there are places where you can dance at any hour of the day. Even at noon.’ And he let out a guffaw. Even his laughter was dissolute. ‘I don’t mind waiting or I can pick you up somewhere.’
He was invasive and mischievous. The way he was behaving, he didn’t give the impression of having been sent by Díaz-Varela, although he must have been. How else would he know where I worked? And yet he was behaving as if he were acting on his own initiative, as if he had clung on to that scantily-clad image of me from a few weeks before and decided, quite simply, to take a chance, to dive in, on a kind of urgent whim, it’s a tactic some men use and it usually works too, if they’re the jolly, convivial sort. I remembered feeling then that, not only was he immediately registering my existence, he also deemed our summary introduction to each other to be some sort of step forward or even an investment for the near future; that he had noted me down in his mental diary as if hoping to meet me again very soon, alone and in another place, or was even blithely considering asking Díaz-Varela for my phone number later on. Perhaps Díaz-Varela had referred to me as a ‘bird’ because that was the only term Ruibérriz de Torres was capable of understanding: because that’s all I was to him, ‘a bird’. I didn’t mind, I myself think of some men simply as ‘guys’. He was the kind of man who possesses limitless self-confidence and cheek, so much so that it’s almost disarming sometimes. I had put that attitude down to the two men’s mutual lack of respect, to their being accomplices and knowing each other’s weakest points, to being partners in crime. Ruibérriz didn’t seem to care what my relationship to Díaz-Varela was. It also occurred to me that perhaps the latter had told him there was no relationship now. And that idea bothered me, the possibility that he might have given Ruibérriz the green light without so much as a flicker of regret, without the slightest trace of jealousy, with no sense that, in some diffuse way, I belonged to him – that, if you like, he had discovered me – and that idea made me more determined to take that shameless individual down a peg or two, albeit gently, wordlessly, because I was still intrigued to know what he was doing there. I agreed to have a drink with him, a very quick one, I told him, nothing more. We sat at the table next to the window, the one where the Perfect Couple used to sit, when they existed, and I thought: ‘What a falling off was there.’ He removed his overcoat with the dramatic, resolute gesture of a trapeze artist, and immediately puffed out his chest, he was doubtless proud of his pectorals and considered them an asset. He kept his scarf on, he must have thought it suited him and went well with his close-fitting trousers, both items being light stone in colour, a distinguished colour, but one more appropriate for spring, he clearly didn’t pay much attention to the seasons.
He continued firing flirtatious remarks at me and spoke of trivialities. His remarks were direct and unashamedly adulatory, but not in bad taste; he was trying to get off with me and appear witty – he was, in fact, wittier when he wasn’t trying so hard, his jokes were predictable, mediocre, slightly gauche – that was all. I grew impatient, my initial friendliness was wearing thin, I found it hard to laugh, I was beginning to feel the effects of a long day at work, and I hadn’t been sleeping very well since I said goodbye to Díaz-Varela, being tormented by nightmares and by troubled awakenings. I didn’t dislike Ruibérriz despite what I knew about him – well, perhaps he really had been repaying a favour or helping out a friend who had the terrible task of providing a swift death for another friend who should have died yesterday, far too early or at least before his natural or appointed time (before the second chance event in his life, which comes to the same thing) – but he didn’t interest me in the least, he was too smooth, I couldn’t even appreciate his gallant compliments. He was quite unaware that he was getting on a bit, closer to sixty than fifty, but he behaved like