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"Come
on in, Fate," he said.

The
lamp hanging from the ceiling was green. Next to a window, sitting in an
armchair, was Rosa Amalfitano. She had her legs crossed and she was smoking.
When Fate came through the door she lifted her eyes and looked at him.

"We're
doing some business here," said Chucho Flores.

Fate
leaned against the wall, feeling short of breath. It's the green color, he
thought.

"I see," he said.

Rosa
Amalfitano seemed to be high.

Fate thought he remembered that someone, at some point,
announced it was someone's birthday that night, the birthday of a person who
wasn't with them but whom Chucho Flores and Charly Cruz apparently knew. As he
drank tequila a woman started to sing "Happy Birthday" in English.
Then three men (was Chucho Flores one of them?) started to sing the Mexican
birthday song "Las Mananitas." Many voices joined in. Next to him,
standing at the bar, was Rosa Amalfitano. She wasn't singing, but she
translated the words of the song. Fate asked her what the connection was
between King David and birthdays.

"I
don't know," said
Rosa
. "I'm not
Mexican, I'm Spanish."

Fate
thought about
Spain
.
He was going to ask her what part of
Spain
she was from when he saw a
man hit a woman in a corner of the room. The first blow made the woman's head
snap violently and the second blow knocked her down. Without thinking, Fate
tried to move toward them, but someone grabbed his arm. When he turned to see
who it was, no one was there. In the opposite corner of the club the man who
had hit the woman stepped next to where she was huddled on the ground and
kicked her in the stomach. A few feet away'from him he saw Rosa Mendez smiling
happily. Next to her was
Corona
,
who was looking in a different direction with the usual serious expression on
his face.
Corona
's
arm was around Rosa Mendez's shoulders. Every so often she would lift
Corona
's hand to her
mouth and bite his finger. Sometimes Rosa Mendez's teeth bit too hard and then
Corona
's brow furrowed
slightly.

"Garcia was a fairly well-known fighter in
Sonora
," said
Chucho Flores. "He wasn't very good, but he could stand there and take it
better than anybody else."

Fate
looked toward the end of the bar. Omar Abdul and Garcia were still there,
silent, staring at the rows of bottles.

"One
night he went crazy and killed his sister," said Chucho Flores. "His
lawyer argued temporary insanity and all he did was eight years in the prison
at
Hermosillo
.
When he got out he didn't want to box anymore. For a while he was with the
Arizona Pentecostalists. But God never gave him the gift of speech and one day
he stopped preaching the Word and started working the door at some clubs. Until
Lopez, Merolino's trainer, showed up, and hired him as a sparring partner."

"A couple of fuckups," said
Corona
.

"Yes,"
said Fate, "judging by the fight, a couple of fuckups."

At
the last place they went Fate saw Omar Abdul and Merolino's other sparring
partner. They were drinking alone in a corner of the bar and he went over to
say hello. The fighter named Garcia barely nodded in recognition. Omar Abdul,
however, gave him a broad smile. Fate asked them how Merolino Fernandez was
doing.

"Fine, just fine," said Omar Abdul. "He's at the
ranch."

Before Fate said goodbye, Omar Abdul asked him why he hadn't left
yet.

"I
like this city," said Fate, to say something.

"Brother,
this city is a shithole," said Omar Abdul.

"Well, there are some beautiful women here," said Fate.

"The
women here aren't worth shit," said Omar Abdul.

"Then
you should go back to
California
,"
said Fate.

Omar
Abdul looked him in the eye and nodded several times.

"I
wish I was a goddamn reporter," he said, "you people don't miss a
thing."

Fate pulled out some money and beckoned to the bartender. Whatever
my friends are having, it's on me, he said. The bartender took the money and
looked at the fighters.

"Two
more mezcals," said Omar Abdul.

When
Fate went back to his table, Chucho Flores asked him whether the fighters were
his friends.

"They
aren't fighters," said Fate, "they're Merolino's sparring
partners."

Then, and this he did remember clearly, they ended up at
Charly Cruz's house. He remembered because of the videos. Specifically, the
video that was supposed to be by Robert Rodriguez. Charly Cruz's house was big,
as solid as a two-story bunker—that he also remembered clearly— and it cast its
shadow over a vacant lot. There was no yard, but there was a garage for four or
maybe five cars. At some point during the night, although this was much less
clear, a fourth man had joined the convoy. The fourth man didn't talk much but
he kept smiling for no reason and he seemed nice. He was dark-skinned and he
had a mustache. And he rode with Fate, in his car, sitting next to him, smiling
at every word Fate said. Every so often he looked behind them and every so
often he checked his watch. But he didn't say a single word.

"Can't
you talk?" Fate asked him in English after several attempts to start a
conversation. "Cat got your tongue? Motherfucker, why do you keep looking
at your watch?" And the man invariably smiled and nodded.

Charly
Cruz's car led the way, followed by Chucho Flores's car. Sometimes Fate could
see the shapes of Chucho and Rosa Amalfitano. Usually when they stopped at a
stoplight. Sometimes the two shapes were very close together, as if they were
kissing. Other times all he saw was the shape of the driver. At one point he
tried to pull up alongside Chucho Flores's car, but he couldn't.

"What
time is it?" he asked the man with the mustache, and the man shrugged his
shoulders.

In
Charly Cruz's garage there was a mural painted on one of the cement walls. The
mural was six feet tall and maybe ten feet long and showed the Virgin of
Guadalupe in the middle of a lush landscape of rivers and forests and gold
mines and silver mines and oil rigs and giant cornfields and wheat fields and
vast meadows where cattle grazed. The Virgin had her arms spread wide, as if
offering all of these riches in exchange for nothing. But despite being drunk,
Fate noticed right away there was something wrong about her face. One of the
Virgin's eyes was open and the other eye was closed.

The house had many rooms. Some were used just for storage
and were stacked full of videos and DVDs from Charly Cruz's video stores or his
private collection. The living room was on the first floor. Two armchairs and
two leather sofas and a wooden table and a TV. The armchairs were good but old.
The floor was yellow tile edged with black and it was dirty. Not even a couple
of multicolored Indian rugs could hide it. A full-length mirror hung on one
wall. On the other wall there was a poster for a Mexican movie from the 1950s,
framed and protected behind glass. Charly Cruz said it was the original poster
for a very rare film, of which almost all the copies had been lost. Bottles of
liquor were kept in a glass cabinet. Next to the living room was an apparently
unused room where there was a latest-generation music system and a cardboard
box full of CDs. Rosa Mendez knelt next to the box and began to dig through it.

"Women go crazy for music," Charly Cruz said into Fate's
ear, "I go crazy for movies."

The nearness of Charly Cruz startled Fate. Only then did he
realize that the room had no windows and it struck him as odd that anyone would
choose it for the living room, especially since the house was so big and there
had to be lots of rooms with more light. When the music started,
Corona
and Chucho Flores
each took a girl by the arm and left the living room. The man with the mustache
sat in an armchair and looked at his watch. Charly Cruz asked Fate whether he
was interested in seeing the Robert Rodriguez movie. Fate nodded. The man with
the mustache, because of the angle of his chair, couldn't see the movie without
craning his neck exaggeratedly, but he showed no curiosity at all. He just sat
there looking at them and every so often looking at the ceiling.

The
movie, according to Charlie Cruz, was half an hour long at most.

An old woman with a heavily made-up face looked into the camera.
After a while she began to whisper incomprehensible words and weep. She looked
like a whore who'd retired and, Fate thought at times, was facing death. Then a
thin, dark-skinned young woman with big breasts took off her clothes while
seated on a bed. Out of the darkness came three men who first whispered in her
ear and then fucked her. At first the woman resisted. She looked straight at
the camera and said something in Spanish that Fate didn't understand. Then she
faked an orgasm and started to scream. After that, the men, who until that moment
had been taking turns, joined in all together, the first penetrating her
vagina, the second her anus, and the third sticking his cock in her mouth. The
effect was of a perpetual-motion machine. The spectator could see that the
machine was going to explode at some point, but it was impossible to say what
the explosion would be like and when it would happen. And then the woman came
for real. An unforeseen orgasm that she was the last to expect. The woman's
movements, constrained by the weight of the three men, accelerated. Her eyes
were fixed on the camera, which in turn zoomed in on her face. Her eyes said
something, although they spoke in an unidentifiable language. For an instant,
everything about her seemed to shine, her breasts gleamed, her chin glistened,
half hidden by the shoulder of one of the men, her teeth took on a supernatural
whiteness. Then the flesh seemed to melt from her bones and drop to the floor
of the anonymous brothel or vanish into thin air, leaving just a skeleton, no
eyes, no lips, a death's-head laughing suddenly at everything. Then there was a
street in a big Mexican city at dusk, probably
Mexico City
, a street swept by rain, cars
parked along the curb, stores with their metal gates lowered, people walking
fast so as not to be soaked. A puddle of rainwater. Water washing clean a car
coated in a thick layer of dust. The lighted-up windows of government
buildings. A bus stop next to a small park. The branches of a sick tree
stretching vainly toward nothing. The face of the old whore, who smiles at the
camera now as if to say: did I do it right? did I look good? is everybody
happy? A redbrick staircase comes into view. A linoleum floor. The same rain,
but filmed from inside a room. A plastic table with nicked edges. Glasses and a
jar of Nescafe. A frying pan with the remains of scrambled eggs. A hallway. The
body of a half-dressed woman sprawled on the floor. A door. A room in complete
disarray. Two men sleeping in the same bed. A mirror. The camera zooms in on
the mirror. The tape ends.

"Where's
Rosa
?"
asked Fate when the movie ended.

"There's
a second tape," said Charly Cruz.

"Where's
Rosa
?"

"In some room," said Charly Cruz, "sucking Chucho's
dick."

Then he got up and went out of the room, and when he came back he
had the remaining tape in his hand. As he rewound the video, Fate said he had
to use the bathroom.

"End of the hall, fourth door," said Charly Cruz.
"But you don't want to use the bathroom, you want to look for Rosa, you
lying gringo."

Fate
laughed.

"Well, maybe Chucho needs some help," he said as if he
were asleep and drunk at the same time.

When he got up, the man with the mustache started. Charly Cruz
said something to him in Spanish and he settled comfortably back in the
armchair. Fate walked along the hallway, counting doors. When he got to the
third door he heard a noise from the floor above. He paused. The noise stopped.
The bathroom was big and looked like something straight out of a design
magazine. The walls and floor were white marble. At least four people could fit
into the bathtub, which was circular. Next to the bathtub was a big oak box in
the shape of a coffin. A coffin from which the head would protrude, and that
Fate would have said was a sauna, if the box weren't so narrow. The toilet was
black marble. Next to it was a bidet and next to the bidet was a marble
protuberance a foot and a half high whose purpose Fate was unable to discern.
By a stretch of the imagination, you might say it looked like a chair or a
saddle. But he couldn't imagine anyone sitting there, not in a normal position.
Maybe it was used to hold towels for the bidet. As he urinated, he gazed at the
wooden box and the marble sculpture. For an instant he thought both things were
alive. Behind him was a mirror that covered the whole wall and made the
bathroom seem bigger than it was. Looking to the left, Fate saw the wooden
coffin, and turning his head to the right, he saw the protuberant marble
fixture. At one point he looked behind him and saw his own back, standing in
front of the toilet, flanked by the coffin and the useless-seeming saddle. The
sense of unreality that dogged him that night was heightened.