Then Angélica came in, glowing, and once again she and Pablo set up the screen. I spent a while thinking, as María painted: there was no longer the slightest doubt in my mind that Pancho had dragged me to the Fonts' house so that I could distract María while he and Angélica went about their business. It didn't seem very fair. Before, at the Chinese café, I'd asked him whether he considered himself a visceral realist. His reply was ambiguous and lengthy. He talked about the working class, drugs, Flores Magón, some key figures of the Mexican Revolution. Then he said that his poems would definitely appear in the magazine that Belano and Lima were putting out soon. And if they don't publish me, they can go fuck themselves, he said. I don't know why, but I get the feeling the only thing Pancho cares about is sleeping with Angélica.

"Are you all right, Angélica?" said María, when the moans of pain, exactly the same as yesterday's, began.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Can you go take a walk?"

"Of course," said María.

Once again we resignedly settled ourselves at the metal table under the climbing vine. For no apparent reason, my heart was broken. María started to tell me stories about their childhood, thoroughly boring stories that it was clear she was only telling to pass the time and that I pretended to find interesting. Elementary school, their first parties, high school, their shared love of poetry, dreams of traveling, of seeing other countries, Lee Harvey Oswald, in which they'd both been published, the Laura Damián prize that Angélica had won… Once she reached this point (I don't know why; possibly because she stopped talking for a minute), I asked who Laura Damián had been. It was pure intuition. María said:

"A poet who died young."

"I already know that. When she was twenty. But who was she? Why haven't I read anything by her?"

"Have you ever read Lautréamont, García Madero?" said María.