GETTING A LETTER, a real letter, not an advertisement in disguise or a bill or a bank statement, is one of the best and nicest things that can happen to anybody. When Mr. Valdez was only a little boy, a faraway uncle sent him a letter, and in the envelope there was a red cardboard box, printed with the image of a cat, and inside the box there was a piece of soap shaped like a cat and the soap grew fur when it was used. It was wonderful and miraculous for a few days and then it ceased to look like a cat and became instead merely strange, like something festering, something forgotten at the bottom of the fruit bowl.

And then, when he was much older, there were letters from publishers—rejections first of all, but even they had a certain bitter tang, like a good cocktail, and he learned to savor it. Rejections were part of the learning process, in the tango hall, in the bedroom and in literature. He harbored no grudges.

But before long, letters started to arrive from magazine editors who agreed to publish his stories and then from publishers who begged to publish them, letters from critics, letters from fans. He enjoyed them all but the ones he liked best were the ones that came from people who had once turned him down. He lay in his bed at night, holding them up to the lamp, sliding one sheet of paper over the other so the edges lined up, so the letterheads and the typed addresses matched exactly, so they were precisely the same apart from where one said “No” and the other said “Please.” He remembered the deliciousness of it, long after he learned to take it for granted. There was no gambler’s thrill any more for L.H. Valdez, no excitement and anticipation over the unknown outcome. He wrote a story, he sent a story, the story was published. That was how it was or, at any rate, that was how it had been. That was how it had been when he was still writing stories. That was how it was.

All the same, when Mr. Valdez went to the wall of named and numbered metal boxes where he and his neighbors received their mail and he found that huge white envelope with those two words “The Salon” printed along the top left edge in ink so thick that it stood out under his thumb, he felt a thrill of delight and a little fatherly pride.

He knew what was in the envelope: a modest little check, a kindly effusive letter from the editor Correa and a couple of copies of the magazine with Caterina’s story tucked in somewhere near the back, between a dull interview with a first-time novelist and the start of the paperback reviews. And it made him happy that he was able to do that for her, that he had that much influence. It made him happy because he knew she would be happy. It made him happy because he remembered how proud and delighted he had been the day he first saw his work in print and now he had made that happen for her, he had opened a door for her, which was nice because the next time it would be easier. Next time she could say: “And I have been published in The Salon,” and she would be taken seriously. Mr. Valdez was glad that he had given her career a little push. He had set her on the road to being a writer although, obviously, she would have to set all that aside for motherhood, but only for a few years, perhaps ten, maybe fifteen depending on when the babies came and how many they were, and he was delighted to do it. Best of all, he was glad that she had not done it alone and part of her success, whatever it was, would always be his. She would be in his debt. She would be grateful. She would have to be grateful.

Mr. Valdez was so excited when he saw the letter that he almost tore it open right there in the lobby. But he didn’t. He gathered it up with his other letters, with that day’s copy of The Nation and with all the other brown rubbish that lay in the brass box, and he rode up in the lift, planning how he would take his ironing board from the kitchen cupboard and smooth out the cruel folds in the magazine, make it new again before he presented it to her.

And, inside his flat, that was exactly what he did. He went into his kitchen and, standing over the table, he sliced the envelope open with a cheese knife—because it was the first that came to hand—and he pulled out those two copies of The Salon.

Mr. Valdez was not a nice man. He was not simpático. There was nobody in the whole of the city who would have gone to the wall for him. But his worst enemy—and there were several who would gladly have claimed that title—would surely have felt for him in that moment.

The back page of the magazine was ordinary enough, just a full-page color ad for American Express, but when he turned it over in his hand, Mr. Valdez could make no sense of it. He stood staring at the front page, not understanding it, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. The words were there, he could see them, they were going into his eyes, but it was as if they were jammed there without penetrating his brain. There, under the usual headline, exactly as Juan Ignacio Correa had imagined, was the single word “VALDEZ!” embellished with an extravagant exclamation mark which Miss Cantaluppi had confected at the last moment.

It made no sense. He could not understand. And then he understood. He flicked through page after page of glossy advertisements, searching for the index, as his panic rose, pretending to himself that this could not possibly be true. But it was true. It was written all over Correa’s gushing editorial, announcing to the world the birth of a new short story by L.H. Valdez. And there was more, over twenty pages of critique and assessment, expert opinion from somebody he had never heard of, explaining “his” story and what it meant and its themes, its “mythic tropes, memes and dream symbols,” and setting out exactly where it fitted in the canon of L.H. Valdez stories, from his first, green efforts to this mature, accomplished masterpiece, the crowning achievement of a master storyteller.

Mr. Valdez dropped the magazines on the table with an enraged roar and tore the big white envelope open, hunting for something else, some explanation for this lunacy. He found it. A letter from Correa—oh how Marta Alicia Cantaluppi had thrilled to type it, carrying the final draft to the editor’s desk before her like a monstrance in the saint’s day procession—and he had addressed it in his own hand.

It said: “My dear Valdez, I can never thank you enough for choosing The Salon to publish your latest story.”

“But I didn’t, you fool. I didn’t!”

“The whole world of literature has been holding its breath and waiting for a word from you, waiting and wondering as the weeks turned to months and the months to years …”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

“… with no word from our foremost writer and, now, the waiting has ended in this triumph. With ‘The Pedlar Miguel Ángel’ you have truly opened a new ‘chapter’ …”

“Jesus!”

“… in the history of the national literature and …”

There was another page and a half of that unctuous drivel until it ended with:

“You asked to be recompensed for your work at our usual rates. I need hardly explain that such a thing is simply unthinkable. There can be no usual reward for such exceptional writing and no reward, however exceptional, can ever be adequate. Therefore, I trust you will accept the enclosed check, not as payment for something which it is beyond my power to purchase but in recognition of an art which belongs already to the whole world.”

Correa’s huge signature took up the whole of the bottom half of the page in a swirl of violet ink, and stapled to the back there was a stiff, yellow cashier’s check which offered to pay to the account of Mr. L.H. Valdez the sum of 250,000 coronas.

Mr. Valdez tugged it free and held it up to the window. “Well,” he said. “That should soften the blow.”