"So did she come over?"

"Come over? No, at least not in the sense you mean. I did see her. Her head popped up for a second over the heads and shoulders of a bunch of assholes."

"And what did she do?"

"She didn't do a goddamn thing."

"Maybe she didn't see you," said Moctezuma.

"Of course she saw me. She looked me in the eye, but the way she does. You know how it is, sometimes she looks at you and it's like she doesn't see you or she's looking right through you. And then she disappeared. So I said to myself you lost this one, amigo. Go quietly and don't make a scene. And I started to move for real, and as I was backing away María's bitch of a mother lunges at me, and I thought the woman was going to kick me in the balls or slap me at least. All right, then, I thought, so much for the orderly retreat, I'd better run, but by then the bitch was on top of me like she was going to kiss me or bite me, and guess what she says to me…"

The Rodríguez brothers were silent. No doubt they already knew.

"Did she insult you?" I asked hesitantly.

"She said: shame on you, shame on you. That's all, but she said it ten times at least, and an inch away from my face."

"It's hard to believe that witch gave birth to María and Angélica," said Moctezuma.

"Stranger things have happened," said Pancho.

"Are you still her lover?" I said.

Luscious Skin heard me but didn't answer.

"How often have you had sex with her?" I said.

"I don't even remember," said Luscious Skin.

"What's with the questions?" said Pancho.

"I don't know, just curious," I said.

It was late that night when I left the Rodríguez brothers' house (I had lunch and dinner with them and I could probably even have spent the night, they were so generous). When I got to the bus stop on Insurgentes, I suddenly realized that I didn't feel strong enough or in the mood for the long, involved discussion waiting for me at home.

One by one, the buses that I should have taken kept going by, until at last I got up from the curb where I'd been sitting and thinking and watching the traffic (or rather, watching the headlights of the cars shining in my face) and set out for the Fonts'.

Before I got there I called. Jorgito answered. I told him to get his sister. In a few seconds, María came to the phone. I wanted to see her. She asked me where I was. I told her I was near her house, at Plaza Popocatépetl.

"Wait for a few hours," she said, "and then come. Don't ring the bell. Come over the wall and sneak in as quietly as you can. I'll be waiting for you." I sighed deeply and almost told her that I loved her (but didn't say it), and then hung up. Since I didn't have the money to go to a coffee shop, I stayed in the plaza, sitting on a bench, writing in my diary and reading a book of Tablada's poems that Pancho had loaned me. When two hours exactly had passed, I got up and set out for Calle Colima.

I looked both ways before I jumped, hauling myself up onto the wall. I dropped down, trying not to crush the flowers that Mrs. Font (or the maid) had planted on that side of the garden. Then I walked in the dark toward the little house.

María was waiting for me under a tree. Before I could say anything, she kissed me on the mouth, sticking her tongue down my throat. She tasted of cigarettes and expensive food. I tasted of cigarettes and cheap food. But both kinds of food were good. All the fear and sadness that I felt instantly melted away. Instead of going to her little house we started to make love right there, standing up under the tree. So that no one would hear the sounds she made, María bit my neck. I pulled out before I came (María said ahhhh: maybe I pulled out too quickly) and I guess I came on the grass and the flowers. In the little house Angélica was sound asleep, or pretending to be sound asleep, and we made love again. And then I got up, my whole body aching, and I knew that if I told her I loved her the pain would go away instantly, but I didn't say anything and I checked in every corner, to see whether I would find Barrios and the Patterson girl sleeping in one of them, but there was no one there except for the Font sisters and me.

Then we started to talk, and Angélica woke up and we turned on the light and the three of us talked until late. We talked about poetry, about the dead poet Laura Damián and the prize named after her, about the magazine that Ulises Lima and Belano planned to publish, about Ernesto San Epifanio's life, about what Huracán Ramírez must look like with his mask off, outside the ring, about a painter friend of Angélica's who lived in Tepito, and about María's friends from the dance school. And after lots of talk and many cigarettes, Angélica and María fell asleep and I turned out the light and got into bed and made love to María again in my mind.

NOVEMBER 20

Political affiliations: Moctezuma Rodríguez is a Trotskyite. Jacinto Requena and Arturo Belano used to be Trotskyites.

María Font, Angélica Font, and Laura Jáuregui (Belano's ex-girlfriend) used to belong to a radical feminist movement called Mexican Women on the Warpath. That's where they supposedly met Simone Darrieux, friend of Belano and promoter of some kind of sadomasochism.

Ernesto San Epifanio started the first Homosexual Communist Party of Mexico and the first Mexican Homosexual Proletarian Commune.

Ulises Lima and Laura Damián once planned to start an anarchist group: the draft of a founding manifesto still exists. Before that, at the age of fifteen, Ulises Lima tried to join what remained of Lucio Cabañas's guerrilla group.

Quim Font's father, also called Quim Font, was born in Barcelona and died in the Battle of the Ebro.

Rafael Barrios's father was active in the illegal railroad workers' union. He died of cirrhosis.

Luscious Skin's father and mother were born in Oaxaca and, according to Luscious Skin himself, they starved to death.

NOVEMBER 21

Party at Catalina O'Hara's house.

This morning I talked to my uncle on the phone. He asked me when I planned to come back. Always, I said. After an awkward silence (he probably didn't understand my answer but didn't want to admit it), he asked me what I'd gotten myself mixed up in. Nothing, I said. Tonight I want to see you home where you belong, he said. Or else. Behind him I could hear my aunt Martita crying. Of course, I said. Ask him if he's on drugs, my aunt said, but my uncle said he can hear you and then he asked me whether I had money. I've got bus fare, I said, and then I couldn't talk anymore.

Actually, I didn't even have bus fare. But then things took an unexpected turn.

At Catalina O'Hara's house were Ulises Lima, Belano, Müller, San Epifanio, Barrios, Barbara Patterson, Requena and his girlfriend Xóchitl, the Rodríguez brothers, Luscious Skin, the woman painter who shared the studio with Catalina, plus lots of other people I didn't know and hadn't heard of, who came and went like a dark river.

When María, Angélica, and I made our entrance, the door was open. As we came in the only people we saw were the Rodríguez brothers, sitting on the stairs to the second floor sharing a joint. We said hello and sat down next to them. I think they were waiting for us. Then Pancho and Angélica went upstairs and we were left alone. From above came spooky music that was supposed to be soothing, full of the sounds of birds, ducks, frogs, wind, the sea, and even people's footsteps on the earth or dry grass, but the general effect was terrifying, like the sound track for a horror movie. Then Luscious Skin came in, kissed María on the cheek (I looked the other way, at a wall covered in prints of women or women's dreams), and started to talk to us. Why I don't know, maybe because I was shy, but while they talked (Luscious Skin was a regular at the dance school; he spoke María's language), I gradually tuned out, turning inward, and started to think about all the strange things I had experienced that morning at the Fonts'.