Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

"A little," I said, after considering my response for a second.

I noticed that her voice had gotten husky again.

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No, of course not," I said.

"Who did you do it with, then? A prostitute?"

"No, with a girl from Sonora who I met last year," I said. "We were only together for three days."

"And you haven't done it with anyone else?"

I was tempted to tell her about my adventure with Brígida, but in the end I decided that it was better not to.

"No, nobody else," I said, and I felt so miserable I could have died.

I called María Font. I told her I wanted to see her. I begged her to come out. She said that she'd meet me at Café Quito. When she came in, around seven, several pairs of eyes followed her from the doorway all the way to the table where I was waiting.

She looked beautiful. She was wearing a Oaxacan blouse, very tight jeans, and leather sandals. Over her shoulder she was carrying a dark brown knapsack stamped with little cream-colored horses around the edges, full of books and papers.

I asked her to read me a poem.

"Don't be a drag, García Madero," she said.

I don't know why, but her saying that made me sad. I think I had a physical need to hear one of her poems from her own lips. But maybe it wasn't the place; Café Quito was loud with talk, shouts, shrieks of laughter. I gave her back the Lautréamont.

"You read it already?" said María.

"Of course," I said. "I stayed up all night reading. I read Lee Harvey Oswald too. What a great magazine, it's such a shame they had to fold. I loved your things."

"So you haven't been to bed yet?"

"Not yet, but I feel good. I'm wide awake."

María Font looked me in the eyes and smiled. A waitress came over and asked what she wanted to drink. Nothing, said María, we were just leaving. Outside, I asked whether she had somewhere to go, and she said no, she just wasn't in the mood for Café Quito. We went walking along Bucareli toward Reforma, then crossed Reforma and headed up Avenida Guerrero.

"This is where the whores are," said María.

"I didn't realize," I said.

"Give me your arm so nobody gets the wrong idea."

The truth is, at first I didn't see anything to suggest that the street was any different from those we had just been on. The traffic was heavy here too, and the people crowding the sidewalks were no different from the people streaming along Bucareli. But then (maybe because of what María had said) I started to notice some differences. To start with, the lighting. The streetlights on Bucareli are white, but on Avenida Guerrero they had more of an amber tone. The cars: on Bucareli it's unusual to find a car parked on the street; on Guerrero there were plenty. On Bucareli, the bars and coffee shops are open and bright; on Guerrero, although there were lots of bars, they seemed turned in on themselves, secret or discreet, with no big windows looking out. And finally, the music. On Bucareli there wasn't any. All the noise came from people or cars. On Guerrero, the farther in you got, especially on the corners of Violeta and Magnolia, the music took over the street, coming from bars, parked cars, and portable radios, and drifting from the lighted windows of dark buildings.

"I like this street," said María. "Someday I'm going to live here."

A group of teenage hookers was standing around an old Cadillac parked at the curb. María stopped and greeted one of them:

"Hey there, Lupe. Nice to see you."

Lupe was very thin and had short hair. I thought she was as beautiful as María.

"María! Wow, mana , long time no see," she said, and then she hugged her.

The girls with Lupe were still leaning on the hood of the Cadillac and their eyes rested on María, scrutinizing her calmly. They hardly looked at me.

"I thought you died," said María all of a sudden. The callousness of the remark stunned me. María's tact has these gaping holes.

"I'm plenty alive. But I almost died. Didn't I, Carmencita?"

"That's right," said the girl called Carmencita, and she continued to study María.

"It was Gloria who bit it. You met her, didn't you? Mana , what a fucking mess, but no one could stand that cunt."

"I never met her," said María with a smile on her lips.

"The cops are the ones who nailed her," said Carmencita.

"And has anyone done anything about it?" said María.

"Nelson," said Carmencita. "Do what? The bitch knew too much, she was in way over her head, there was nothing anyone could do."

"Well, how sad," said María.

"Say, how's school?" said Lupe.

"So-so," said María.

"You still got that hot stud running after you?"

María laughed and shot me a glance.

"My friend here is a ballerina," Lupe said to the other girls. "We met at Modern Dance, the school on Donceles."

"Yeah, sure," said Carmencita.

"It's true, Lupe hung out at the dance school," said María.

"So how did she end up here?" asked a girl who hadn't spoken before, the shortest one of all, almost a dwarf.

María looked at her and shrugged.

"Will you come have coffee with us?" she said.

Lupe checked the watch on her right wrist and then looked at her friends.

"The thing is, I'm working."

"Just for a little while, you'll be back soon," said María.

"All right, then. Work can wait," said Lupe. "I'll see you girls later." She started to walk with María. I walked behind them.

We turned left on Magnolia, onto Avenida Jesús García. Then we walked south again, to Héroes Revolucionarios Ferrocarrileros, where we went into a coffee shop.

"Is this the kid you've been fooling around with?" I heard Lupe say to María.

María laughed again.

"He's just a friend," she said, and to me: "If Lupe's pimp shows up here, you'll have to defend us both, García Madero."

I thought she was kidding. Then it occurred to me she might be serious and, frankly, the situation started to seem appealing. Just then I couldn't imagine a better way to look good in front of María. I felt happy. We had the whole night ahead of us.

"My man is heavy," said Lupe. "He doesn't like me to be running around with strangers." It was the first time she had looked directly at me when she spoke.

"But I'm not a stranger," said María.

"No, mana . Not you."

"Do you know how I met Lupe?" said María.

"I have no idea," I said.

"At the dance school. Lupe was Paco Duarte's girlfriend. Paco is the Spanish dancer who's the head of the school."

"I went to see him once a week," said Lupe.

"I didn't know you took dance lessons," I said.

"I don't. I just went there to fuck," said Lupe.

"I meant María, not you."

"Since I was fourteen," said María. "Too late to be a good ballerina. That's the way it goes."

"What do you mean? You're a great dancer! Weird, but the truth is everyone in that place is half insane. Have you seen her dance?" I said I hadn't. "You'd fall head over heels."

María shook her head to deny it. When the waitress came we ordered three coffees and Lupe also ordered a cheese sandwich, no beans.

"I can't digest them," she explained.

"How's your stomach?" said María.

"Not bad. Sometimes it hurts a lot, other times I forget it exists. It's nerves. When it gets to be too much, I just have a toke and it's fixed. So what about you? Aren't you going to the dance school anymore?"

"Not so often," said María.

"This idiot walked in on me once in Paco Duarte's office," said Lupe.

"I almost died laughing," said María. "Actually, I don't know why I started to laugh. Maybe I was in love with Paco and it was hysterics."

"Come on, mana , you know he wasn't your type."