NOVEMBER 10

I found the visceral realists. Rosario is from Veracruz. All the visceral realists gave me their respective addresses, and I gave them all mine. They meet at Café Quito, on Bucareli, a little past the Encrucijada, and at María Font's house, in Colonia Condesa, or at the painter Catalina O'Hara's house, in Colonia Coyoacán. (María Font, Catalina O'Hara, such evocative names-but what is it they evoke?)

As for the rest of it, everything went fine, although it almost ended in tragedy.

Here's what happened: I got to the Encrucijada at eight. The bar was packed, the crowd grim and grisly beyond belief. In a corner there was actually a blind man playing the accordion and singing. All the same, I elbowed my way into the first opening I spotted at the bar. Rosario wasn't there. When I asked the girl behind the bar where Rosario was, she acted as if the question were somehow fickle, flighty, presuming. But she was smiling, as if she didn't think that was so bad. Honestly, I had no idea what she was trying to get at. Then I asked her where Rosario was from, and she told me that she was from Veracruz. I asked her where she was from too. From here, from Mexico City, she said. What about you? I'm a cowboy from Sonora, I said. I'm not sure why, it just popped out. In real life, I've never been to Sonora. She laughed, and we might have kept talking for a while, but she had to go wait on a table. But Brígida was there, and when I was on my second tequila, she came over and asked me how I was. Brígida is a woman with a frowning, melancholy, offended look. I remembered her differently, but I'd been drunk the time before, and this time I wasn't. Brígida, I said, how's it going, long time no see. I was trying to seem friendly, even cheerful, though I can't say I felt that way exactly. Brígida took my hand and pressed it to her heart, which made me jump, and my first impulse was to back away from the bar, maybe even just take off, but I restrained myself.

"Do you feel it?" she said.

"What?"

"My heart, you idiot, can't you feel it beating?"

With my fingertips I explored as much territory as I could: Brígida's linen blouse and her breasts, framed by a bra that seemed too small to contain them. But no trace of a heartbeat.

"I don't feel anything," I said with a smile.

"My heart, bonehead, can't you hear it beating, can't you feel it slowly breaking?"

"I'm sorry, I can't hear anything."

"How do you expect to hear anything with your hand, lamebrain, I'm just asking whether you feel it. Don't your fingers feel anything?"

"Honestly… no."

"Your hand is icy," said Brígida. "Such pretty fingers. It's obvious you've never had to work."

I felt watched, scrutinized, bored into. The grisly drunks at the bar had taken an interest in Brígida's last remark. Preferring not to confront them just yet, I announced that she was wrong, that of course I had to work to pay my tuition. Now Brígida was gripping my hand as if she were about to read my palm. That interested me, and I forgot about the potential spectators.

"Don't be cagey," she said. "You don't have to lie to me, I know you. You're rich and spoiled, but you're very ambitious. And lucky. You'll go as far as you want to go. Although here I see that you'll lose your way several times, and it'll be your own fault, because you don't know what you want. You need a girl to stand by you in good times and bad. Am I wrong?"

"No, that's perfect, keep going, keep going."

"Not here," said Brígida. "There's no reason these nosy bastards should hear your fortune, is there?"

For the first time I dared to take a good look around. Four or five grisly drunks were still hanging on Brígida's words, one of them even staring at my hand with unnatural intensity, as if it were his own. I smiled at all of them, not wanting to upset them, trying to let them know this had nothing to do with me. Brígida pinched the back of my hand. Her eyes were burning, as if she were about to start a fight or burst into tears.

"We can't talk here, follow me."

I watched her whisper to one of the waitresses, then she beckoned to me. The Encrucijada Veracruzana was full, and a cloud of smoke and the music of the blind man's accordion rose over the heads of the regulars. I looked at the clock. It was almost twelve; time is flying, I thought.

I followed her.

We went into a kind of long, narrow storage room piled with cartons of bottles and cleaning supplies for the bar (detergent, brooms, bleach, a squeegee, a collection of rubber gloves). At the back stood a table and two chairs. Brígida motioned me toward one of them. I sat down. The table was round and its surface was covered with gouges and names, mainly illegible. The waitress remained standing, less than an inch from me, watchful as a goddess or a bird of prey. Maybe she was waiting for me to ask her to sit. Touched by her shyness, I did. To my surprise, she proceeded to sit on my lap. The situation was uncomfortable and yet in a few seconds I realized with horror that my instincts, taking leave of my mind, my soul, and even my most shameful wishes, were stiffening my dick to the point that it was impossible to hide. Brígida surely noticed the state I was in, because she got up and, after studying me again from above, offered me a blow job.

"What…" I said.

"A blow job, do you want me to give you a blow job?"

I looked at her blankly, although the truth, like a lone and flagging swimmer, was gradually making some headway in the black sea of my ignorance. She stared back at me. Her eyes were hard and flat. And there was something about her that distinguished her from every other human being I'd known up until then: she always (wherever you were, whatever the circumstances, no matter what was happening) looked you straight in the eye. Brígida's gaze, I decided then, could be unbearable.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"Baby, I'm talking about sucking your dick."

I didn't have time to reply, which was probably all for the best. Without taking her eyes off me, Brígida kneeled down, unzipped my pants, and took my cock in her mouth. First the head, which she nibbled, the bites no less disturbing for being light, and then, showing no signs of choking, the whole penis. At the same time, she ran her right hand over my lower abdomen, stomach, and chest, slapping me hard at regular intervals and giving me bruises I still have. The pain probably helped make the pleasure I felt even more exquisite, but it also prevented me from coming. Every so often, Brígida would lift her eyes from her work, although without releasing my member, and search for my eyes. Then I would close my own and mentally recite random lines from the poem "The Vampire," which later, when I reviewed the incident, turned out not to be lines from "The Vampire" at all, but an unholy mixture of poetry from different sources, my uncle's pronouncements, childhood memories, the faces of actresses I loved in puberty (Angélica María's face in black and white, for example), a whirlwind of spinning scenes. At first I tried to shield myself from the slaps, but once I realized that my efforts were futile, my hands went to Brígida's hair (dyed a light chestnut color and not very clean, as I discovered) and her ears, which were small and fleshy but almost unnaturally tough, as if they weren't made of flesh and blood at all, only cartilage or plastic, or no: barely tempered metal, from which hung two big fake silver hoops.

When the end was near, and in order not to cry out I had raised my fists and was shaking them at some invisible being slithering along the walls of the storage room, the door opened suddenly (but silently), and a waitress's head appeared, a terse warning issuing from her lips:

"Look out!"