someone to call him a taxi that would take him to a hotel, a cheap one, please. This episode entailed a long list of grievances, culminating in a long overdue explanation. The taxi driver informed him that none of the joints in Torreón’s red-light district allowed sex with any of those statuesque women until you’d first drunk torrents of booze and paid in advance with a hefty roll of bills. He also told him that if he just wanted sex he should go to the seedy women, the worst of the worst, all over fifty, perhaps some chubby young ones and, to top it off, they stank, those sitting on their rocking chairs, each one in front of the open door of her own mangy hovel. There were lots along a three- or four-block stretch. The thing was that if he wanted fine flesh he’d have to drink like a donkey and … which has already been said … money attracts money, right? as well as disgust and definitely drama. Like so many others before you, my friend, you’ve been had. After uttering this reproachful rant, he hurled at him a hail of insults, and who knows how much they affected Demetrio, for his reason seemed to be drifting like a slipstream: he heard sharp words—but which ones? The discourse was—could it be?—inebriated. The little he caught became faint in the face of fleeting memories of Oaxaca: there everything was straightforward, no sly malevolence, only direct consummation, whereas here … longings left unquenched that get reabsorbed and mess everything up … Money evaporating in proportion to aggravation provoked, knowing that if he returned to the red-light district he would have to do so with great caution: not pay in advance: duh!? Suffer, err, and top it all off sleeping in a hotel, ergo, impersonal sleep, even more so because the room was—cheap? Demetrio didn’t know how much he’d paid the taxi driver or the clerk at the … A fortune—tough luck! And there he remained till noon the next day. When he awoke he had no appetite, only pure dismay. His priority—can you guess?—: go find the pickup. His hangover had left him transfixed. But he found a taxi and, did he remember where … ? He paced painstakingly through the red-light district: four blocks; very few people in the streets; the big guy’s lucky star better start to shine soon; if only it would magically appear—now!—his vehicle, among the splendors of chance (few, many, just the right number): leaden destiny, for God’s sake! and, after walking around like an inept detective he finally found his pickup, it was all in one piece, and it even seemed to have acquired a new sheen. He took off, of course, for Parras … automatically … Well done! The magnet: sanctity—what else could it be?, or at least caution was pulling him back. The devil would pull at him later … But now let’s have a look at this:
His arrival at the house of rustic beauty. His silent mother, big like him, wanting to embrace, let us say, a distress: and: the parry: such scoundrelly persistence. Right away Demetrio’s retreat so he could pull himself together. There was noise in his head and twisted (red) threads, so to speak: confusion, unmitigated, or one obstacle after another: intrinsic, or—what the hell were they? Some kind of logjam lay in wait for this semisinful man, a logjam that threatened to drown him in one single and frantic obsession: sex, at any cost: once, again, then again and again, recondite recycling. However, when he saw all those saints in his room, porcelain beings that seemed to grow bigger the longer he watched them, he muttered this: “Demetrio” is synonymous with “nobody’s fucking me.” And he fell asleep. His dream did him no favors. Mireya appeared, as if against her own will, shining from the jewels that bedecked her. She was the queen of the red-light district in Saltillo, where he found himself. When she saw him she said in a malicious voice: Well, well, I finally find you … You might like to know that your daughter is twenty years old—had that much time passed?—She’s studying medicine at the best university in Monterrey. I pay for her studies with my work as a high-class prostitute. What do you think about that? Now, get out of here, because if you don’t, I’ll have my men tear you to pieces. Go away! You’re a pathetic fool! Demetrio woke