“Mario, don’t fuck around. In this heat, with your shit-awful face

… and it’s only a couple of minutes to Candito’s place… A few beers. Come on, let’s off.”

“I can’t, you bastard. Fucking remember I’m a policeman…” his weak-willed arms feebly hoisting flags proclaiming SOS… “Don’t keep on, Skinny.”

But Skinny did. “I’m damned desperate to go and I thought you’d jump at the chance. You know I never get out, I’m more bored than a toad under a rock… A few cold beers. Just for my birthday, right? And you’re practically not a policeman any more…”

“But what kind of bastard have you turned into, Skinny? Your birthday’s not until next week.”

“All right. All right. If you don’t want to, we won’t…”

The Count brought the wheelchair to a halt outside the entrance to the building. He wiped the sweat away again, as he looked at a passageway lined with doors on both sides. His arms hung heavy after the effort of pushing his friend’s two hundred and fifty pounds more than ten blocks, and the two hills he’d gone up and down. A light flickered in the dark at the end of the passage and the glare from television screens and voices of the characters in the latest soap emerged from every open door in the place. “Tell me, Mama, who’s to blame for everything that’s happened? Please tell me, Mama,” asked someone who’d surely suffered terrible things in that life in daily episodes that craved to be the real thing. Then he put his handkerchief away and walked towards Candito’s door, the only one still shut. As he pushed the wheelchair he tried to hide his face between his arms: I’m still a policeman, he thought, as the temptation from those clandestine beers drew nearer, with the cool, delectable oblivion their consumption would deliver.

He knocked and the door opened as if they were expected. Cuqui, the mulatta who now lived with Candito, had only to stretch out her arm to turn the door handle. Like all those living in the block, she too was watching the soap, and her face seemed to reveal the astonishment of the character finally discovering the whole truth. “I’m to blame,” the Count thought of saying, but he restrained himself.