Dr Elizondo grabbed the bunch of keys from her desk and said, ‘Let’s go get a coffee.’ At the next desk, Dr Valls, whose anthology of contemporary Spanish stories published by Anagrama I’d read, pretended to have no idea what was going on, behind the pile of books surrounding him. Maybe he had no idea what was going on. Although, however distracted or self-absorbed he was, it was unlikely he hadn’t heard the words I’d just said: I want to change adviser, I’d said, in a tone of voice that was unnecessarily assertive.
We walk out into the hallway, and Dr Elizondo stops in front of the machine that dispenses coffee. You wouldn’t rather go to the cafeteria, professor? I say. She presses the button for a cortado and gives me a half-second scornful glance, with the exact same amount of fury and disappointment in it as the looks I’ve been getting from Valentina ever since we arrived in Barcelona (with the same mixture, I mean). Dr Elizondo does at least still acknowledge my existence, unlike Valentina, who refers to me in the third person as if I wasn’t present and she’s talking to an imaginary friend (an imaginary girlfriend, to be precise, judging by the rhetoric and content of her comments). What annoys me most about Juan Pablo is that he wants to act like nothing happened, she says. I don’t know if a day will come when I’ll be able to forget all the terrible things Juan Pablo said to me, she says. And even – just last week, standing in front of one of the Alexander Calder mobiles at the Fundación Miró: Juan Pablo would have loved this, she said, as we watched the almost imperceptible movement of one of the little colored balls, as if I was dead.
I ask the machine for an espresso, wait for the little cup to finish receiving the liquid and go out into the November cold and walk toward the flower bed where Dr Elizondo is sitting, waiting for me. What’s the problem? she says. So like, there’s no problem, I say (the itching starts at the back of my neck and runs down my spine). Well then? she says, and so I get tangled up explaining things to her that she already knows I already knew when I asked her, by email, to be my adviser and would she do me the favor of signing the papers for my application for a scholarship. That she’s a specialist in Andean narrative. That my research project is mostly focused on Rio de la Plata, Cuba and Mexico. That she works with mythology. That she’s a Greimasian. That while I admire Greimas’s work very much, especially his concept of the semiotics of passions, it doesn’t seem the most suitable methodology for my research. That humor and semiotics don’t go together. I say everything scrambled together and without a break as if instead of talking I am scratching or as if it had been scientifically proved that verbal diarrhea cures itching (my whole body is prickling now). I close my mouth when I realize that I’m babbling: Comedy is an effect and semiotics are a cause, I’ve just said, but it’s the effect of a different cause, comedy and semiotics are parallel discourses that never meet, so like, not like semiotics and tragedy, or semiotics and mythology, which are perpendicular. Behind the glasses that lend a certain turtlishness to her appearance, like the wise tortoises of the Galapagos Islands to be precise, the look in Dr Elizondo’s eyes is so expressive that she doesn’t need to say a word for me to understand that what she’s thinking is that I’m a moron. Or a cretin. Or that my face is covered in rashes. I squeeze the little cup I’m holding between my right thumb and index finger. The coffee goes down, immediately portending gastritis. I don’t know why I’m doing it, I would tell her if I was telling the truth, if I could tell her the truth I’d say I was only obeying orders, that I’ve found myself caught in the net of a criminal organization that is compelling me, under pain of death, to change my adviser and the subject of my doctoral thesis. I don’t expect anyone to believe me.
Have you been to the doctor to get that dermatitis looked at? says Dr Elizondo. I tell her it’s an allergy, my father’s a dermatologist. It looks like a case of dermatitis nervosa, she says, and I suspect her concern for my health isn’t altogether disinterested (a diagnosis of nervous breakdown due to the change in country or stress of the doctorate would allow her to accept what I’m asking for without this wounding her amour propre). It’s a multifactorial allergy, I insist, I’ve had it since I was very little, I lie, stealing this possibility away from her, more worried – thanks to some narcissistic reflex – about protecting my own amour propre than hers. I ought to do a bit more work on my sense of self-preservation (I’m going to need it). Dr Elizondo puffs, annoyed. Who have you been thinking of to take my place? she says, with evident hurt, as if academics could be the singers of country songs too. Who? I repeat, momentarily deferring the revelation of the name that the lawyer spelled out to me in the last of our calls, which this time I made from a call shop in Sants. Write this down, said the lawyer. I haven’t got a pen, I said. Then ask for one, fuck’s sake, said the lawyer, get a move on. I opened the door of the booth and three people immediately rushed at me, thinking I’d finished, a woman in a veil, a guy who looked Bolivian or Peruvian and a sub-Saharan, as if it was the start of a joke: there’s a Muslim woman, a Black man and a Latino man in a call shop. I gestured that it was still being used and did anyone have a pen, a bolígrafo, I said, a boli, I said again, looking at the people who were standing in the line, until the Bolivian or Peruvian took a Bic out of some pocket in his paint-stained overalls and handed it to me. I went back into the booth, closed the door, scratched my neck and my stomach, took a little piece of paper out of my wallet and said: Ready, and the lawyer spelled out the name that Dr Elizondo is waiting for.
Fernando? says Dr Elizondo, referring to Dr Valls, at the next desk. So, like, no, I say. Well then? she says. I take another sip of gastritis. She sighs, exasperated. Dr Ripoll, I say finally. Though I actually say Ripol, because I still can’t pronounce the double-l at the end of the name the way the Catalans do it. Meritxell? she says, pronouncing the double-l at the end perfectly well, and she almost jumps to her feet, and when she realizes her reaction was exaggerated and that it could be misinterpreted, as if there were something personal between them, she says: Well, maybe you can explain to me what your project has to do with gender studies. I’m not going to lift a finger to process the change of adviser for your thesis, she adds. You do it yourself, and bring me the papers to sign when they’re ready. And she leaves at too speedy a pace for her tortoise-like wisdom, thereby saving me the shame of having to confess that I’m changing not only adviser but also research project, and that the topic of my thesis is now going to be misogynistic and homophobic humor in Latin American literature of the twentieth century. Immediately afterward, I start scratching all over my body as though the topic of my thesis has brought me out in hives.
The cell phone in my pants pocket is also shaking, to the rhythm of the itching, and it takes me a while to realize that’s where the vibration is coming from. Number unknown. Hello, I say, and an English voice says: One moment, please. Two or three seconds go by. How’d it go? says the lawyer. So, like, fine, I say. Any problem changing? he asks. No, I say, but I’ve got to go through the process. When do you have your class with Dr Ripoll? pronouncing the final double-l perfectly. There’s a seminar next week, I say. Fine, he says. Pay attention. Find out everything you can about Laia Carbonell. She’s a doctoral student working with Dr Ripoll, I’m sure she’ll be in the seminar. Laia Carbonell, he says again, spelling it out with the final double-l. Get close to her, I need you to make contact with her. You’re not going to screw this up, learn all the gender studies chitchat, you’re going to need it. From now on, no more jokes. Mess this up and you’re fucked. Get it?
The seminar attracts a handful of lost souls like me, though 90 percent are composed of a compact group of doctoral students who are working on research projects in the field headed up by Dr Ripoll, entitled ‘Textual Bodies and Bodily Texts’. Most are Catalan women, with the exception of a subgroup of four Colombian women, they all seem to have known one another for some time, they demonstrate that rigid complicity of those who went to progressive elementary schools, guerrilla warriors of the Waldorf method, or Montessori at the very least.
The Colombians do a presentation on the progress they’ve made in their project on the masculinization of the female body, showing a video in which they are disguised in dark suits, black ties, false moustaches and top hats, wandering down the Ramblas. The video lasts about ten minutes, during which time they do nothing but dodge tourists, talk in phony voices, smoke cigars, grab their genitals the way Javier Bardem does in the Golden Balls poster and complain about how people are laughing at them. Back in reality, meanwhile, maybe to hide the embarrassment at seeing themselves on the screen, the Colombians all start interrupting one another, chattering away confusedly about transvestism and transsexuality. When the projection comes to an end, Dr Ripoll asks them what the greatest challenge was that they faced in embodying the male. The Colombian women say the hardest part was not laughing. Or smiling. How so? asks Dr Ripoll, who I guess was imagining, as I was, that they were referring to how hard it was to take their performance seriously and not make a joke out of it. But that wasn’t it, one of the Colombians explains, it’s that since men don’t smile or laugh, the thing they found trickiest was not to smile or laugh. Men don’t laugh? asks Dr Ripoll. The Colombians all say no, in unison, and I laugh, I let a burst of laughter out and instantly everybody discovers that I exist, that I’m there, at the back of the class. Sorry, I say, that made me laugh.
Dr Ripoll asks me to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I talk briefly about my CV, about my research project on machista and homophobic humor, I tell them that I’ve already analyzed Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s stories in my undergrad thesis, and in one of these, for example, there’s a character who considers it the greatest humiliation possible that a doctor stuck his finger in his ass. I actually use the words ‘inserted’ and ‘anus’, which sound more academic. And I say it all in a sort of appalled tone, though the truth is I think it’s an awesome story. The Catalan women forgive me. The Colombians not so much. The professor says we’re going to take a ten-minute break while we wait for the guest lecturer from the University of Santiago de Compostela to arrive.
During the break I go to the gastritis vending machine, I stand in line behind the Catalans, alert to what I can hear of their conversations, which is almost nothing. The problem is, it looks like there are two or three Laias, apparently being called Laia in Barcelona is as common as being called Claudia in Mexico or Jennifer in Honduras. The break ends without my having made any progress, the Catalan classes I’m taking are a disaster, almost a month going twice a week and I still don’t understand a thing.
The Galician professor heads up a research group at Santiago de Compostela on the oppression and repression of phallic discourse. After a brief institutional speech celebrating the collaboration between his university and the Autónoma, he sets about showing us some slides in which we see him with his boyfriend, inserting monstrous latex penises in the most varied positions. Missionary. Doggy. Spoons. Advanced Cow. Beautiful, says one of the Catalans. Lovely, agrees one of the Colombians. In the gloom (the lights have been turned off to allow us to appreciate the photos better), I look at the faces of the research students illuminated by the dazzle of the screen. There are three or four of them who look more or less attractive, I think. One very much so. All of them watching hardcore homosexual porn together, spellbound. In normal conditions, as Valentina might have put it, Juan Pablo would have loved this.
Very interesting, says Dr Ripoll, when the lights come back on, following a huge close-up of the visiting professor’s anus. The phallus as subversion, she says, or the subversion of the phallus. The mise en abyme of the phallus. And then she declares the class over and tells us we’re expected back before the holidays, on December 10.
I dawdle, as my mother would say, in the classroom, until the Catalan girls have finished chatting to the visiting lecturer, probably asking him what cream he uses for his piles or something. When they finally leave, I follow them discreetly through the maze of corridors leading from the Philology classrooms to the train station. There are eight girls in total, two of them split off to go to the library, another heads for the cafeteria (the most attractive one), another says goodbye when they pass the computer room, and though there’s a chance that one of them’s Laia, the Laia I’m looking for, I go by probability and decide to stick with the four who are still together headed for the underpass that leads into the station, I hurry to reach the train platform at the same time as them, I stand next to them as if we were together and I look at them blatantly, making it very hard for them to ignore me. Hi, I say, when I realize that, despite everything, they’re really trying their utmost to do just that. Hi, they answer, somewhat reluctantly. I tell them I thought the Galician professor’s presentation was really interesting, really stimulating, I say, and then to counteract any misunderstanding that my enthusiasm might have provoked, or to prevent the four Catalan girls from thinking I’m talking utter crap, I say that the photographs reminded me of an article by Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler that interprets the history of sexuality through the history of materials and technology, the urbanism that led to red-light districts, the darkness of the public space before the invention of electricity, perfect for clandestine encounters, I say it’s impossible to understand fetishism or sadomasochism without considering the history of rubber production, the exploitation of the Amazonian Indians by English companies in the nineteenth century, and that we must always think about the political and social aspect of the erotic practices of post-modernity, because the Galician professor and his boyfriend’s being able to reach orgasm required the creation of a market in sexual prostheses that goes back to the enslavement of the Putumayo Indians, who were tortured and mistreated like criminals.
So, what, we’re supposed to feel guilty every time we come? asks one of the Catalan girls, when my hysterical verbal diarrhea finally subsides, the exact moment when a screen notifies us that it’s four minutes till the Barcelona train. Ha ha ha, I laugh, totally faking it, laughing at her bad joke, because she’s one of the kind-of-attractive Catalans, which improves her joke. I guess it’d be enough if you apologized for your colonialist attitude before putting on your panties, I say. What was your name again, Mexicano? she asks, laughing condescendingly, her upper canines are pushed slightly forward, or the four incisors slightly back. I’m Laia, she adds. I tell her my name and look at the other three, who say they’re called Ona, Ana, with two n’s, she says, Anna, and Laia, an ordinary Laia with milky skin who’s wearing a Levi’s denim jacket from prehistoric times. I look back and forth between the two Laias, waiting for one of them to offer the clarification that anybody might think appropriate (and to me was urgent, a matter of life and death), and finally the one with the pushed-back teeth says she’s Laia Carbonell, Carbonei, she says, or that’s what my pre-Catalan ears hear, and then she says the surname of the other Laia, another Catalan surname, but I don’t care about that.
Truth is, Mexicano, says Laia, skipping over the introductions, it’s also impossible to talk about fetishism without analyzing the history of misogyny, because even some of the ‘noble savages’ you defend were crazy fucking misogynists, and she starts illustrating her argument with a story about a Polynesian tribe. I take advantage of the three minutes left till the train comes, two minutes fifty-eight seconds, to compose a mental portrait of Laia, as if the lawyer’s orders were really prompts for an exercise in a writing workshop. She has golden hair, almost red, trimmed up to the back of her neck, her earlobes adorned with two tiny little pearls, her nose turned up and leaning slightly toward the right (chasing after the trace of some succulent aroma), her cheekbones and forehead are healthy, ruddy, with no trace of adolescent acne, no greasiness, her small thin lips slightly blue with the cold (she doesn’t use lipstick).
The train arrives and the three friends manage to get seats and Laia and I have to settle for leaning against one of the doors, at the exact moment Laia concludes her argument saying that ultimately totems were the first inflatable (she doesn’t say blow-up) toys. I say that as far as Mexico is concerned, the Aztecs and the Mayas were more disposed toward annihilation than to eroticism or reproduction, and that their conception of eroticism, if anything, was pretty grim, necrophiliac, and Laia Carbonell laughs as if I’d told a joke and the position of her teeth starts giving me a tingly feeling between my legs. Before we find ourselves with one of those silences installing itself between us as heavy as a backpack full of sand, I ask her if she knows the Pygmalion myth, she pouts which means obviously she does (she unbuttons her coat, revealing her slender shape – her two breasts, which aren’t big even when bulked up by the bra and blouse and sweater, must be smaller than plums), and then I up the level of sophistication and talk about Oskar Kokoschka, the painter, who when he came back from the First World War found that his lover had married another man, and instead of attempting to win her back, he did something simpler: he commissioned the production of a doll identical to her, and also, as if that wasn’t enough, both the painter’s ex-lover and his doll were called Alma, meaning soul, irony of ironies. Kokoschka would take his doll to the opera, to parties hosted in his honor, and after one crazy night the doll showed up decapitated in the garden of his house. Truth is, I say, as if it was a moral to the story, you can’t talk about the history of misogyny without considering mental illness. You’ve hit the nail on the head there, Mexicano, guys are all total wack jobs, all of you, says Laia, opening her mouth wider as she hoots with laughter, showing the whole arch of her teeth.
I take advantage of the fact that she seems to have softened up to carry out the usual questioning, where she was born, how old she is, etc. She says she’s from Barcelona. That she’s twenty-nine, nearly thirty. That she studied Catalan philology at the Autónoma. I ask if she’s always lived in Barcelona. She says she lived in Brussels for a year when she was finishing high school, because of her father’s work, and she did an Erasmus study-abroad program for six months in Berlin. Do you speak German? I say. No, she says. Well, I say, six months isn’t much to learn German if you’re not very smart. You’re such a cretin, she says, and goes back to laughing, and I go back to looking at her teeth. I didn’t go to learn German, she adds, I went to the Institute of Romance Languages at the Humboldt. The train goes through Peu del Funicular station and she says: Next one’s me, Mexicano. She gestures to her friends to stay sitting, they promise to call one another, and when she comes closer to give me a pair of goodbye kisses, not bothering to avoid contact with the rashes on my face, on which she hasn’t commented either, I say maybe we could meet up for a coffee, or a beer. Or to study German. Maybe, she says, laughing, and I see her teeth again. And then, when the carriage door opens, she says: But don’t get your hopes up, Mexicano, I like girls.
That evening I phone the lawyer from a call shop in El Poble Sec. I tell him the things I found out about Laia Carbonell. What else? says the lawyer. He doesn’t seem to be taking notes. When I tell him that’s all, that was all I’ve managed to discover so far, he says: Now you bang her, he says. What?! I say, and I press the speaker closer to my left ear as if suddenly all the waves and winds of the Atlantic Ocean had engineered some interference, and I even change the phone quickly to my right ear because I sense I’ll hear better with the right. I said you’re going to fuck her, says the lawyer, you’ve already forgotten the way we talk back home? and my right ear is apparently also unable to translate the message into anything remotely plausible (if he’d asked me to kill her, or to kidnap her, or to torture her, or to extort her, or to blackmail her, say, that would have more diegetic coherence, bearing in mind what had come before). Hello?! I shout, Yes?! Hello?! I say again, trying to buy a bit of time to see whether reality, which is so generally omnipresent, or realism, its common lieutenant, might finally make an appearance. You’re going to B-A-N-G her! says the lawyer again. To F-U-C-K her! he repeats, as though the criminal organization’s orders were a sublimation of the collective libido.
I smack the phone hard to cut off communications and race out of the booth and almost run right out into the street, but the Paraguayan at the cash register stops me with a hysterical yell: Where d’you think you’re going without paying, asshole?! And my middle-class prejudices (my values, as my mother would say) are stronger than my eagerness to flee, and so I stop to wait for the Paraguayan to print out my bill, it’s two euro eighty, while he tells me that a customer receiving a piece of terrible news and skipping off without paying is a con he’s seen many times, that he’s not such an idiot to believe it, that there was a Cuban woman in the neighborhood who would come out of the booth crying and shouting that her little children had died in Havana, or in Morón, she’d change the city depending on the call shop, and nobody dared to stop her when she left, until the word got around the neighborhood. Her reputation was her downfall, the Paraguayan is telling me, when the cell phone in my pants pocket starts to ring, number unknown, and I answer without thinking, just to get the Paraguayan off my back, as he wants to show me this Cuban woman’s photo (he has it printed out on a sign stuck up next to the cash register), and I hear the operator saying, in English, One moment, please, and then there’s the lawyer shouting: You do not ever hang up on me, asshole! You do not hang up on me! And I’m about to hang up when he adds: Your dad will be first, it’s a shame, given how much I kind of liked your dad, so decent, such a hard worker. The other day I went to his office for him to check out a mark on my arm. A good doctor, your dad, he wanted to send me to get my circulation checked out, he was real concerned, but the mark was only a bruise that some dickhead had given me when he escaped Chucky when he cut one of his ears off, fucking Chucky can’t tie proper knots, seriously, and the guy’s supposed to have been in the Boy Scouts. Dial me again right now, he says, and he hangs up. I need another booth, I tell the Paraguayan, the itching running from my little toe up to the top of my head. The Paraguayan tells me to find someplace else, that over his dead fucking body is he going to let me back into his call shop, that I’m an idiot if I think I’m going to be able to swindle him just by insisting. I’ll pay you up front, I say. Oh shit, says the Paraguayan, what’s up with you, man? Your face is all covered in rashes. It’s an allergy, I say, and I pull out my wallet and hand him a ten-euro bill. It’s a matter of life and death, I say, and the Paraguayan grabs hold of the bill and tells me not to imagine for a moment he’s going to swallow the con about being allergic, that when I’ve used up the ten euro he’s going to come into the booth and kick me out with his own two feet. Number three, says the Paraguayan, and I run over to booth three.
That’s what I like to see, says the lawyer when he answers. I’m going to the police, I say. Seriously? he says. Which one are you going to? If you go to the municipal police, ask for Gimeno, he’s in charge in Barcelona. Tell him I’m sending him a hug. If you go to the Mossos d’Esquadra, that’s the Catalan police, say hi from me to Captain Riquer. I say nothing: instead of answering, I scratch (my arm, my neck, my stomach, my lower back). And might I know what you’re planning to tell them? the lawyer continues. That you’re being blackmailed to fuck a girl who is also undoubtedly very rich? The Chinaman sent me some photos. Nice-looking, this Laia. Kind of skinny, the way I like them. Get her teeth fixed she’d be a stunner. I’m going to tell them, I say, that you people killed my cousin, that I witnessed it all. Your cousin got run over by a city truck, don’t be an asshole, he says, if you want I can send you a copy of the death certificate. Your uncle and aunt made such a fuss they even put the driver in prison, hadn’t you heard? Stop with saying these assholeish things, or jerkish things if you prefer, I think your dad would like to go on living, he strikes me as the kind of guy who’s very attached to his life. Laia’s a lesbian, I say, in case this small detail had escaped him, though my repeating it now marks the beginning of my capitulation. We knew that already, asshole, says the lawyer. What you’re going to do is a threesome, that’s why we needed Valentina. Now’s when we’re going to use Valentina. What?! I say, stunned, not so much at his explanation as at its effect: an unexpected erection. In reality, the lawyer continues, what we need is to get into Laia’s inner circle, and the quickest and simplest way is through sex. And wouldn’t it be easier for me to befriend her? To gain her trust? I say, unconvinced, but still stunned, all the more so at the recollection of Laia’s teeth, the four upper incisors pushed slightly back, at the fantasy of sucking on them, the anthill between my legs competing with the generalized itching, the promise of a threesome and a death threat, Eros and Thanatos, I’m sure you could explain it with Bataille, I don’t expect anyone to believe me. It’s so obvious you have no fucking clue where you’ve gone to live, says the lawyer. It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for you to befriend a Catalan. Pay attention, jot down the phone number I’m going to give you. You just call this asshole for me, you’re calling for the lawyer, you tell him, he’ll give you what you need to set up the orgy, don’t think I’m such an asshole that I’d rely on your gifts as a Don Juan. You brought a pen this time, asshole? Write this down.
The guy was wearing sweats and a green military jacket with a hood. He was walking around in circles, nervously, hands in his pockets, at the entrance to Artigues station. By his appearance and attitude you’d have thought he was a common delinquent, someone who doesn’t even bother to hide it, or who is just very bad at hiding it. I approached him, hesitantly. You’re from the lawyer, babe, he says, stepping forward. You’re Babe? I say. You’re late, babe, he says. I made a mistake changing lines at Sagrada Familia, I say. We’re going to that bar, he says, not taking his hands out of his pockets, gesturing toward the corner with his chin.
At the bar there’s a Chinese guy serving. There are two slot machines, both occupied by Chinese guys. Six or seven tables with local people reading the paper, chatting noisily, watching the TV that’s up on the back wall. We sit at a table next to the counter. I’ll have a beer, just a half, Babe shouts to the Chinese guy. I’d estimate he’s between twenty-five and thirty. His skin is pockmarked. Brown hair, I’d guess, to judge by the locks sticking out from under the hood which he doesn’t take off even inside the bar. Eyes that are blue like mine. I ask for my usual dose of gastritis. Under the table, Babe touches my knee. I jerk back. Your hand, babe, Babe says nice and quiet, your hand under the table. I obey. I receive a little plastic bag which I hide in my jacket pocket without looking at it. Now he sits back, relaxed.
Which bit of Mexico you from, babe? says Babe, after taking his first sip of the beer. Like, from the capital, I lie. Oof, says Babe, that’s got to be rough, babe, all those people squashed together, the mile-long traffic jams, and on top of all that it shakes, babe, one day you wake up in your undies and the whole fucking city’s been destroyed. You did well to come here, babe, he says. What are those rashes on your face? It’s an allergy, I say. See, babe? he says. I bet it’s from the pollution, hey, do you know the joke about the Jewish leper? Are you Jewish? I ask, uncomfortable, looking around to see if anyone is listening to us. What are you saying, babe? says Babe, in Catalan now. Babe’s from Badalona, babe, what made you think I’m Jewish? I don’t know, I say. I guess I wouldn’t tell a Jewish joke if I wasn’t Jewish. Shit, babe, says Babe, so I can’t tell a joke about Blacks or fags or Mexican immigrants? It’s only a joke, babe. If I tell you a Jewish joke doesn’t mean I’m a Nazi, babe. I wouldn’t be sure, I say, you know the old saying: A man is known by the company he keeps. Or a man is known by the company he laughs with. Christ Almighty, babe, says Babe, I don’t have any Nazi pals, I have a lot of nutty pals but no Nazi ones. It’s an assumption, I say, imagine who’d laugh at your joke and I’m sure you’d come up with a Nazi, doesn’t matter if he actually exists, it’s an imaginary Nazi who’d be laughing at your joke. If you’ve got imaginary Nazis for your pals they lock you up in Sant Boi, babe, says Babe, ha ha ha. Fuck, babe, the things you Mexicans get worked up about, if you don’t want me to tell you the joke I won’t. The noise of a cascade of coins interrupts what he’s saying. Man, those Chinese are motherfuckers on the slots, says Babe, looking at the Chinese guy who’s collecting up the coins. Go into any bar in Barcelona and you’ll see them, playing on the slots. You know what one pal told me, babe? That that’s how the Chinese are funded, babe, with the cash they get from the slots, that’s how they buy up the neighborhood stores, the bars, have you noticed? There are Chinese shops everywhere these days, it’s a plan for global domination, babe, all of it with the cash from the slots, he says. He finishes his beer in one swig and makes as if to stand up. You pay for the drink, babe, the pills are paid for already. Then he moves closer to whisper to me, glancing one way and then the other, paranoid-looking: Those pills are the best of the best, he says, there’s nothing purer, best aspirins in Barcelona. People kill for them. And you get given them for free. Who are you, babe? Are you Luis Miguel’s dealer? Paulina Rubio’s?