Juan Pablo Villalobos - I'll Sell You a Dog

They looked at each other as if suspecting for a moment they’d got the wrong person and it was all a misunderstanding. They asked me how old I was. I told them I was twenty-one.

‘And you have to ask your mum, kid?’ the inspector said. ‘What you need to do is help your mother. The stand’s a really good business, you’ll see.’

‘Bigotes was her brother, and she doesn’t know about any of this yet,’ I explained.

‘Even more reason not to ask her, then,’ the inspector said. ‘Just tell her you inherited it, she’ll be happy.’

‘You have to decide now,’ the rates guy said. ‘We’re giving you an opportunity. There’s a waiting list to get a spot on this corner.’

I knew it really was a good opportunity; one of the ways I used to help my uncle was by counting the money when we closed up the stand. I said yes, thinking that if I said no I’d end up with nothing, and if I accepted and I didn’t like it, I could always give it up. The inspector handed me a card: on the back he’d written a code in numbers and letters.

‘If one of our colleagues from the Department comes, show him this card. Keep it in your wallet. Don’t lose it. Without this card you’re no one, got it?’

I said yes.

‘Tonight I’ll come round to settle up.’ The rates guy said. ‘Everything had better add up, don’t you try and be smart. We wouldn’t want you to end up a faggot, now.’

‘Another thing,’ the inspector said.

He turned and looked across the road stretching out his arm to signal to a guy leaning against the wall there. The individual crossed the road without looking and a car had to screech to a halt to avoid running him down. When the driver stuck his head out of the window to curse at him, the man showed him a pistol he had hidden under his shirt, tucked into his trousers. He tucked his shirt in again and came over to where we were. He had a scar criss-crossing his face and a toothpick between his teeth. He was spectacularly ugly, like the caricature of a despot drawn by an artist troubled by the atrocities of war, so ugly it was depressing, because it implied that beauty was a moral attribute.

‘Evening,’ he said.

‘Evening,’ I repeated.

The rates guy put his right hand on the man’s shoulder and informed me:

‘My pal here’s the one who’ll sell you the meat.’

The doorbell rang and it wasn’t Wednesday or Saturday. On the intercom, Mao’s lilting voice announced:

‘I have your order.’

‘Pizza? You’ve got the wrong apartment.’

‘I’m from the UPD: Unintelligible Philosopher Deliveries.’

I told him to come up, pressed the button that opened the main door and, in the obligatory five minutes it took him get upstairs (almost ten, as it turned out), began to imagine the commotion going on down in the lobby caused by the combination of his dreadlocks, his gently swaying walk and the pong he gave off. Finally, Mao rapped at the door to my apartment as if typing out a telegram: first one rap on its own, then several little raps spaced out and finished off with a kind of samba flourish. When I opened the door, my eyebrows expressing bewilderment, he apologised.

‘It’s a habit.’

I changed the position of my eyebrows to an interrogative one.

‘I’ve been in hiding a long time.’

‘You took ages, did you crawl on your knees all the way from China?’

‘It’s that lift, it took forever to come. I even started to think I’d miss the fall of the Yankee Empire while I was waiting.’

I let him in and he began to inspect my apartment as if he was worried I’d set up an ambush. Once he’d verified that, aside from the cockroaches, there was no one else here, he went and stood in front of the painting hanging on the wall.

‘That’s one cool freak,’ he exclaimed.

‘That’s my mother,’ I told him.

‘And was she really that fat?’

He was wearing a Shining Path T-shirt again, which even from where he was standing gave off a stench that made clear it was the same garment. Being in hiding always was a good excuse for soap-dodgers. It suddenly occurred to me that my only visitors were militants: boys in uniform, with rucksacks on their backs.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s up with the gang in the lobby? Is it a sect?’

‘Something like that. It’s a literary salon.’

‘Right on. And you don’t take part?’

‘As if! I don’t read novels.’

‘The novel is a bourgeois invention.’

‘Oh really?’

He took off his rucksack, unzipped it and took out two books, which he handed me. I was disappointed to see that Notes to Literature came in two volumes and the one he had brought me, the second, was such a slim edition it might not be any use to me at all.

‘What about the other volume?’ I asked.

‘It’s gone, man, this was the only one left.’

Then I took a look at the red-and-blue cover of the other book he’d brought me: The Dream and the Underworld , by James Hillman.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘It’s a present. To bring you a bit more up to date with the latest impenetrable shit that’s out there.’

I took out my wallet and gave him the agreed-on twenty pesos before I, thanks to some surprise twist in the story (including this mysterious gift), ended up having to shell out more.

‘Hey, is Dorotea your girlfriend?’ I asked.

‘You know her?’

‘Juliet introduced us. And she and I had a run-in, in any case. Did you know your little lady-friend works for the system?’

‘You’ve got it all wrong, Grandpa.’

‘I’m not confused, I saw you with her the other day. And I told you before, don’t call me Grandpa.’

‘But Dorotea’s not who you think she is.’

‘Oh, no? You’re not going to tell me she’s a spy?’

He sniffed, as if sniffing meant yes in the coded language of the insurgency. He sniffed again, and it seemed I’d interpreted correctly.

‘My God, it’s true.’

‘Look, all you need to know is Dorotea’s closed the file on you, you don’t have to worry about that.’

‘Oh really? And how much is that going to cost me? Don’t think I’m going to pay you.’

‘Chill, Grandpa, Dorotea’s taken care of it, she’s a good chick. She did it as a special favour, because you’re a friend of her grandmother’s.’

‘And do you mind telling me what the hell you hope to achieve by infiltrating the Society for the Protection of Animals?’

‘It’s a gold mine of information. Have you got any idea who reports that kind of stuff? Bored, stuck-up old ladies with nothing better to do, the wives of businessmen and politicians — who else cares about animals in this country? You might laugh, Grandpa, but Dorotea just got the dope on the richest man in the world.’

‘Did she really?’

‘Everything: address, phone numbers, email.’

‘And what are you going to do with it all?’

‘I can’t tell you, it’ll compromise the operation.’

Then it was my turn to start looking around, as if I feared that someone else might be listening in to our conversation in my own home and I was needlessly implicating myself in who-knew-what mischief. I changed the subject abruptly.

‘Did they ask you anything in the salon?’

‘Man, I haven’t been interrogated like this since the G-20 summit.’

‘What did they ask you?’

‘They asked me why I was here.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘That I was a supplier.’

‘Brilliant. They must be thinking you’re my dealer.’

‘Or that I bring you your Viagra.’

‘Actually, maybe you can help me out.’

‘You want me to get hold of the little magic pill for you?’