When Paul appeared the next day, Anne told him what had happened. Paul said "Shit!" but didn't elaborate. For a couple of days he tried to write something in a notebook with a black cover that Anne was never allowed to read, but he soon gave up and applied himself to sleeping on the beach and drinking. Sometimes he went out with Rubйn as if nothing had happened; other nights he stayed at the bungalow and twice they tried to make love, with less than satisfactory results. She slept with Rubйn again. Once, at night, on the beach, and another time in the bedroom at the bungalow, while Paul was sleeping on the sofa next door. As the days went by, Anne noticed that Rubйn was becoming jealous of Paul. But this only happened when the three of them were together, or when Anne and Rubйn were alone, not when Paul and Rubйn went out at night to visit the Ma-zatlбn bars. They were like brothers then, Anne remembers.
When the day came to leave, Anne decided to stay in Mexico. Paul understood and said nothing. It was a sad good-bye. She and Rubйn helped Paul pack his bags and put them in the car and then they gave him presents: an old book of photos from Anne and a bottle of tequila from Rubйn. Paul didn't have any presents for them, but he gave Anne half the money he had left. When Paul was gone, Anne and Rubйn shut themselves in the bungalow and spent three days in a row making love. Anne's money soon ran out and Rubйn went back to selling drugs outside The Frog. Anne left the bungalow and went to live at Ruben's house in a suburb from which you couldn't see the ocean. The house belonged to Rubйns grandmother, who lived there with her eldest son, Ruben's uncle, an unmarried fisherman, about forty years old. Things soon took a turn for the worse. Ruben's grandmother didn't like the way Anne walked around the house half-naked. One afternoon, when Anne was in the bathroom, Ruben's uncle came in and propositioned her. He offered her money. Anne, of course, refused the offer, but not firmly enough (she didn't want to offend him, she remembers) and the next day Ruben's uncle offered her money again in return for her favors.
Without realizing what she was about to unleash, Anne told Rubйn. That night Rubйn took a knife from the kitchen and tried to kill his uncle. The shouting was loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood, Anne remembers, but strangely nobody seemed to hear. Luckily, Ruben's uncle, who was a stronger and more experienced fighter, soon disarmed him. But Rubйn wasn't about to give in, and threw a vase at his uncle's head. As bad luck would have it, just at that moment his grandmother was coming out of her room, wearing a very bright red nightgown, the likes of which Anne had never seen. Ruben's uncle dodged the vase and it struck his grandmother on the chest. The uncle gave Rubйn a beating, then took his mother to hospital. When they returned, the uncle and the grandmother marched straight into the room where Anne and Rubйn were sleeping and gave them two hours to get out of the house. Rubйn had bruises all over his body and could hardly move, but he was so scared of his uncle that before the two hours were up, they had packed all their gear into the car.
Rubйn had relatives in Guadalajara, so that's where they went. They ended up staying only four days. The first night they slept in Ruben's sister's house, which was small, stiflingly hot, and crowded. They shared a room with three small children and the next day Anne decided to find a hotel. They had no money, but Rubйn still had some marijuana and acid tablets he could sell, or so he thought. His first attempt was a failure. He didn't know Guadalajara well; he didn't know where to deal, and he came back to the hotel tired and empty-handed. That night they talked until very late and in a moment of frustration Rubйn asked Anne what they would do if they couldn't get money to pay for the hotel or buy gas for the car. Anne said (she was joking, of course) that she could sell her body. Rubйn didn't get the joke and slapped her. It was the first time a man had ever hit her. I'd rob a bank before I let you do that, he said, and threw himself on her. Anne remembers what followed as some of the weirdest sex of her life. It was as if the walls of the hotel room were made of meat. Raw meat and grilled meat, bits of both. And while they were fucking she looked at the walls and she could see things moving, scurrying over that irregular surface, like something from a John Carpenter horror movie, though I can't remember that actually happening in any of his films.
The next day Rubйn sold the drugs and they headed for Mexico City. They lived with Ruben's mother, in a suburb near La Villa, pretty close to where I was living at the time. If I'd seen you then, I would have fallen in love with you, I told Anne many years later. Who knows, said Anne. Then she added: If I'd been a teenage boy, I wouldn't have fallen in love with me.
For some time, two or three months, Anne thought she was in love with Rubйn and envisaged spending the rest of her life in Mexico. But one day she phoned her parents, asked them for money to buy an airplane ticket, said goodbye to Rubйn, and went back to San Francisco. She moved into Lindas apartment and found a job as a waitress. Sometimes when she came home from work, Linda was still up and they would talk until late. Some nights they talked about Paul and Marc. Paul was living on his own and had started painting again, though much less than before, and with no prospect of getting a gallery. According to Linda the problem with Paul's paintings was that they were very bad. Marc was living like a recluse in his apartment, listening to the radio and watching all the television news. He had hardly any friends left. Anne remembers that a few years later, Marc published a book of poems, which was something of a success in the Berkeley student community, and he gave readings and took part in some conferences. It seemed like the ideal moment for him to start a new relationship and share his life with someone, but after the initial buzz, Marc retreated to his apartment and she never heard anything more about him.
When a guy called Larry moved in with Linda, Anne rented a little apartment in Berkeley, near the cafй. Things seemed to be going well, but Anne knew they were about to fall apart. She could tell from her dreams, which were increasingly strange, from her state of mind, drifting toward melancholy, from her unpredictable mood swings. She went out with a couple of guys, but in both cases it was a disappointment. Sometimes she went to see Paul, but she soon stopped, because although the visits would begin well enough they almost always ended in tears, self-reproach and sadness, or in violent outbursts (Paul would tear up sketches, even destroy paintings). Sometimes she thought about Rubйn and laughed at how naive she had been. One day she met a guy called Charles and they became lovers.
Charles seemed to be the opposite of Paul, Anne remembers, although deep down they were very similar. He was black and had no source of income. He liked to talk and he knew how to listen. Sometimes they spent the whole night making love and talking. Charles liked to talk about his childhood and his adolescence, as if he sensed there was a secret there that he had overlooked. Anne, on the other hand, preferred to talk about what was happening to her at that precise moment in her life. She also liked to talk about her fears, the catastrophe looming ahead, lurking in some apparently normal day. In bed, Anne remembers, things were as unsatisfactory as ever. For a little while, maybe because of the novelty, it was pleasant, maybe even magical a couple of times, but then it went back to being like it always was. And that was when Anne made what, from a certain point of view at least, she regards as a monumental error. She told Charles what it was like for her in bed, with all the men she had slept with, including him. At first Charles didn't know what to say, but several days later he suggested that since she didn't feel anything, she might as well exploit her situation. It took Anne a few days to realize that Charles was talking about prostitution.