Hey, Kenny, what’s up! he heard behind him, a moment before he felt the pat on the back. Clearly uncomfortable, Kenny returned the greeting with just a hello, as he got up from the bench where he was reading the paper; he didn’t remember the man’s name. You don’t remember me? Josep, man, it’s Josep! Ah, how could I forget, he said in a calm voice. 35 days, right? I said I’d be back, a little home visit, did you eat yet? Let me get you something—shit, some new shoes maybe? You’re all set up here, you’ve really got it made, I’m starting to understand you now (fucking immigration, he said under his breath). They ordered two mixed-grill platters—the waiters were surprised to see Kenny not dining alone. Good trip? he said curtly. Great, well, actually not so great—the Chinese never make it easy for you, do they?—but it’ll all shake out. Hey, remember I said I was gonna tell you a good one? A true story, the kind of thing someone might want to write down. Yes, said Kenny, I remember. So, shall I tell you? You’ll see, it’s true, it happened to me! Because the one I told you the other time, you didn’t swallow that, did you? I mean, it was half true, I did make the manhole cover for a place called Carson City, but I didn’t put any trees on it, I did shit, the story just occurred to me when I was on a highway near there—I was doing a little tourism, see, getting a few things for the wife and kids—and I saw a tree covered in shoes, and that was the clearest idea I had of what that country’s like, they don’t do anything by halves … But did you fall for it? No, said Kenny dryly, that part I didn’t believe. Smart cookie, okay, but this next one, this really is for real. I swear. If it wasn’t—do you really think I’d come here just to tell you lies? All the stories you must hear, you’re gonna have to go and write them down one day, right? Something to live off when you get old? Although, like I told you before, my parents are from Catalonia, born and bred, and me and my kids the same, my grandparents came from a town in León, the city with the manhole covers I mentioned before, Hong Kong’s secret twin town, okay, well at the end of the 1960s we moved there to live with my grandparents, the economy was bad and my grandparents never integrated in Barcelona, because of the language, and some other stuff that has nothing to do with anything, the point is, León was up in the mountains and out of the way no matter where you were coming from, after they rerouted the motorway in about 1955 and built a different one that passed nowhere near, although many of the houses were still occupied in those days and there were lots of children. One afternoon, I remember it well, one of those days when it’s so hot no one goes out in the street, a very striking car came into town, a black Dodge, and it parked up in the main square outside the town hall. Of course people were peeking through their window blinds, the kind you can’t tell they’re being peeked through from outside, and then a guy got out of the car, tall, thin, wearing a dark suit, dark just like this one I’m wearing, and he went straight into the town hall. They say he went in there shouting the mayor’s name. So he was from the government, or something, and his mission was to be there then, because a month later the great day was coming, a man was about to walk on the moon, and the town had been chosen as the location for some important tests which had to do with state security, tests that were never publicly revealed. So the mayor made everything available to the man, footed the bill, put him up in the Fondita Hostel, which was the only remaining hostel after, like I said, the road was moved in ‘55. And so the guy goes there, gets given the best room. I was 8 years old and, as you can imagine, we kids were totally intrigued by the arrival of this character, there was nothing for us there but the radio, going down to the river, and betting on when the Sugus sweets would come (we’d had word of them from an emigrant to Madrid who sent us cards telling us they melted in your mouth and tasted of tropical fruit), so anyway that was the end of blackbird-catching, swimming in the river, and listening to the radio, and no more dreaming about Sugus, either, because every ounce of our attention was focused on this dude. Luckily for us the son of Sabina, the woman who ran the hostel, kept us all informed, telling us the guy stayed in his room all day, like some kind of ascetic, that he took breakfast and lunch in his room, and that there were noises constantly coming from inside, machine noises, like the ones made by the big calculating machines you got in those days, and that he only came out at night, at dinnertime, when he went down to the restaurant—smartly dressed, suit and everything—he’d sit on his own, not saying a word to anyone, and he always ordered the same thing, a fried egg with chorizo, a carafe of wine, and then crème caramel for dessert, before heading straight back up to his room. And it went on like that, day after day. But we were so intrigued that one night we decided to make a human tower so that one of us could climb up to the window. So we drew lots, got on each other’s shoulders, and up went Little Seb—who, by the way, went on to become mayor years later—but he only managed to look in for a few seconds because our legs gave out, and the tower came tumbling down, but according to him there was a sack full of small, colored dice—picture it, our intrigue levels just went woof … Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase: the big day came and, since there wasn’t any TV in those days, a megaphone was hooked up to the radio and placed out in the main square, so the whole town could experience the first man on the moon communally. As for the outsider, he said that he didn’t require anything special for his studies, he had everything he needed. Picture it, all of us, the whole town there waiting, the guy on the radio giving it hell, and the government man who doesn’t join in, who someone has to go and tell it’s happening, and Little Seb gets sent, off he runs, but before he arrives at the hostel he trips and falls down in a heap. Then finally the man came out. He approached the square, he walked in this, you know, purposeful way, quite a picture, I can tell you, quite a picture, his impeccable suit, his gleaming shoes, but empty-handed, that’s right, empty-handed, and he comes and stands out in the middle, and a knot forms around him, and this hush settles, and he asks everyone not to come in too close, that he needs some kind of opening at least, and then he puts his hand in his pocket and, bringing out a lead box, or some kind of metal at least, he takes out a small ball, the size of a marble, made of dark glass, then he draws a circle on the ground in chalk, and then really, really carefully he places the ball down in the middle, and the commentator on the radio is still going for it, and a murmur goes around, and the mayor asks for quiet, picture it, crazy, and when the commentator says Armstrong is just about to set foot on the moon, the guy starts staring at the ball, I swear I’d never seen such piercing eyes, and the thought I had was that he must have eaten his dinner before coming because I thought I saw the red of the chorizo on his lips, I swear that was what I saw, and finally the commentator announces it, he’s down, Armstrong’s on the moon!, and the man lifts his gaze and looks up at the sky, he rolls his sleeves up, spreads his arms, and says, Phew, disaster averted! The ball didn’t so much as move, this is a very safe town you have here! And we children ran behind him, throwing stones at his car as he drove away with one arm out of the window, dropping Sugus in his wake, fistfuls of which he scooped from a sack, until his peals of laughter faded into the distance.