“Why are you here?” he asked.

  I pointed at the car.

  “Just to be with my girlfriend for a while.”

  He looked at me skeptically.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Without another word, he went back into the half-built house and lay down on a cot next to the fire. The dog followed and lay down next to him. The man wrapped himself in a blanket and turned his back to me.

  I RETURNED TO THE CAR. I took three drags off the cigarette and flicked it into a puddle. Margarita had gotten dressed. She looked calmer, but fragile. I had never felt the urge to protect her before. I was anxious to guard her, mostly from myself.

  She smiled sadly at me. I took her by the nape of her neck, pulled her toward me, and kissed her on the mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when we separated.

  “Why? What are you sorry about?”

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled.

  We drove away and left the watchman and his dog behind. It started to clear up, and a luminous half-moon appeared in the sky.

  “The Turkish moon,” Margarita said.

  “Pisces moon,” I added.

  Margarita turned on the radio. In the song that came on, I noticed some of the lyrics that Jacinto Anaya had jotted down. It was a truly sappy ballad. Margarita moved to change the station.

  “Leave it on,” I ordered.

  I turned up the volume.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I asked her to be quiet. When the song ended I explained what I had found in the box. She listened attentively, and I noticed she was a little bit nervous. I asked her if she knew anything about it. “No idea,” she answered. Then she changed the subject.

  When we got back to her house I asked her again.

  “You really don’t know anything?”

  “No,” she answered firmly.

  I held her by the wrist as she was about to get out of the car and I pulled her in. I kissed her neck and groped her breasts. She pulled away from me, grabbed my face with both her hands and studied me for a long time.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she said.

  “Love me,” I answered without thinking.

  “Do you really want me to love you?” she asked, surprised.

  I leaned in to kiss her again. She put a finger on my chin and pushed me back.

  “Ask Tania,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She pointed at the radio.

  “The song lyrics. Ask her.”

  She didn’t say anything else. She got out of the car without saying good-bye and walked inside.

  EXHAUSTED, I MADE my way home. I sadly summoned up the images of Margarita’s and Rebecca’s naked bodies, the texture of their skin, their flavor. It pained me to know I was losing them.

  I drove slowly, watching people, sizing them up, like the nights when Gregorio and I combed the streets looking for someone to fight with. We did it for the sheer pleasure, the addiction to violence. We didn’t gang up on anyone; on the contrary, we were drawn to the surprise, the risk, the possibility of running into someone fiercer than ourselves. That was how we ended up taking on four or five at a time, like tough guys, to prove that we could. And of course we could, even if they beat the shit out of us. Because it wasn’t about winning, it was about feeling the fists, the busted flesh. One’s own, another’s.

  Several nights we were taken down; like the time when we misjudged a trio of hefty men who turned out to be a union leader’s bodyguards. They cracked our toughness with their boots and pistol butts. We ended up lying in the gutter with our lips split and noses crushed. We didn’t give a shit. It was part of the fun.

  One Friday, when I went to pick up Gregorio, I found him worried, tense, with no desire to leave the house. After much insistence, he agreed to go for a spin around the neighborhood. As a condition, he said we should take it easy.

  After driving around for an hour, we stopped in front of a store to buy some Pepsis and sat on the hood of the car to drink them. Gregorio was apathetic, reduced to muttering monosyllables.

  He began to bore me. I left him alone and went into the store to buy some doughnuts. As I was paying for them, I heard a dull thud behind me: Gregorio had rolled off the hood and was lying on the sidewalk, scratching his arms manically.

  I quickly picked him up by the chest and put him in the car. The store owner looked out his window and asked if we needed any help. I said we didn’t. I drove away, flooring the accelerator.

  I decided to take him to a nearby welfare clinic. Gregorio was squirming on the seat, moaning, “They’re eating me, they’re eating me.” We entered the parking lot, and as I was heading for the emergency wing, Gregorio grabbed me by the forearm.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he ordered, with an unbalanced look on his face.

  “What’s wrong with you? Fuck!” I demanded.

  “Let’s go.” He repeated.

  I made a U-turn and we left. I stopped a few blocks farther on.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He nodded. His face was pale. His left ring finger was trembling slightly.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  He clumsily explained that the earwigs were multiplying by the thousands inside of him, and that they were starting to eat his innards; that at night he woke up and saw how fistfuls of earwigs were flowing out of his mouth and nose and wriggling between the sheets. The most minimal shift would make the earwigs invade him again, entering through his nails, his scalp, his anus. He also confessed that when he masturbated, instead of semen he ejaculated small brown balls: compacted insects that, as soon as they hit the floor, scattered, only to rush back at him.

  “I can feel them chew at me,” he said. “They’re eating me alive right now, I swear, they’re eating me alive.”

  I TOOK HIM HOME. He asked me to stay and look after him.

  “I can’t beat them alone,” he said. “I can’t.”

  I spent the night with him, without either of us able to sleep. In the middle of the night, he sat up in bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress and calmly stated that the only way he would ever be free of the earwigs was to lie down beside a human corpse, still warm.

  This was ridiculous. Nevertheless, he insisted: “It’s my only option.”

  We didn’t speak of it again until the following week, as we were scouting the streets.

  “We need to kill somebody,” he said without emotion.

  His theory was simple: He had to kill a man (a woman wouldn’t work), split him open, and lie down next to him so that the smell of entrails, still fuming, would attract the mass of insects eating away at his insides.

  “It’s my only option,” he repeated.

  To prove that he was serious, he took out a switchblade and opened it.

  “What? Are you going to kill me?” I joked.

  “No.” He answered drily.

  “Why don’t you stop fucking around and put that thing away?” I said.

  He smiled sarcastically.

  “Are you scared?”

  I didn’t pay attention to him and kept driving. It seemed like one of his many boasts, and wasn’t worth getting upset over. Suddenly, as I slowed down to turn a corner, Gregorio pointed at a skinny kid, no more than fifteen years old, who walked distractedly down the sidewalk.

  “That one,” he shouted.

  Gregorio jumped from the moving car and ran toward him. Taking him by surprise, he threw him against the wall. The boy tried to turn around, but Gregorio held the knife to his back.

  “Hold still.”

  I stopped the car in the middle of the street and headed toward them. Gregorio was breathing agitatedly, beside himself.

  “Take it easy,” I said.

  He looked at me spitefully. He grabbed the teen by his hair, held the blade to his throat, and forced him to kneel.

  The kid started to beg pitifully for his life. Aggravated, Gregorio shook him to shut him up.

  “Let him go,” I begged.

  Gregorio smirked.

  “It’s my only choice.”

  There was no one on the street other than the three of us. The teenager’s screams could be heard loud and clear. Gregorio pressed the knife against his neck and when I thought he was about to make the definitive incision, he pulled the blade away.

  “It’s just a joke,” he said, looking at me. “It’s a fucking joke.”

  He started to laugh. He ordered the boy to get up and he obeyed.

  Gregorio faced him, staring at him straight in the eyes.

  “Get out of here,” he said, and kissed him on the forehead.

  The boy ran away into the dark side streets.

  “It was a joke…” Gregorio repeated in a whisper.

  ONE NIGHT, six months after that incident, Gregorio’s parents found him sitting on a dining room chair gushing blood from his bare feet. He had cut them with the same knife. He thought that, due to the laws of gravity, the earwigs would flow out with the bloodstream and he would finally be rid of them.

  Gregorio severed veins and tendons. The damage was such that he required several reconstructive procedures. He was unable to walk for two months. While still in recovery, he was moved to the psychiatric hospital, to the ward with the dangerous patients, the one with the “real crazies,” as Gregorio called them.

  “We’re losing him,” mumbled his father, worried, after I accompanied him to one of the very brief visits his son was allowed.

  I’d seen him sedated, babbling idiocies, tied to the bed with his feet wrapped in bandages.

  “We’re losing him,” he said again and rested his head on the steering wheel. He cried in a way he always hid from his children. “Don’t cry,” he’d order, “you look like a sissy.” They’d grow quiet, swallowing their tears. Now he was sobbing disconsolate, without holding back, moaning, “We’re losing him, we’re losing him.”

  And we did: Gregorio slowly left us, disappearing by degrees into the inaccessible landscape of his madness.

  THREE DAYS after his wounds healed, Gregorio cut two toes off his right foot and put them in his mouth. That same night I had sex with his sister on his living room carpet.

  I GOT BACK HOME at two in the morning. Upon closing the garage door, I spotted a small kitten in the corner. It was wet and shivering. I moved closer to it and it hissed, frightened. I wanted to catch it to dry and feed it. Still, when I reached out my hand, he swiped and managed to scratch me. I pulled back and the cat crouched, ready to attack again. I clapped three times loudly so that it would get out of the garage. It jumped and darted under the car and hid inside the motor by climbing the front axle.

  I decided to leave it alone and went in the house. The scratch had left a thin string of blood on the back of my hand. I washed and disinfected. It was a precaution I always used to take when hurt by animals after Roberto Donneaud, my cousin, almost had to have his right thumb amputated when a parrot bite led to a severe infection.

  I found a note from my mother on the nightstand: “Tania called, said she wasn’t going to stay at home tonight, that if you want to, you can call her at Laura Luna’s house: 803–52–74.”

  803–52–74 was a nonexistent phone number, a code to inform me that she’d be waiting at room 803.

  I hesitated to go. I anxiously wanted to be with her, to kiss her, to make love to her, to listen to her, and for her to listen to me. But I was also afraid of her. I was afraid of confronting her, of not knowing what to say, of provoking her, of remaining silent, fighting, humiliating ourselves—of losing her.

  I was exhausted and had to take a cold shower in order to wake up. I quickly got dressed, wrote my father a note saying that I’d bring the car back in the evening, and left.

  I pulled into the Motel Villalba, drove around the parking lot, made sure the curtains were drawn in 803 and stopped in front of the reception area. I shut off the motor, got out of the car, and activated the alarm. I looked around. Despite the fact that it was early morning, several rooms were occupied. The dark-skinned employee stealthily emerged from a hallway and surprised me as I was counting the empty rooms.

  “Evening,” he mumbled.

  From his tone of voice, I could tell he hadn’t recognized me.

  “What’s up?” I greeted.

  He studied my face lit by the blue neon sign.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, servile and gruff.

  I smiled. How could he be so bad at recognizing faces?

  “You don’t remember me?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered drily.

  “I rent 803.”

  He looked at me doubtfully for a moment and after a few moments nodded.

  “Oh, now I remember. You’re the guy who wanted to buy the gun.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Sorry, it’s just that I see so many clients, and all of them at night, that, well, it’s hard to keep track.”

  “So, are you gonna sell me the piece?”

  He scratched the base of his skull and shook his head.

  “See, the thing is, I told one of the guys about your idea, and the idiot told the boss, and so the boss took the gun away so I wouldn’t be tempted.”

  I didn’t believe him, but we both said we were sorry not to have done it earlier. I asked him to take care of the car and requested the key to 803. He searched his pockets and handed me a key.

  “It’s the master key,” he warned. “Don’t lose it.”

  I took it and squeezed it in my hand.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

  He took out a flashlight and turned it on.

  “I’m gonna get back to work,” he muttered. He turned away and continued his rounds.

  TANIA’S BLACK JETTA was parked in the garage, behind the drawn curtains. I put my hand on the hood. It was cold—she must have arrived at least two hours earlier. I walked into the room. Tania was sleeping, naked, barely covered by one of the sheets. She was lit by a streetlight filtering through the curtain. I looked at her for a while in silence and she seemed more beautiful than ever.

  I got naked and lay down next to her. I hugged her from behind and she sleepily grabbed one of my fingers. I started to lick the back of her neck. Tania shuddered and her skin rose slightly. She turned and kissed my mouth. I lowered my hands, grabbed her hips and pulled her toward me. Our stomachs touched. Still groggy, she pushed herself up with her left leg and straddled my thighs. She opened her eyes, looked at my face, and stroked my forehead.

  “I thought you weren’t going to come,” she whispered.

  I kissed her on the lips.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She smiled and lay on my chest.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  We made love slowly, without talking. No fury, no gymnastics. Just the slow ripple of our bodies.

  For the first time in several weeks, we had a simultaneous orgasm. It was a calm, basic orgasm, and when we finished we fell asleep with me still inside her.

  JUST BEFORE DAWN, I noticed her kneeling on the mattress, watching me.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered in a low voice.

  “So?”

  She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

  “I was just looking at you.”

  I sat up and held her.

  “Go back to sleep,” I said.

  She lay back and rested her forehead on my chest. I noticed she was sobbing. I touched her chin and lifted it up.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She brushed the hair away from her eyes. She mopped up her tears with her forearm.

  “Do you love me?” she asked, wrinkling her brow as if she were making an effort not to cry again.

  “Lots.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She seemed to calm down. She slowly let her head drop and curled up on my lap, facing my inner thigh.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  She softly bit my thigh as an answer. I kissed her shoulder and with the tips of my fingers traced a path down her spine. Tania exhaled a moan and stretched.

  “No, please,” she mumbled.

  I kept my trajectory and lowered my finger to the end of her coccyx.

  “Don’t go on,” she asked.

  I slid my fingers down even farther and started stroking circles around her anus.

  “Manuel,” she whispered and bit my thigh again. I wet her anus with some vaginal fluid and inserted my middle finger.

  She contorted forward and backward to a rhythm that made my finger go deeper and deeper. Her snaking motion accelerated. When it seemed as if Tania was going to reach orgasm she suddenly stopped and gripped my finger with her anus.

  “Are you going to marry me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, “it’s a long way away.”

  “Yes or no.”

  It took me a moment to answer. She loosened her muscles and shifted to one side. I moved my finger to avoid it slipping, but she turned her hips to push it out. She seemed more sad than upset.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed out loud.

  Tania looked at me skeptically.

  “Yes,” I repeated, “I will marry you.”

  She brought her hand to her face and started to laugh.

  “Don’t listen to me, I’m crazy,” she said, and hid behind a pillow.

  Her body convulsed with laughter. I took the pillow away and held her head in my hands.

  “Stop fucking around.”

  She calmed down and sighed.

  “I don’t understand you,” I said and threw the pillow onto the floor.

  She picked it up and put it on her stomach.

  “I’m all confused,” she mumbled.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “No, you’re not,” she said firmly.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do,” she murmured.

  She closed her eyes, curled up under the covers, and asked me to hold her. She fell asleep as I caressed her shoulders.

 

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