the sonorous sounds of shooting … No way around it! one day they simply had to open at ten a.m., and from then on …
Nose to grindstone! And … what about a raise? A small one. An all-too-subtle percentage that—damn!: crumbs. Well, now you have him: Demetrio was unremitting: his face was getting harder, as wealthy people’s faces do: handsome, interesting, self-sufficient, his two eyebrows like two triumphal arches and his mouth squeezed more tightly into a ball: signs of ceaseless success, a form of disdain, an attitude of thinking of himself as the cat’s meow. Much later there would be, let us call it, a “visualization” of the employees’ merits: those! tush!, so honorable. And, from a different angle, since things were going so swimmingly—money by the cartload, a gift from God, rolling in the dough, day in and day out—he foresaw the possibility of investing in new businesses, maybe even citified ones, the urban brought to the small town, but which ones, which one: a dive—exciting! unique! that space envisaged so long ago. Oh, out with it: a cathouse with beautiful whores, good lighting, and rooms in the back. Ambition. Like the ones in Oaxaca: good old Presunción and the other, La Entretenida; also, with guards, but not aggressive ones: everything tending toward discretion, not like in Torreón, where he came within a foot of losing his life; no, not that, rather a joint that one would want to go to, to patronize … Oh, still a hazy dream. Though …
If he talked to the mayor. Invest fifty-fifty …
Partners worthy of something supersalacious … Still limping slightly, Demetrio made his way to the town hall. By hook or by crook he would get an appointment with Píndaro Macías. And he did. There to lay out his plans, dotting all the dirty i’s and crossing all the t’s. The mayor listened attentively to his diligent description of this seedy world. So many details, but the mayor, smiling stintingly, said, “No!”
Emphatically, it would seem. The “no” reverberated loudly.
Because Parras was not ready for such a radical change. People would rise up, first against him, then against Demetrio.
But even such well-established perversity: no!
Parras would have to grow to triple or quadruple its size for such a place not to be seen in a bad light.
And another stream of reasons for the rejection, though Demetrio would also be interested in starting up some other kind of business. More corrupt, less corrupt … Let’s talk … Another time …
Demetrio left the mayor’s office with a thunderous suite of ideas. Going into business with this mayor, hmm, better to become his good friend. Tactics piled on top of tactics. Perfidious and subtle utilization, and, of course, after, after …
Another meeting—when?
A difficult, because delicate, step.
Now it’s time to shrink time, for good news was going to flow like a wafting breeze (a weightless one), which is to say, nothing terrible was happening that would delay the multiple manifestations of a thousand and one simple situations. Nothing black, nor murky nor gray, hence whiteness, if you like, in all that he had to suffer or surfeit, made everything, therefore, turn out like never before. The mountains of money at the pool hall; for better or for worse each week the cash register filled to overflowing, and at home such remarkable pleasure: each day harmony more deeply entrenched, like a rosy and benevolent blob, something as normal as the sun shining large, or the sky clearing all about, or sweet aromas rising from who-knows-where, or when everything we see inspires us.
And the days passed with no apparent sadness: spring—how joyous!, and summer—how peaceful! Add to that the truth about accretion: the charm of knowing that money makes even the most unpleasant things charming and that the servants Amalia and María Fulgencia, as well as the employees Ángel and Aníbal, had not lodged a single complaint for months, not the slightest, nothing, how fortunate, confound it. We’re doing very well, Demetrio commented to his mother with a surfeit of cynicism, and they said, cheers! clinking together their mugs filled with café con leche. It is perhaps fitting here to say that at that time Mayor Píndaro Macías occasionally frequented the pool hall, he played his games, and he lost over and again, but his leisure time—how delightful! He was not good at billiards because he had little practice hitting the ball; just consider all his responsibilities as municipal leader … completely overburdened. Nevertheless, the frequency increased, not so