Susana served her overly sweet Cuban coffee on the balcony in old porcelain cups, along with some toast Argenis smeared with the Maggi mayonnaise his mother had bestowed upon his luggage. They spoke of his parents, his brother Ernesto, his studies at the School of Fine Arts. She listened with interest, not saying anything until – since Bengoa had told him she’d studied art history – Argenis asked who her favorite artist was. “Of all time?” she asked nervously, as if her response could save her life, and then said “Goya” without moving her eyes from the toast she was eating, and without him moving his from her orange-flecked lips, from the clavicles split by the narrow straps of her top, from the feet whose shoes had been left by the front door. That day, he helped her make the bed and wash the dishes, and when it was time for lunch he delved into his suitcase to share a can of beans with her, opening it as if it were a bottle of champagne. When it was time for her to leave, a time that coincided with that of his injection, Susana pulled a little book from her wrinkly fake leather purse and put it in his hand. “It’s a gift for you, Argenis.” It was a guide to the collection of the Hermitage Museum, in Russian and with a very dilapidated cover. She left before he could thank her, and as he listened to her footsteps going down the stairs, his heart crumpled in his chest like a rejected sketch in the hand of its draftsman.

Sitting on his bed preparing the syringe, he watched through the window as a woman in the next building hung up clothing in her bedroom. Pink pants, a blouse, athletic socks. Things acquired a distinct thickness in the few seconds preceding the injection. The intense anticipation melted down material objects and their subatomic reality became evident: the orange blouse and the woman’s hand were made of the same stuff – uncertain particles, the ideas of things. He thought of all the trouble monks went to, in order to feel something similar. In the stupor of the first few hours of his high, he paged through Susana’s booklet as if a secret message was hiding in those pages, a message he’d have to decipher. After plenty of speculation he closed the gift, noticed the dirt under his fingernails and went to the bathroom to clean them with a toothbrush and a drop of shampoo. When they were done he shaved the beard he hadn’t trimmed since getting to Chinatown, and then did the same with the hair on his head. He was wearing it in a short Afro that he first had to trim down with a little pair of scissors his mother had put into a transparent plastic bag, along with other toiletries. Then he shaved his head completely, nicking himself a few times. As he went over the back of his neck with the green plastic Bic razor, he felt something like the pleasure his mother must have felt, imagining him regularly using those implements. He washed off the specks of blood and doused his head and face in Old Spice aftershave, his father’s favorite.