Rafael Barrios, in the bathroom of his house, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, September 1982. Jacinto and I wrote each other occasionally. He was the one who let me know about Ulises's disappearance. But he didn't give me the news in a letter. He called me from his friend Efrén Hernández's house, which meant that it was serious, or at least that he thought it was serious. Efrén is a young poet who wants to write poetry like the visceral realists used to write. I don't know him. He showed up after I'd moved to California, but according to Jacinto, the kid isn't a bad writer. Send me some of his poems, I said, but Jacinto only sends letters, so I don't know whether he writes well or not, whether he writes visceral realist poetry or not, though to be honest, of course, I don't know what that means, visceral realist poetry. Maybe what Ulises Lima writes. I don't know. All I know is that no one in Mexico has heard of us anymore and those who have heard of us make fun of us (we're the example of what not to do), and maybe they're not all wrong. So it's always nice (or at least appreciated) to come across a young poet who writes or wants to write in the visceral realist style. And this poet's name was Efrén Hernández and it was from his phone, or actually his parents' phone, that Jacinto Requena called to tell me that Ulises Lima had disappeared. I listened to the story and then I said: he hasn't disappeared, he decided to stay in Nicaragua, which is a whole different thing. And he said: if he had decided to stay in Nicaragua, he would have told us so, I went to see him off at the airport and he had no intention of not coming back. I said: cool it, man, it's like you don't know Ulises. And he said: he's disappeared, Rafael, believe me, he didn't even say a thing to his mother, you don't want to know the hard time she's giving the assholes at Bellas Artes. I said: holy smoke. And he said: she thinks the peasant poets killed her son. I said: holy shit. And he said: you can say that again. Anytime somebody touches a mother's child she turns into a lioness. At least that's what Xóchitl says.

Barbara Patterson, in the kitchen of her house, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, October 1982. Our life was miserable but when Rafael heard that Ulises Lima hadn't come back from a trip to Nicaragua it became twice as miserable.

One day I said things can't go on like this. Rafael wasn't doing anything. He didn't work, he didn't write, he didn't help me clean the house, he didn't do the shopping, all he did was take showers (because if nothing else, Rafael is clean, like practically all fucking Mexicans) and watch TV until dawn or go out for beers or play soccer with the fucking Chicanos in the neighborhood. When I came home, there he'd be at the door, sitting on the steps or on the ground, in an Américas T-shirt that stank of sweat, drinking his Tecate and shooting the shit with his friends, this little group of brain-dead teenagers who called him Poet Man (which he didn't seem to mind) and who he'd be with until I'd made our fucking dinner. Then Rafael would say goodbye to them, and they would say sure thing, Poet Man, see you later, Poet Man, we'll catch you tomorrow, Poet Man, and only then would he come into the house.

I was seething with rage, I really was, absolute fury, and I would happily have poisoned his goddamn scrambled eggs, but I restrained myself. I counted to ten. I told myself he was going through a bad patch. The problem was, I knew the bad patch had already been going on too long, four years, to be precise, and although there were plenty of good moments, there were more bad ones and my patience was almost at its limit. But I kept trying, and I would ask how was your day (stupid question) and he would say (what could he say?) fine, okay, so-so. And I would ask: what do you talk about with those kids? And he would say: I tell them stories, I teach them life lessons. Then we would be quiet with the TV on, each of us absorbed in our own scrambled eggs, our pieces of lettuce, our tomato slices, and I would think what life lessons are you talking about, you poor bastard, you poor jerk, what lessons did you ever learn, you pathetic leech, you pathetic loser, you fucking asshole, if it weren't for me you'd be sleeping under a bridge. But I didn't say anything, I just looked at him, and that was all. Although even my glances seemed to bother him. He would say: what are you looking at, white girl, what are you scheming? And then I would force a dumb smile, not answering, and start to clear the plates.

Luis Sebastián Rosado, a dark office, Calle Cravioto, Colonia Coyoacán, Mexico City DF, March 1983. One afternoon, he called me. How did you get my number? I asked. I had just moved out of my parents' house and it had been a long time since I'd seen him. A moment came when I thought that our relationship was killing me and I decided to make a clean break. I stopped seeing him, I stopped showing up when we were supposed to meet, and it didn't take him long to disappear. He lost interest, he went in search of new adventures, but still, deep down (as I always knew I would), I yearned for him to call, to come looking for me, to miss me. But Luscious Skin didn't come looking for me and for a while, a year or so, we were completely out of touch. So it was a pleasant surprise when he called. How did you get my number? I asked. I called your parents and they gave it to me, he said, I've been trying to call you all day, you're never home. I sighed. I would've preferred it if he'd had a harder time finding me. But Luscious Skin was talking as if we'd just seen each other last week, so that was that. We talked for a while. He asked how I'd been, he mentioned that he'd seen a poem of mine in Espejo de México and a story in an anthology of young Mexican writers that had just come out. I asked whether he'd liked the story. I had only recently taken up the difficult art of storytelling and my steps were still unsure. He told me he hadn't read it. I took a look at the book when I saw your name, but I didn't read it, I don't have any money, he said. Then he stopped talking, I stopped talking, and for a while we were both silent, listening to the muted humming and crackling of Mexico City's public telephones. I remember that I was quiet, smiling and thinking about Luscious Skin's face, also smiling, imagining him standing on some sidewalk in the Zona Rosa or Reforma, with his little black knapsack hanging over his shoulder, brushing his ass sheathed in worn, tight denim, a full-lipped smile sketched with surgical precision on an angular face without an ounce of fat, like a young Maya priest, and then I couldn't bear it anymore (I felt tears come to my eyes) and before he could ask for it I gave him my address (which he must have already had) and told him to come right away, and he laughed, a happy laugh, and he said it would take him more than two hours from where he was, and I said it didn't matter, I would make some dinner in the meantime, and I'd be waiting for him. Narratively speaking, that was the moment to hang up and dance for joy, but Luscious Skin always waited until the coins ran out, and he didn't hang up. Luis Sebastián, he said, I have something very important to tell you. You can tell me when you get here, I said. It's something I wanted to tell you a long time ago, he said. His voice sounded unusually forlorn. At that moment I began to suspect that something was going on, that Luscious Skin hadn't called me just because he wanted to see me, or because he needed money. What is it? I said, what's wrong? I heard the last coin fall into the bowels of the public phone, the sound of leaves, the wind whipping dead leaves, a sound like cables tangling and untangling and then slipping apart in the void. Poetic misery. Remember there was something I wanted to tell you and in the end I didn't? he said, his voice sounding perfectly normal. When? I heard myself ask stupidly. A while ago, said Luscious Skin. I told him I didn't remember and then I argued that it didn't matter, he could tell me when he got there. I'm going out to do some shopping, I'll see you soon, I said, but Luscious Skin didn't hang up. And if he wasn't going to hang up, how could I? So I waited and listened and even encouraged him to talk. And then he brought up Ulises Lima, saying that Lima had gotten lost somewhere in Managua (I wasn't surprised, half the world was going to Managua), but that actually he wasn't lost, he was hiding, or in other words, everyone thought (who was everyone? I wanted to ask, his friends, his readers, the critics who've been assiduously following his work?) that he was lost, but that he knew he wasn't lost, he was really hiding. Why would Ulises Lima want to hide? I asked. That's what it all comes down to, said Luscious Skin. I talked to you about this a while ago, remember? No, I said in a tiny voice. When? Years ago, the first time we slept together, he said. I felt shivers, a twisting in my gut; my testicles contracted. It was an effort to speak. How do you expect me to remember? I whispered. Now I was even more eager to see him. I suggested that he take a taxi. He said that he didn't have any money. I promised that I would pay, that I would be waiting for him outside. Luscious Skin was about to say something else when the line went dead.