One afternoon, as I was reading, I heard Xóchitl calling me, banging on her ceiling with a broomstick. I leaned out the window. Ulises is here, said Xóchitl, do you want to come down? I went downstairs. There was Ulises. I wasn't especially thrilled to see him. Everything he and Belano had meant to me was too remote now. He talked about his travels. I thought there was too much literature in his telling of them. As he was talking I started to play with little Franz. Then Ulises said he had to go see the Rodríguez brothers and asked whether we wanted to go with him. Xóchitl and I looked at each other. If you want to go, I'll watch the kid, I said. Before I left, Ulises asked me about Angélica. She's home, I said, call her. I can't say why, but my attitude was generally hostile. When they left, Xóchitl winked at me. That night the math teacher didn't come. I fed little Franz in my room and then I took him downstairs, got him into his pajamas, and put him to bed, where he soon fell asleep. I chose a book from the shelf and sat reading beside the window, watching the headlights of the cars going by on Calle Montes. I read and thought.

At midnight, Requena came home. He asked me what I was doing there and where Xóchitl was. I told him she had gone to a meeting of visceral realists at the Rodríguez brothers' house. After he checked on his son, Requena asked me whether I'd eaten. I told him I hadn't. I'd forgotten to eat. But I gave the boy his supper, I said.

Requena opened the refrigerator and took out a small pot that he put on the stove. It was rice soup. He asked me whether I wanted any. What I really wanted was not to go back to my lonely room, so I said I'd have a little. We spoke in lowered voices so as not to wake up little Franz. How are your dance classes going? he said. How are your painting classes going? Requena had only been in my room once, the night of the dinner, and he'd liked my paintings. Everything's fine, I said. And your poetry? I haven't written for a long time, I said. Me neither, he said. The rice soup was very spicy. I asked him whether Xóchitl always cooked like that. Always, he said, it must be a family tradition.

For a while we looked at each other without saying anything, and we looked out the window too, and at Franz's bed and the unevenly painted walls. Then Requena started to talk about Ulises and his return to Mexico. My mouth and my stomach were burning, and then I realized that my face was burning too. I thought he would stay in Europe forever, I heard Requena saying. I don't know why I started to think about Xóchitl's father just then, whom I had only seen once, as he was leaving the room. When I saw him I took a step backward, because I thought he was a frightening-looking man. He's my father, said Xóchitl when she saw the expression of alarm on my face. He nodded to me, and left. Visceral realism is dead, said Requena, we should forget about it and make something new. A Mexican section of surrealism, I murmured. I need something to drink, I said. I watched Requena get up and open the refrigerator, the yellow light streaking across the floor to the legs of little Franz's bed. I saw a ball and some tiny slippers, though they were too big to belong to the boy, and I thought about Xóchitl's feet, much smaller than mine. Did you notice anything new about Ulises? said Requena. I drank some cold water. I didn't notice anything, I said. Requena got up and opened the window to clear the cigarette smoke. He acts crazy, said Requena, like he's out of his head. I heard a noise from little Franz's bed. Does he talk in his sleep? I asked. No, it's from outside, said Requena. I went over to the window and looked up toward my room. The light was off. Then I felt Requena's hands on my waist and I didn't move. He didn't move either. After a while he pulled down my pants and I felt his penis between my buttocks. We didn't say anything to each other. When we were done we sat down at the table again and lit cigarettes. Will you tell Xóchitl? said Requena. Do you want me to tell her? I said. I'd rather you didn't, he said.

I left at two in the morning and Xóchitl still hadn't come home. The next day, when I got back from my painting classes, Xóchitl came to my room to get me. I went with her to the supermarket. As we were shopping she told me that Ulises Lima and Pancho Rodríguez had fought. Visceral realism is dead, said Xóchitl, if only you'd been there… I told her that I didn't write poetry anymore, and I didn't want to have anything to do with poets either. When we got back, Xóchitl asked me in. She hadn't made the bed, and the dishes from the night before, the dishes Requena and I had used, were piled unwashed in the sink along with Xóchitl and Franz's lunch dishes.

That night the math teacher didn't come either. I called my sister from a public phone. I didn't have anything to say but I needed to talk to someone and I didn't feel like being in Xóchitl's room again. I caught her on her way out. She was going to the theater. What do you want? she said. Do you need money? We made conversation for a while, then before we hung up I asked her whether she knew that Ulises Lima was back in Mexico. She hadn't heard. She didn't care. We said goodbye and hung up. Then I called the math teacher's house. His wife answered the phone. Hello? she said. I was silent. Answer, you goddamn fucking bitch, she said. I hung up gently and went home. Two days later Xóchitl told me that Catalina O'Hara was having a party where all the visceral realists might get together and see whether it was possible to start the group up again, put out a magazine, plan new activities. She asked me whether I planned to go. I said no, but that if she wanted to go I would watch Franz. That night Requena and I made love again, for a long time, from the moment the boy fell asleep until three in the morning, approximately, and for a moment I thought that he was the one I loved, not the stupid math teacher.

The next day Xóchitl told me how the meeting had gone. Like a zombie movie. In her opinion, visceral realism was finished, which was too bad because the poems she was writing now, she said, were really visceral realist poems. I listened to her without saying anything. Then I asked about Ulises. He's the boss, said Xóchitl, but he's on his own. After that, there were no more visceral realist meetings, and Xóchitl didn't ask me to watch her son at night again. My relationship with the math teacher was over, but we still slept together every once in a while and I still kept calling his house, out of masochism, I guess, or worse, because I was bored. One day, though, we talked about everything that was or wasn't happening between us, and after that we stopped seeing each other. When he left he seemed relieved. I thought about moving out of the room on Calle Montes and going back to live at my mother's house. In the end I decided not to leave, to stay there for good.