FIVE
WHEN I WOKE UP THAT MORNING I could never have imagined the dirty trick that had been played on me. For a few minutes I remained serenely between the sheets in my apartment in the Engels Building, dozing, receiving in my cupped hands the warmth of my testicles, happy in the knowledge that it was Friday, listening to the cries of the street vendors that rose to my fifth-floor apartment very early in the morning, because my apartment with high ceilings and large windows was located on the corner of Sexta Avenida and Once Calle, in the very heart of the city, as I realized once again that morning upon opening the curtains and contemplating the light on the rooftops and between the buildings, which fortunately were few within my immediate visual perimeters; a furnished apartment with housekeeping services — laundry and fresh sheets and towels like in a hotel — I moved into almost immediately upon my arrival in this city, and whose rent of four hundred dollars a month didn’t seem too excessive given its privileged location, which allowed me to walk the six blocks that separated it from the archbishop’s palace and to have my favorite bars right on hand, and given its very good security situation thanks to a guard being on duty twenty-four hours a day. Once I was dressed and groomed and had eaten my yogurt and cereal — health always comes first — I double-locked the door, walked down the hallway to the elevator, pressed the button to the first floor, got out in the lobby, where I said good morning to the receptionist and the doorman, then went straight out onto the street, keeping my eyes on the passersby, walking down Once Calle on my way to Octava Avenida toward Café León, where I could drink the best coffee in the city and peacefully read the newspapers, as I did from Monday to Friday, before making my way to the office, I sat down at the bar and asked for a café latte and a couple of churros and grabbed whatever newspaper was available, which that Friday morning turned out to be a rag called