Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

"Spare us," said Pancho.

"Cut the crap," said his brother.

"Make it snappy," I said so as not to be left out, although the truth was I felt completely drained.

"Well, so I told her. I said: María, let's do this next time or some other night. We usually fucked here, at my place, where we could take our time, although she never stayed all night, she always left at four or five in the morning, and it was a pain in the ass because I always offered to take her home. I couldn't let her go by herself at that hour. And she said keep going, don't stop, it's all right. And I thought she meant that I should keep slapping her ass. What would you have thought she meant? (The same thing, said Pancho.) So I started hitting her again, well, hitting her with one hand and stroking her clitoris and her tits with the other. Really, the sooner we finished, the better. I was ready. But of course, I wasn't going to come before she came. And the slut was taking forever and that started to make me mad, so I was hitting her harder and harder. Her butt, her legs, but also her cunt. Have you ever done it that way, boys? Well, I recommend it. At first the sound, the sound of the slaps, kind of doesn't seem right, it throws you off. It's like something raw in a dish where everything else is cooked. But then it kind of meshes with what you're doing, and the girl's moans, María's moans, mesh with it too, each time you hit her she moans, and the moans keep getting louder, and a moment comes when you feel her ass burning, and the palms of your hands are burning too, and your cock starts to beat like a heart, plunk plunk plunk …"

"You're laying it on thick, mano ," said Moctezuma.

"I swear it's the truth. She had my cock in her mouth, but not gripping it tight, not sucking it, just teasing it with the tip of her tongue. She had it like a gun in a holster. See the difference? Not like a gun in the hand, but a gun in a sheath, under the arm or slung around the waist, if that makes sense. And she was throbbing too, her butt was throbbing and so were her legs and the lips of her vagina and her clitoris. I know because each time after I hit her I would stroke her, I felt her there and I noticed, and that really turned me on and I had to make an effort not to come. And she was moaning, but when I hit her she moaned more. When I wasn't hitting her she moaned a lot (I couldn't see her face), but when I was hitting her it was much more extreme, the moaning, I mean, like her heart was breaking, and what I wanted was to turn her over and screw her, but there was no way, she would've gotten mad. That's the problem with María. Things are intense with her but you always have to do it her way."

"And what happened next?" I said.

"Well, she came and I came, and that was it."

"That was it?" said Moctezuma.

"That was it, I swear. We cleaned ourselves up-well, I cleaned myself up, combed my hair a little, and she put on her pants, and we went out to see what was going on at the party. Then we got separated. That was my mistake. Letting myself get separated from her. I started to talk to Berrocal, who was alone in a corner. Then the poet Artemio Sánchez came over with some girl about thirty who was supposedly the deputy editor at El Guajolote and right there I started asking her whether she needed poems or stories or philosophical pieces for the magazine, I told her that I had lots of unpublished material, I talked to her about my buddy Moctezuma's translations, and as I talked I was looking for the hors d'oeuvre table out of the corner of my eye because all of a sudden I was fucking hungry, and then I saw María's mother show up again, followed by her father, with the famous Spanish poet a few steps behind, and that was the end of that: they threw me out and warned me never to set foot in their house again."

"And María didn't do anything?"

"No, she didn't. Nothing. At first I acted like I didn't understand what they were talking about, you know, like none of this had anything to do with me, but then, mano , there was no point pretending anymore. It became clear that they were going to boot me out like a fucking dog. I was sorry that they did it in front of Berrocal. Why not be honest, the bastard was probably laughing to himself as I backed away toward the door. I can't believe there was a time I actually sort of admired him."

"You admired Berrocal? You really are a dumbshit," said Pancho.

"The truth is that in the beginning he was nice to me. You don't know what it's like, you're from Mexico City, you grew up here, but I came here not knowing anyone and without a fucking peso. That was three years ago, when I was twenty-one. It was one hurdle after another. And Berrocal helped me out, let me into his workshop, introduced me to people who could hook me up with a job; I met María in his workshop. My life has been like a bolero ," said Luscious Skin suddenly, in a dreamy voice.

"Well, go on: Berrocal was looking at you and laughing," I said.

"No, he wasn't laughing, but I thought he was laughing to himself. And Artemio Sánchez was looking at me too, but he was so bombed he didn't even know what was going on. And the deputy editor of El Guajolote , I think she was the most horrified, as well she should have been because the look on María's mother's face was enough to give you the chills. I swear I thought she might have a weapon on her. And despite it all I was backing out in slow motion, and that was because I still hoped that María would show up, that María would push through the guests and between her parents and grab me by the arm or sling her arm over my shoulders-María is the only woman I know who puts her arm around men's shoulders instead of their waists-and get me out of there with some decorum, I mean go with me."

"So did she come over?"

"Come over? No, at least not in the sense you mean. I did see her. Her head popped up for a second over the heads and shoulders of a bunch of assholes."

"And what did she do?"

"She didn't do a goddamn thing."

"Maybe she didn't see you," said Moctezuma.

"Of course she saw me. She looked me in the eye, but the way she does. You know how it is, sometimes she looks at you and it's like she doesn't see you or she's looking right through you. And then she disappeared. So I said to myself you lost this one, amigo. Go quietly and don't make a scene. And I started to move for real, and as I was backing away María's bitch of a mother lunges at me, and I thought the woman was going to kick me in the balls or slap me at least. All right, then, I thought, so much for the orderly retreat, I'd better run, but by then the bitch was on top of me like she was going to kiss me or bite me, and guess what she says to me…"

The Rodríguez brothers were silent. No doubt they already knew.

"Did she insult you?" I asked hesitantly.

"She said: shame on you, shame on you. That's all, but she said it ten times at least, and an inch away from my face."

"It's hard to believe that witch gave birth to María and Angélica," said Moctezuma.

"Stranger things have happened," said Pancho.

"Are you still her lover?" I said.

Luscious Skin heard me but didn't answer.

"How often have you had sex with her?" I said.

"I don't even remember," said Luscious Skin.

"What's with the questions?" said Pancho.

"I don't know, just curious," I said.

It was late that night when I left the Rodríguez brothers' house (I had lunch and dinner with them and I could probably even have spent the night, they were so generous). When I got to the bus stop on Insurgentes, I suddenly realized that I didn't feel strong enough or in the mood for the long, involved discussion waiting for me at home.

One by one, the buses that I should have taken kept going by, until at last I got up from the curb where I'd been sitting and thinking and watching the traffic (or rather, watching the headlights of the cars shining in my face) and set out for the Fonts'.