“I’ll see you at the restaurant. I’m going to go try to pick up a notebook I left at my doctor’s,” I blurted out, then started quickly down San Lorenzo like somebody fleeing from an imminent shootout. After a moment of confusion, my friend likewise acted hastily, perhaps fearing that my abrupt swerve was merely a strategy to sneak away, or perhaps he was incapable of spending a moment alone, unable to bear his own exaltation without somebody there to listen to him, though before he came running after me, he did lodge a protest: “We can go get it after lunch.” But I was already on my way, unstoppable and not slacking my pace even slightly, still hoping he would not follow me; I told him that I wouldn’t have time after we ate, I still had a lot to do for my trip, which from all points of view was true, as was also my desire to disappear, and the possibility of getting my hands on the notebook where Don Chente had written down my confessions did not seem that outlandish. “How the hell are you going to get your notebook if you just told me that the old man went to San Salvador!?” my friend demanded as he caught up with me in a last-ditch effort to stop me, insisting that we first go to the restaurant. “His wife or the maid will be there,” I said, hurrying my steps, and I repeated that he didn’t have to come with me, it would be better if he went straight to the restaurant to get a good table, and I would catch up with him there in no more than fifteen minutes. But the die was cast, there was no way I could extricate myself from Félix, who had now started to run sulkily after me, because the idea of laying my hands on Don Chente’s notebook had invigorated me, and my energetic and determined pace contrasted with how sluggish I had been feeling just moments before. We soon crossed to the next block, my steps spurred on by the prospect of the imminent recovery of that notebook, which really did belong to me, because what was written in it were the secrets of my life, and if Don Chente had indeed disappeared, the most prudent thing was for that information to be in my hands, I didn’t want to even imagine what would happen if that notebook fell, for example, into the claws of someone like Félix, I told myself, feeling a hint of shivers running up and down my spine, the mere possibility of such an occurrence making me shake my head and speed my steps up still further; until that moment I hadn’t realized that my friend had been there alongside me the whole time, blabbing away about how, because of me, the girls would get to the restaurant and leave when they didn’t find us there, about how I would be sorry for having thrown away such an opportunity. But by then we were standing in front of that elegant building, my attention now focused on the doorbell, and I felt master of the situation, confident of achieving my goal. And a few seconds later I heard through the intercom the same voice I’d heard on most of my other visits, the voice of the maid asking who was there and what I wanted. I told her I was Erasmo Aragón, Don Chente’s patient, that she had answered the door for me on other occasions, surely she remembered me, didn’t she? and that at my last appointment I had left a notebook in the doctor’s office and that he, before leaving for San Salvador, had left me a message telling me that I could drop by to pick it up, he would leave it with his wife or with her. “His wife went with him,” the maid said. What an ass I am, I admonished myself, why didn’t I realize that the doctor had gone with his wife! “And nobody told me anything about any notebook,” the maid added, sounding like she wanted to put an end to the conversation. “The doctor must have forgotten, he left in such a hurry and was so sad about Doña Rosita’s death,” I said quickly, trying to retake the initiative, even surprised that for once my memory had worked in my favor and allowed me to remember the name of Don Chente’s mother, mentioned at Muñecón’s place the night before. And then I asked her if she would let me come up to look for the notebook, surely it was on his desk, I would immediately recognize it. She remained quiet for a few seconds, perhaps uncertain, but then said that she was sorry, her orders were not to open the door to anybody. “So maybe, since you can’t let me in, you could do me the favor of going to look for it and bringing it to me,” I suggested, using one final ploy and without straying from my measured and polite tone, at the same time as I became aware that Félix was bringing his face up to the intercom, his face that was all puffy from the booze, his eyes glassy, evidence that his wires were already crossed and fizzling. “Do what we say!” he shouted to my great surprise, “and hurry up about it!” in that scornful tone used to give orders to dim-witted domestics, as if he were about to give her a whipping, before I could push him away, bringing my finger angrily to my lips to tell him to shut up, his outburst was about to render all my efforts in vain. “What? Who’s there?” the maid asked, now quite disconcerted. “Open up, this is the police!” Félix shouted, already in a state of rapture, gesticulating at the intercom, while the urge to grab him by the hair and slam his face into the glass door came over me at the exact instant I clearly heard the click of the intercom as the maid hung up the phone, which only increased my rage because I understood that she had withdrawn in alarm, and if at first she had trusted me, she had now acted out of fear and suspicion. But Félix was infatuated by the role he was playing, and when he realized that the maid had hung up, he began ringing the doorbell compulsively, over and over again, his face contorted in rage, insulting her and threatening her, as if she were still listening to him, his behavior so scandalous that I feared the neighbors would come out and give us a piece of their mind, so I began to retreat to the sidewalk, my head down, my rage turning into chagrin at the pathetic spectacle my friend was making of himself, and I managed to say, “Let’s go, you moron, you already fucked everything up.”
We walked down San Lorenzo back toward Insurgentes, my buddy Félix still shouting behind me about how could “that goddamn half-breed” possibly have refused to return my notebook to me, whereas I was being pulled in different directions by insidious emotions, on the one hand wanting to skewer my companion, tell him to get lost, go to hell, leave me alone, and on the other hand blaming myself: I was the only one to blame for what had happened to me because I was the one who had invited Félix to meet me at Sanborns instead of nursing my hangover alone and then going to deposit my check and buying my airplane ticket, which would have been the commonsensical thing to do; but instead, I’d had the brilliant idea of calling my buddy Félix and not somebody else. And so we continued, together but each in his own world, and when we turned down a side street, I heard a voice behind me calling out, “Young men!” a voice I immediately turned toward only to find that it came from a couple of policemen in a patrol car driving slowly behind us, as if they were escorting us, or checking us out. “Stop!” the fat one with the porcine nose sitting behind the steering wheel shouted, pulling the car over to the curb and starting to open the door, an order in response to which my first impulse was to take off running, as fast as my legs could carry me, a normal reaction for someone from the country I was from, and therefore also normal for Félix, whose face underwent an abrupt transformation due to the same combustion that was taking place inside me and that burned off the last drop of alcohol in my bloodstream — we’d been caught completely unawares, my companion in the middle of his harangue and me in my bewilderment; so, after that initial blast of fear, we just stood there stock still and waited for the officers to reach us, the fat one with the porcine nose and a skinny short one with a mustache like Cantinflas, who asked us point-blank: “What’s going on, why are you making such a fuss so early in the morning?” And he barked that in a tone of voice somewhere between cunning and ass-licking, like a dog playing with his prey before biting into it. “What fuss?” Félix answered, having abruptly pulled himself together and adopted a certain aloofness toward the men in uniform standing in front of us — these were not ghoulish Salvadoran soldiers but rather mooching, mud-brained Mexican policemen. But the fat one with the porcine nose rudely answered that we had been threatening people in the building back there, and we had to accompany them to the station, and — now in a rather intimidating tone that made his nostrils flare and vibrate — he demanded that we show him our IDs, whereat my friend haughtily pulled out his wallet to show them his press credentials, on the corner of which shone the logo of the magazine he worked for, which immediately deflated the fat one and also the little guy with the mustache like Cantinflas — before they were snarling and snapping their jaws but now they were all bark and no bite. And while my buddy Félix was explaining to them that the whole mess was because that dirty little maid didn’t want to give me back my notebook that I had left in my doctor’s apartment, I stood there in a state of suspension, at first terrified at the possibility that the policemen would make us get into their patrol car and would find my final paycheck in my pocket, then with a strong urge to tell them that Félix was lying, that he and not the maid had been the cause of everything, that only he would have had the bright idea to shout insults and threats through an intercom at a girl who was only following orders, and would they please do me the favor of arresting him and taking him to the station without further delay. But instead of that, I somewhat abashedly held out my press credentials, feeling as if I were lying, knowing I was the only one to blame for the whole fiasco, for hanging out with the people I hung out with instead of making my way alone, but all they needed was one glance at my credentials, issued by the news agency I no longer worked for, to be fully convinced that they weren’t going to get enough money out of us for a soda pop, at which point they told us to continue along our way, they even addressed us as “gentlemen,” before returning to their car.