“Theirs is still the best version of Proud Mary.”

“That’s not even up for discussion.”

“He sings like a black, or rather sings as if he were fucking God.”

“Fucking right.” And were surprised as they looked each other in the eye: both felt simultaneously the painful inevitability of the morbid replay they were engaged in. They’d repeated that same dialogue, the same words, on other occasions, often, over twenty years of friendship, and always in Skinny’s room, and its periodical resurrection brought back the feeling they were entering an enchanted realm of perpetual, cyclical time, where it was possible to imagine all was pristine and eternal. But so many visible signs, so much skulking behind shame, fear, rancour and even affection, gave notice that only the remastered voice of Tom Foggerty and the Credence guitars had any permanence. The baldness threatening the Count and not-so-skinny Skinny’s sick flab, Mario’s inveterate sadness and Carlos’s intractable illness were all too conclusive proof, among a thousand others, of a wretched decline entirely in the ascendant.

“It’s some time since you saw Red Candito?” Skinny asked when the song came to an end.

“No kidding.”

“He was here the other afternoon and told me he’d given up his line in shoe-making.”

“What’s he into now?”

Skinny looked at the cassette player, as if suddenly something about the machine or song had distracted him.

“What’s up, you sly bastard?”

“Nothing’s up… He’s got a piloto and he’s selling beer…”

The Count nodded and smiled. He could smell his friend’s intentions from several miles.

“And he asked me why we didn’t go and pay him a visit one of these days…”

The Count nodded and smiled again.

“You know I can’t go to that kind of place, Skinny. It’s illegal and if something happens…”