it's as if he did, because he knows he's turned as red as a tomato. And now she gives him a look, an amused or affectionate or nervous look, and finally she asks him, "Are you going to tell me what's wrong, Benjamin?"

A fainting sensation comes over Chaparro, because he's just noticed that this woman asks one thing with her lips and another with her eyes. With her lips, she's asking him to explain why he's blushing and squirming in his chair and looking up every twelve seconds at the tall pendulum clock that stands against the wall near the bookcases; but with her eyes, besides all that, she's asking him something else. She's asking him what's wrong, what's wrong with him, with him and her, with him and the two of them, and she seems interested in his answer, she seems eager to know, maybe anxious, and probably undecided as to whether what's wrong with him is what she supposes is wrong with him. Supposes, or fears, or hopes, Chaparro's not sure which, because that's the mystery, the great mystery of the question in her gaze, and Chaparro suddenly panics, he springs to his feet like a maniac and tells her he has to go, it's getting very late. Surprised, she rises as well-is she surprised and nothing more, or surprised and relieved, or surprised and disappointed?-and Chaparro practically flees down the hall, flees past the tall wooden doors of the other offices, flees across the diagonal checkerboard of black and white floor tiles, and catches his breath again only after climbing into a 115 bus, miraculously empty at that peak hour of early evening. He goes home to his house in Castelar, where the final chapters of his story are waiting to be written, one way or another, because he's beginning to find the situation intolerable, not Ricardo Morales's or Isidoro Gomez's situation, but his own, which has nearly ruined him, which has bound him to that woman, that woman sent to him from heaven or h.e.l.l and now lodged inextricably in his heart and his head, that woman who's still, even at this distance, asking him what's wrong, with the loveliest eyes in the world.

Doubts.

"On July 28, 1976, Sandoval went on a monumental bender that saved my life." Chaparro rereads the opening sentence of his new chapter and hesitates. Is that a good way to start this part of the story? he wonders. He's not convinced, but he can't come up with anything better. Of the various objections to the sentence, the strongest concerns precisely the idea he's trying to convey. Can a single human action-in this case, a monumental drinking binge-be the cause that changes another's destiny, a.s.suming that such a thing as destiny exists? Besides, what does "saved my life" mean? Chaparro doesn't like the phrase, which sounds trite to him. And something else: What guarantee is there that what prevented him from returning home on that June night was Sandoval's drunken rampage and not some other indiscernible series of circ.u.mstances?

Be that as it may, the sentence makes a plausible opening and will likely remain. Sandoval was one of the best guys Chaparro ever knew, and he's pleased to think he didn't wind up at the bottom of a ditch with two bullet holes in the back of his neck that night because of Sandoval, even if only because of Sandoval's weaknesses. And since Chaparro didn't want to die then, nor does he now, he'll permit himself to declare unequivocally that Sandoval's t.i.tanic booze-up "saved his life."

Chaparro finds himself in a predicament similar to the one he was in at the beginning of his novel, when he didn't know how to start telling his story; now he doesn't know how to go on. Various images a.s.sail him all at once: the spectacle of his trashed apartment; Baez seated across from him in a dive in Rafael Castillo; a shed with a big sliding door standing in the middle of a field; a solitary road at night, illuminated by powerful headlights and seen through the windows of a bus; Sandoval thoroughly destroying a bar on Venezuela Street.

However, he figures his current narrative standstill will be less difficult to resolve than his initial paralysis. After all, he personally lived through the chaos his life turned into, so he doesn't have to imagine what it might have been like for someone else. And besides, those things didn't happen to him simultaneously, but successively. They were stunning, in some cases even heartbreaking, but they occurred in a chronological sequence he can hold on to. The best way to continue telling his story, he concludes, is to respect that sequence.

First Sandoval wrecks a bar on Venezuela Street. Then Chaparro finds his apartment in shambles. After that, he talks to Baez in a foul-smelling joint in Rafael Castillo. Then he takes a front seat on a night bus. And later, many years later, he stands before the big sliding door of a shed, in the middle of a field.

31.

On July 28, 1976, Sandoval went on a monumental bender that saved my life.

He'd looked dreadful the entire day. When he arrived at the office, he greeted no one and set immediately to work checking a ballistics report, a triviality he could ordinarily have dispatched in twenty minutes; it took him five hours. At the end of the day, after everyone else in the office had gone home or over to the law school, I tried to engage him in conversation, but it was like talking to a wall. As usual, he spoke only when he felt like it.

Eventually he said, "My aunt Encarnacion, my mother's sister, called me this morning." Then he paused; his voice was shaking. "She said some men came and took away my cousin Nacho yesterday. They were soldiers, she believes, but she isn't sure. They kicked down the door in the middle of the night and busted up everything in the place. They were dressed in civilian clothes, she said."

He fell silent again, but I didn't say a word. I knew he hadn't finished.

"The poor old woman asked what could be done. I told her she should come and stay with us, and meanwhile I went with her to the police station to file a complaint." He lit a cigarette before going on. "What else could I do? What could I tell her?"

"You did right, Pablo," I ventured to a.s.sure him.

"I don't know." He hesitated again. "I felt like I was deceiving her. Maybe I should have told her the truth."

"You did right, Pablo," I repeated. "If you tell her the truth, you'll kill her."

The truth. It can be so f.u.c.ked up sometimes, the truth. Sandoval and I had a long conversation about the whole problem of political violence and repression, which had grown especially acute since Peron's death. Currently, fewer bodies were being dumped in empty lots; the murderers had evidently perfected their methods. As workers in the criminal justice system, we were too far removed from the things that were happening to know details, but sufficiently close to guess them. You didn't have to be a fortune-teller. Every day, we saw people being arrested or heard news of other arrests. However, the people taken into custody were never put in jail, never brought before a judge, never remanded to Devoto or Caseros.

"I don't know. She has to find out sooner or later."

I tried to recall Nacho's appearance. I'd seen him a few times when he visited the court, but his features escaped my efforts to bring them into focus.

"I'm leaving," Sandoval said, suddenly getting to his feet. He put on his jacket and headed for the door. "See you later."

Oh, f.u.c.k, I thought. Here we go again. I opened the window and waited. Although several minutes pa.s.sed, I didn't see him cross Tuc.u.man in the direction of Viamonte Street. I felt a little guilty. I remembered something I'd read: "Flooding in India leaves forty thousand dead, but as I don't know them, I'm more concerned for the health of my uncle, who suffered a heart attack." Somewhere in a military barracks or police station, Nacho was being tortured with cattle prods and beaten to a pulp, but I wasn't as distressed on his account as I was for his cousin Pablo, my friend, who had gone off to drink himself into a coma.

Was I selfish and unfeeling, or were we all? I consoled myself by thinking that I could do something for Sandoval, even though there was nothing I could do for his cousin Nacho. I wonder if I was right. Anyway, I decided to give my colleague the usual head start: I'd go looking for him in three hours. I sat down to correct an order of preventive detention. On second thought, two hours seemed better. Three might be too many.

32.

As I was going down the steps to Talcahuano Street, I hesitated for a moment. I was carrying a good bit of money in my pocket, because I'd planned to pay the final installment on my apartment after work that evening-the notary's office stayed open late-but out of fear that the detour would take too long and I wouldn't be able to find Sandoval, I decided I'd look for my friend and postpone my payment until another day. I patted my jacket to make sure the money was snug in the inside pocket and flagged down a cab. We drove up and down Paseo Colon, but I couldn't locate Sandoval. The taxi driver, who seemed to be in a good mood, offered me a long, off-the-cuff disquisition on the simplest and most expeditious way to solve the country's problems. If I'd been less worried and less focused on finding the bar Sandoval was in, maybe I would have asked the cabbie for some clarification of the logic linking such a.s.sertions as "The military knows what it's doing," "n.o.body here wants to work," "They should all be killed," and "The River Plate club under Labruna is the example to follow."

I had the driver cruise the side streets and eventually found Sandoval in an extremely nasty bar on Venezuela Street. I paid my fare, handing the money to the enlightened a.n.a.lyst of our national condition and waiting for him to give me change. Somewhat annoyed by my stinginess, he began to dig around in one of his pockets, and while he did so, I savored a tiny taste of revenge. By this point, I was no longer in a hurry. There was little chance that Sandoval would stand for being hauled out of the ugly little tavern before eleven o'clock, and now it wasn't much past nine.

I sat across from him and ordered a Coca-Cola. The barman offered a Pepsi instead, and I accepted. I'd never seen Sandoval drink like that. It was genuinely frightening, though at the same time, you had to admire his staying power. Evenly, without excessive gestures, he'd lift a full gla.s.s to his lips and empty it in one or two swallows. Then he'd stare into the s.p.a.ce in front of him and feel the hot liquid as it made its way down to his guts. A few minutes later, he'd fill the gla.s.s again.

It was almost midnight, and thus far I hadn't succeeded in getting Sandoval out of his seat, although I must confess that I hadn't tried very hard. From experience, I knew he'd go through an initial stage of drunkenness in which he'd become irritable, fiercely concentrated on his own thoughts, and then he'd reach a second level, more placid and relaxed. That would be the moment for me to carry him off, but on this particular evening, the transition to the second stage was a long time in coming. I got up and went to the men's room. While I was standing in front of the urinal emptying my bladder, I heard a crash of broken gla.s.s, followed by a series of shouts and the sounds of running feet on the wooden floor.

I dashed out of the bathroom, nearly wetting myself in the process. At that hour, fortunately, there was no one left in the place but three or four regulars, who were looking on with more interest than fear. Sandoval was brandishing a chair in his right hand. The owner of the establishment, a short, powerfully built guy, had come out from behind the bar and was stalking Sandoval. Probably because he was afraid of getting whacked with the chair, the bar owner maintained a certain distance between him and his drunken customer. Behind the bar, I could see the broken mirror, the broken bottles, and shards of gla.s.s scattered on all sides.