cachet, something artistique. Even though I don’t know anything about art — here comes the waiter. Are you going to drink the other cappuccino? That idea that Yuca’s political enemies could have masterminded Olga María’s murder, I mentioned it to José Carlos. Yesterday at noon. We had lunch together. Didn’t I tell you? It was lovely. We went to Marea Alta Restaurant in the Zona Rosa. No, I called to ask him where that Deputy Chief Handal had gotten that photo of Olga María. No, I didn’t just come out and ask him like that, so abruptly, I said we should talk, the police had been interrogating me, and I’d like to talk to him about it. José Carlos has already packed up his studio, and he’s leaving for Boston next Monday. He invited me out for lunch. He’s so sweet. He said that way we could say a proper goodbye, because he’ll be running around like crazy all weekend, here and there, tying up loose ends, because he’s decided to leave for good — he doesn’t plan to live in this country ever again. He’s very upset, my dear. How could he not be? You should have heard some of the things he told me. He’s taken it hard, poor man. That’s why he invited me out to eat at Marea Alta, because he doesn’t have a studio or anything. Too bad, my dear, I would have rather gone to his studio. But we had a great time. We drank beer and ate oysters. Upstairs. I love that place: you’re up there level with the treetops, hidden, you can see the cars going by but they can’t see you. I wanted to know what José Carlos had talked about with this Deputy Chief Handal, what muddled nonsense that scandal-mongering policeman came to him with — here comes the waiter with my wine. It’s delicious, ice cold. Excuse me, young man, that other waiter’s name is Rodolfo, isn’t it? Yes, that one behind the bar. What did I tell you? When he walks by I’m going to tell him about Olga María. He probably hasn’t heard. Of course he’ll remember her. How could he forget? Are you nuts? A woman like Olga María isn’t easy to forget, especially when she’s been flirting with you; there’s not a man in the world who’d forget that. I’m going to call him over here. No, it’s not tactless. Anyway, I want to finish telling you about José Carlos. The thing is, I asked him point blank where that Deputy Chief Handal had gotten the naked photograph of Olga María — though it doesn’t show her privates — lying on the sofa; I told him I knew that he, José Carlos, had taken it, he shouldn’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, I knew that sofa and it would have been very unlikely that a brute like Handal would be going around fabricating a photo like that — he should be frank with me. He was surprised that the policeman would have been so indiscreet as to show me the picture of Olga María. Needless to say, he did take it: it was one in a series he thought up one afternoon when she came to the studio and they were drinking wine. They were already pretty tipsy, and José Carlos suggested she pose in the nude, but only in sexy poses, without showing her privates: neither her tits or her pussy. He told me he shot a whole roll, but that night Olga María called him, very alarmed, and asked him to destroy the roll — she said taking those photos had been totally reckless. That’s what José Carlos told me, anyway. He told her he’d already developed them, in his own darkroom, and they’d come out fantastic, he wanted to show them to her. But Olga María was really worried: she begged him to destroy the prints and the negatives, said she’d pay him for the cost of the materials, she just didn’t want those photos to exist for anything in the world. The whole thing had been madness, she’d never allow him to take pictures of her again. José Carlos said he’d never heard her so beside herself, so categorical, and he promised her he’d destroy them all. And that’s what he did. But he kept one, the brute, and he left it in his album as a souvenir. According to him, Deputy Chief Handal and his bloodhounds searched his entire studio, without permission or a warrant, and they illegally confiscated the photograph — the only thing they took, but he can’t report them because then Marito would find out about his relationship with Olga María. A great big mess, my dear. Those policemen are a bunch of delinquents. José Carlos says they were very threatening when they interrogated him — he thought any minute they’d arrest him and start torturing him. Horrible: they accused him of blackmailing Olga María and then hiring somebody to murder her when she threatened to report him. Imagine that. Poor José Carlos, he’s devastated. But we had a great time upstairs at the Marea Alta, they have these gigantic oysters, absolutely delicious. What José Carlos also doesn’t understand is how the police found out about the relationship between him and Olga María. I told him I suspect Conchita and Cheli, the girls from the boutique. But he doesn’t want to know anything about it, he just wants to get out of here and never come back. Anybody in his situation would do exactly the same thing. What freaked him out most was that Olga María had had a relationship with Yuca. Deputy Chief Handal, the damn blabbermouth, told him. José Carlos thinks she left him so she could get involved with Yuca: he feels hurt, betrayed, over such a minor thing, but then he really loved her, my dear. I tried to explain to him that Olga María didn’t leave him because of Yuca, they’d known each other since their school days and the whole rest of the story. But he didn’t believe me. He looked so upset I couldn’t help telling him that Olga María and Yuca never actually made love, I had it from the horse’s mouth, he should believe me, things between them never worked out. This all happened yesterday: I played the role of the counselor, the mender of broken hearts. José Carlos is so sensitive — at one point he even had tears in his eyes, real tears. I told him that Olga María loved him, she’d always spoken highly of him, she’d even confided in me that he was an excellent lover. That’s the only way I could comfort him, my dear. Men and their vanity. That was when I asked him what he thought about my idea that maybe one of Yuca’s friends had arranged for Olga María to be murdered in order to destroy Yuca politically. He mulled it over for a few minutes. Then he said that if that’s what happened we’d never find out anything, these kinds of dirty tricks between politicos never come out in the open — Yuca himself would make sure the facts were never known. You sure you don’t want a glass of wine? He told me something else that makes sense to me now that I think about it: if one of Yuca’s political enemies is responsible for Olga María’s murder, it’s better that we don’t know and don’t try to find out who it was, because if we do, they’ll kill us, too; and he, in that case, should disappear as soon as possible, because those politicos will try to divert public attention, and there’s no better way to do that than have as a scapegoat some photographer nobody would stand up for. José Carlos was getting more and more upset. But I told him not to worry, nobody’s going to think he had anything to do with this, even that Deputy Chief Handal doesn’t really suspect José Carlos. That’s my impression, anyway, my dear. That’s what I told him. I was trying to get him to calm down upstairs at Marea Alta, with those gigantic oysters — so delicious, they made you want to go straight to the beach. And that’s when I got the idea. I asked José Carlos what he was doing that afternoon. He said nothing important: just finish packing a few things, make a few phone calls to say goodbye. I suggested we go to the beach, to my family’s place. He stared at me like I must be joking. But I wasn’t joking: I suddenly felt like going to the beach, to feel the cool breeze, to stop thinking about this whole mess with Olga María. Here’s how I explained it to him: it would do him good to go to the beach, forget for a while all the horrors we’ve been through, nothing like the peace and serenity of the sea to help you relax and bid farewell to this country. It didn’t take much to convince him. We paid and went straight to the beach, in my car, happy as clams. You can’t imagine what a good time we had. But let me order another glass of wine. Shall I order one for you? Or better yet, my dear, let’s order a bottle, okay? You’re right, it’s too early: a half bottle, then. Look how this place is filling up. It’s definitely the