up with even more encephalitic din. He began palpating his temples with his fingertips, trying to soothe the internal whir. He had meager success. Little by little—thank God!—the noise went elsewhere.
What the big guy needed was a long and deep cleansing, and that’s what he got. The lathering had to be like an incursion into territory where all memories, good and bad alike, become futile. More and more beneficial suds. An inkling of a new beginning where it would be ordained that he could do whatever the hell he wanted, as long as he acted strategically, per the reigning paranoia, whenever he acted boldly. It had been a good idea to get rid of the brunette, but—Renata? that haughty yet suffering decency … hmmm … let her suffer; may her error ramify; this was the already prodigious and accepted revenge of a macho and now let’s turn to something else … See-through-sex; provocation-sex; struggle-sex. So many gradations of falsity that would soon become achievements. Then came what was not desirable: he emerged resplendent and perfumed, and his mother stood in the main hallway and intercepted him and—what do you think she said? Her indiscretion erupted … She was in such a state of anxiety …
“Demetrio, tell me please if you sinned while you were gone.”
“Yes, indeed I did.”
“How do you feel?”
“Look, Mama, leave me alone, or I’ll go away and never come back.”
“It’s just that I’m worried …”
“Well, you needn’t be, because I’ve been an adult for a long time … What’s more, I’ll tell you right now I’m going to keep on sinning … I’m very fond of all and any sins.”
How could the lady reproach him? She understood, finally, about him being an adult: it’s about time!, and the irremediable strains of maturity: his! he was beginning to rot, whereas she was better off positioning her tearful self in an unfamiliar weepy dimension, because she wept in front of Demetrio: her apron—absorbent? A shudder that hearkened back to when she rocked her only male offspring in a pure white cradle: a pink baby, a sleeping peacock, who then became an incorrigible toddler: O avid restlessness, that then led to him studying to be an agronomist, as his father had recommended, and now, tough luck! to have to see him become a flagrant sinner who walked out without kissing her good-bye on the cheek as he uttered a bitter sentence: I’m going to Torreón. I like the cathouses there. I’m going to sin. Hasty and contemptuous communication. And the pickup and the gasoline: everything ready, of course, for … He left whistling, he wanted to sing, but—what song? He didn’t know all the lyrics of a single one. So, random fragments, O uproarious crooning!, or a feeling of boldness to peel off layers of doubt, don layers of enthusiasm: free and delightful swaying over the course of miles … Happiness is always fortuitous …
Let’s watch his relapse: his arrival at Los Laureles, because he wanted to get it on with those impressive concubines: that Cirila and that Begoña, both unforgettable. Herewith the arrangement: in order to get them to come to his table, Demetrio would have to pay an exorbitant sum (a new rule) to a man with a very flat Carmelite hairdo (that is, with a part down the middle). However, the big guy refused to pay, arguing that it was very bad for him to get drunk: that he was not an alcoholic; he couldn’t tolerate all that nausea and vomiting; and the most whimsical: that alcohol would prevent him from having a decisive erection, to which the man with the very well-groomed do replied that if he wanted only sex he had to pay triple the amount: fifty pesos for each female: o-ho! such a sum was almost highway robbery, or maybe a splendidly pleasant altitude he’d have to reach, for at stake was, let us call it, an irresistible otherness, and Demetrio said, okay, I’ll go for it! Hence the pay now, play later, though the “play” part required a brief wait, whereas the pay became a proud display of bills: an insolent Demetrio under the glow of multicolored lights: mistake … to excess. The brief delay led to a further complication: the man with the hairdo called Cirila and Begoña over and they hid behind a violet curtain. The last thing he said to them was this:
“You’re going with that client from before. The guy is loaded, so you know what to do.”
Yes: they