"Is your sister a thin little dark girl who goes by Lupe?"

"That's her."

"Wait just a second, I'll go knock on her door."

While the receptionist went up to get her I looked through the register. The night of November 30, someone called Guadalupe Martínez had arrived. That same day, a Susana Alejandra Torres, a Juan Aparicio, and a María del Mar Jiménez had checked in. Following my instincts, I decided that Susana Alejandra Torres, not Guadalupe Martínez, must be the Lupe I was looking for. I decided not to wait for the receptionist to come down and I took the stairs in threes to the second floor, room 201, where Susana Alejandra Torres was staying.

I knocked just once. I heard footsteps, a window closing, whispers, more footsteps, and finally the door opened and I found myself face-to-face with Lupe.

It was the first time I'd seen her with so much makeup on. Her lips were painted a deep red, her eyes lined with pencil, her cheeks smeared with glitter. She recognized me at once:

"You're María's friend," she exclaimed with undisguised happiness.

"Let me in," I said. Lupe looked over her shoulder and then stood aside. The room was a jumble of women's clothes strewn in the most unlikely places.

I could tell right away that we weren't alone. Lupe was wearing a green bathrobe and she was smoking furiously. I heard a noise in the bathroom. Lupe looked at me and then looked toward the bathroom door, which was half open. I was sure it must be a client. But then I saw a paper with drawings on it lying on the floor, the mock-up of the new visceral realist magazine, and the discovery filled me with alarm. I thought, rather illogically, that it was María in the bathroom, or Angélica, and I didn't know how I was going to justify my presence at the Media Luna to them.

Lupe, who hadn't taken her eyes off me, noticed my discovery and started to laugh.

"You can come out now," she shouted, "it's your daughter's friend."

The bathroom door opened and Quim Font came out wrapped in a white robe. His eyes were weepy and there were traces of lipstick on his face. He greeted me warmly. In his hand he was holding the folder with the plan for the magazine in it.

"You see, García Madero," he said, "I'm always hard at work, always paying attention."

Then he asked me whether I'd been by his house.

"Not today," I said, and I thought about María again and everything seemed unbearably sordid and sad.

The three of us sat on the bed, Quim and I on the edge and Lupe under the covers.

Really, the situation was untenable!

Quim smiled, Lupe smiled, and I smiled, and none of us could bring ourselves to say anything. A stranger would have assumed that we were there to make love. The idea was gruesome. Just thinking about it made my stomach lurch. Lupe and Quim were still smiling. To say something, I started to talk about Arturo Belano's purge of the ranks of visceral realism.

"It was about time," said Quim. "All the freeloaders and incompetents should be tossed out. The movement only needs the pure of heart, like you, García Madero."

"True," I said, "but the more of us, the better, it seems to me."

"No, numbers are an illusion, García Madero. For our purposes, five is as good as fifty. That's what I told Arturo. Make heads roll. Shrink the inner circle until it's a microscopic dot."

I thought he was going off the rails, and I kept quiet.

"Where were we going to get with an idiot like Pancho Rodríguez, tell me that?"

"I don't know."

"Do you actually think he's a good poet? Does he strike you as a model member of the Mexican avant-garde?"

Lupe didn't say a thing. She just watched us and smiled. I asked Quim whether there was any news of Alberto.

"We're few and soon we'll be fewer," said Quim enigmatically. I didn't know whether he was referring to Alberto or the visceral realists.

"They've expelled Angélica too," I said.

"My daughter Angélica? Good Lord, that is news, man. I had no idea. When was this?"

"I don't know," I said, "Jacinto Requena told me."

"A poet who's won the Laura Damián prize! That takes some nerve, it really does! And I don't say so because she's my daughter!"

"Why don't we go for a walk?" said Lupe.

"Quiet, Lupita, I'm thinking."

"Don't be a pain in the ass, Joaquín, you can't tell me to be quiet. I'm not your daughter, remember?"

Quim laughed softly. It was a rabbity laugh that hardly disturbed the muscles of his face.

"Of course you're not my daughter. You can't write three words without making a spelling mistake."

"What? You think I'm illiterate, you asshole? Of course I can."

"No, you can't," said Quim, making a disproportionate effort to think. A scowl of pain etched itself on his face, reminding me of the expression on Pancho Rodríguez's face at Café Amarillo.

"Come on, test me."

"They shouldn't have done that to Angélica. It disgusts me the way those bastards are toying with people's feelings. We should eat something. I feel sick to my stomach," said Quim.

"Don't be a prick. Test me," said Lupe.

"Maybe Requena was exaggerating, maybe Angélica asked to be let go voluntarily. Since they'd expelled Pancho…"

"Pancho, Pancho, Pancho. That son of a bitch is nothing. He's nobody. Angélica doesn't give a damn whether they expel him, kill him, or give him a prize. He's a kind of Alberto," he added in an undertone, nodding toward Lupe.

"Don't get so upset, Quim, I only said it because they were together, weren't they?"

"What are you saying, Quim?" said Lupe.

"Nothing that's any of your business."

"Test me then, man. What do you think I am?"

"Root," said Quim.

"That's easy, give me paper and pencil."

I tore a sheet out of my notebook and handed it to her with my Bic.

"I've shed so many tears," said Quim as Lupe sat up in bed, her knees raised, the paper resting on her knees, "so many and what for?"

"Everything will be all right," I said.

"Have you ever read Laura Damián?" he asked me absently.

"No, never."

"Here it is, see what you think," said Lupe, showing him the paper. Quim frowned and said: fine. "Give me another word, but this time make it really hard."

"Anguish," said Quim.

"Anguish? That's easy."

"I have to talk to my daughters," said Quim, "I have to talk to my wife, my colleagues, my friends. I have to do something, García Madero."

"Relax, Quim, you have time."

"Listen, not a word of this to María, all right?"

"It's between the two of us, Quim."

"How does that look?" said Lupe.

"Excellent, García Madero, that's what I like to hear. I'll give you Laura Damián's book one of these days."

"How's that?" Lupe showed me the paper. She had spelled the word anguish perfectly.

"Couldn't be better," I said.

"Ragamuffin," said Quim.

"Excuse me?"

"Write the word ragamuffin," said Quim.

"Yikes, that really is hard," said Lupe, and she set to work immediately.

"Not a word about this to my daughters, then. To either of them. I'm counting on you, García Madero."

"Of course," I said.

"Now you'd better go. I'm going to spend a little while longer giving this dunce Spanish lessons, and then I'll be moving along too."

"All right, Quim, see you around."

When I got up the mattress bounced back and Lupe murmured something but didn't lift her eyes from the paper she was writing on. I saw a few scratched-out words. She was trying hard.

"If you see Arturo or Ulises, tell them it isn't right what they've done."

"If I see them," I said, shrugging my shoulders.

"It isn't a good way to make friends. Or to keep them."

I made a noise like laughter.

"Do you need money, García Madero?"

"No, Quim, not at all, thank you."