"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."
"You know you can always count on me. I was young and reckless once too. Now go. We'll get dressed in a little while and then head out for something to eat."
"My pen," I said.
"What?" said Quim.
"I'm going. I'd like my pen."
"Let her finish," said Quim, glancing at Lupe over his shoulder.
"Here, how does that look?" said Lupe.
"You got it wrong," said Quim. "I ought to give you a spanking."
I thought about the word ragamuffin. I'm not sure I'd have spelled it right the first time either. Quim got up and went to the bathroom. When he came out he had a black-and-gold mechanical pencil in his hand. He winked at me.
"Give him back the pen and write with this," he said.
Lupe returned my Bic. Goodbye, I said. She didn't answer.
DECEMBER 13
I called María. I talked to the maid. Miss María isn't in. When will she be home? No idea, may I ask who's calling? I didn't want to give my name and I hung up. I sat at Café Quito for a while, waiting to see whether anyone else would come, but it was hopeless. I called María again. No one answered the phone. I went walking to Montes, where Jacinto lives. Nobody was home. I ate a sandwich in the street and finished two poems I'd started the day before. Another call to the Font house. This time the voice of an unidentifiable woman answered. I asked whether it was Mrs. Font.
"No, it isn't," said the voice in a tone that made my scalp tingle.
It clearly wasn't María's voice. Nor was it that of the maid I had just spoken to. The only alternatives were Angélica or a stranger, maybe one of the sisters' friends.
"Who is this, please?"
"To whom do you wish to speak?"
"To María or Angélica," I said, feeling stupid and scared at the same time.
"This is Angélica," said the voice. "To whom am I speaking?"
"It's Juan," I said.
"Hello, Juan. How are you?"
It can't be Angélica, I thought, it simply can't be. But then I thought that everyone living in that house was crazy, so maybe it was possible after all.
"I'm fine," I said, shaking. "Is María there?"
"No," said the voice.
"All right, I'll call again," I said.
"Do you want to leave her a message?"
"No!" I said and I hung up.
I felt my forehead with my hand, thinking I must have a fever. At that moment, all I wanted was to be home with my aunt and uncle, studying or watching TV, but I knew that there was no turning back, that all I had was Rosario and Rosario's tenement room.
Without realizing it, I must have started to cry. I wandered aimlessly for a while, and when I tried to get my bearings I was in the middle of a bleak stretch of Colonia Anáhuac, surrounded by dying trees and peeling walls. I went into a place on Calle Texcoco and asked for a coffee. When it came, it was lukewarm. I don't know how long I spent there.
When I left it was night.
I called the Fonts again from another pay phone. The same woman's voice answered.
"Hello, Angélica, it's Juan García Madero," I said.
"Hello," said the voice.
I felt sick. Some kids were playing soccer in the street.
"I saw your father," I said. "He was with Lupe."
"What?"
"At the hotel where we have Lupe. Your father was there."
"What was he doing there?" The voice was uninflected; it was like talking to a brick wall, I thought.
"He was keeping her company," I said.
"Is Lupe all right?"
"Lupe's fine," I said. "It was your father who didn't seem to be doing very well. I thought he'd been crying, even if he was better by the time I got there."
"Hmm," said the voice. "And why was he crying?"
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe it was regret. Or maybe shame. He asked me not to tell you."
"Not to tell me what?"
"That I'd seen him there."
"Hmm," said the voice.
"When will María be home? Do you know where she is?"
"At the dance school," said the voice. "And I was just leaving."
"Where are you going?"
"To the university."
"All right, then, goodbye."
"Goodbye," said the voice.
I went walking back to Sullivan. When I crossed Reforma, near the statue of Cuauhtémoc, I heard someone call my name.
"Hands up, poet García Madero."
When I turned, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima were there, and I fainted.
When I woke up I was in Rosario's room, in bed, with Ulises and Arturo on either side of me trying and failing to get me to drink some herbal tea they'd just made. I asked what had happened, and they told me I'd fainted, that I'd thrown up and then I'd started to ramble incoherently. I told them about calling the Fonts' house. I said it was the call that had made me sick. At first they didn't believe me. Then they listened carefully to a detailed account of my latest adventures and delivered their verdict.
According to them, the problem was that I hadn't been talking to Angélica at all.
"And you knew it too, García Madero, and that's why you got sick," said Arturo, "from the fucking shock."
"What did I know?"
"That it was somebody else, not Angélica," said Ulises.
"No I didn't," I said.
"Unconsciously you did," said Arturo.
"But who was it, then?"
Arturo and Ulises laughed.
"There's actually a simple answer, and it's funny too."
"Stop torturing me, then, and tell me what it is," I said.
"Think a little," said Arturo. "Come on, use your head. Was it Angélica? Clearly not. Was it María? Even less likely. Who's left? The maid, but she isn't there at the time of day you called, and anyway you'd already talked to her and you would've recognized her voice, right?"
"Right," I said. "It definitely wasn't the maid."
"Who's left?" said Ulises.
"María's mother and Jorgito."
"I don't think it was Jorgito, was it?"
"No, it couldn't have been Jorgito," I admitted.
"And can you see María Cristina putting on an act like that?"
"Is María's mother called María Cristina?"
"That's her name," said Ulises.
"No, I really can't, but who was it, then? There's no one left."
"Someone crazy enough to imitate Angélica's voice," said Arturo, and he looked at me. "The only person in the house who would pull a weird stunt like that."
I looked from one to the other as gradually the answer began to take shape in my mind.
"Warm, warmer…" said Ulises.
"Quim," I said.
"Who else," said Arturo.
"That son of a bitch!"
Later I remembered the story about the deaf-mute that Quim had told me and I thought about child abusers who had themselves once been abused as children. Although now that I write it, the cause-and-effect relationship between the deaf-mute and Quim's personality shift doesn't seem so clear. Then I went storming out into the street and wasted coin after coin on futile calls to María's house. I talked to her mother, the maid, Jorgito, and, very late that night, Angélica (this time it was the real Angélica), but María was never there and Quim would never come to the phone.