Somebody's voice was raised. A man's. Then someone shouted. A woman. Brígida. I was sure the owner of the bar was hitting her and I wanted to come to her defense, although the truth is I didn't care all that much about Brígida (I didn't care about her at all, really). Just as I was turning back toward the door, the strangers' hands grabbed me. Then I saw their faces emerge from the smoke. It was Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano.

I sighed with relief, I almost burst into applause; I told them that I had been looking for them for days. Then I made another attempt to come to the aid of the shouting woman, but they wouldn't let me.

"Don't make trouble for yourself, those two are always at it," said Belano.

"Who?"

"The waitress and her boss."

"But he's hitting her," I said. The slaps were clearly audible now. "We can't just let him hit her."

"Ah, García Madero, what a poet," said Ulises Lima.

"You're right, we couldn't let him hit her," said Belano, "but things aren't always the way they sound. Trust me."

Clearly they knew all about the Encrucijada, and I would have liked to ask them some questions, but I didn't want to seem indiscreet.

When I came out of the toilets, the light of the bar hurt my eyes. Everybody was talking at the top of their lungs. Some people were singing along to the blind man's song, a bolero, or what sounded to me like a bolero, about a desperate love, a love that time could never heal, although with the passage of the years it became more humiliating, more pathetic, more terrible. Lima and Belano were carrying three books apiece, and they looked like students, like me. Before we left, we went up to the bar, shoulder to shoulder, and ordered three tequilas which we downed in a single gulp, and then we went out into the street, laughing. As we left the Encrucijada, I looked back for the last time in the vain hope of seeing Brígida appear in the doorway to the storage room, but she wasn't there.