a makeshift curtain over the room’s only window. He felt as bad as he had ever felt in his life. If he were to lift his head off this sofa, he would pass out again. That much he knew without even testing it. A pool of pain and nausea had flooded one whole hemisphere of his brain as he lay on that side of his head. He didn’t dare tilt that pool so much as one degree or—he could already smell it—smell it—the vomitus would gush out projectile-style. He had a bleary recollection of throwing up all over the carpet just before he passed out.
He gave up and closed his eyes again. Had to close them, and presently he fell asleep again. It wasn’t a good sleep. He kept waking up, fitfully. The main thing was not to open his eyes. That at least gave him a fighting chance of falling asleep again… however troubled sleep might be.
When he finally woke up for good, the hopsacking curtain was all bright points of light. It must have been close to noon. He dared lift his head a few inches. This time it was awful but not impossible. He managed to swing his legs over the side of the couch and sit up… and lowered his head between his legs to bring more blood to his brain. When he brought his head back up, he put his elbows on his knees and covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. He didn’t want to have to see any more of this tiny, fetid straw-colored room. He didn’t want to do anything, but he could tell he would have to make it to the bathroom one way or another.
He sighed out loud, for no other reason than to hear himself declare how miserable and paralyzed he felt. He sighed some more. The next thing he knew, he could hear the floor creaking with footsteps. What a dump this was… On the other hand, he didn’t even have so much as a dump to go to.
“Good morning. Buenos días. How do you feel?”
There was John Smith… standing in the doorway to the bathroom. Nestor lifted his head just enough to see him head to foot. The americano stood there dressed so americano, it was annoying… the khaki pants so well pressed you could cut your finger on the crease… the blue button-down shirt, open two buttons’ worth at the neck and turned back exactly two cuff lengths’ worth on each sleeve… all just so, just so. Had Nestor known and understood the word preppy, he would have realized why it got under his skin.
But all he said was “I feel like shit… but I guess I’ll survive.” He gave John Smith a quizzical look. “I thought you’d be at work.”
“Well, since the idea is to write a story about you, I guess I am at work. I thought I should at least hang around until you woke up.”
The idea is to write a story about you. In his fragile state, the thought hit Nestor with a jolt. His heart sank. What had he done? Why had he told the guy all that… crap last night? Was he insane?… all that personal crap? He had an urge to call it off—right now! But then he thought of how weak he would look to John Smith… reneging this morning after dredging his innards up for the americano and spreading them out for his inspection… four hours of it, pouring his guts out through his big mouth, and now, hungover, head throbbing… to start whining and begging, “I take it all back! Please, please, I was drunk, that was all! You can’t do this to me! Have pity! Have mercy!”—and that, the fear of looking weak and pathetic and frightened, as much as anything else, was what now kept his mouth shut… the fear of looking afraid! That by itself was enough to keep any Nestor Camacho from yielding to… the Doubts.
“Somebody’s got to drive you back to your car,” the americano was saying. “It’s six or seven miles from here, and I’m not sure”—he lowered one eyebrow and twisted his lips up toward it in a mildly mocking smile—“I’m not completely sure you’d remember where it is.”
That was true. All that Nestor could recall was a bar where the light show seemed so glamorous… the lights from below that filled the liquor bottles with tan and amber and tawny translucent glows and refracted a thousand