After recovering the memory of this event Argenis hated Vantroi’s old shoes even more, but he didn’t have the energy to maintain his hatred of them for even a minute, much less to get to the actual wardrobe. He was still in the bedroom of an apartment painted in watered-down pink. On the wall was another poster, one on which Castro stood gesticulating on a podium, over the phrase “Patria o Muerte, venceremos!” Eighties sneakers had aged better than these slogans, thought Argenis, hearing the soles of Vantroi’s marking the beat of a song. It seemed that Vantroi was still rehearsing, producing that rhythmic scuffing. The sound became more defined and Argenis could now hear it throughout his apartment. But Susana would never allow Vantroi to practice in the living room. He stretched his leg out, full of tracks where he’d occasionally injected himself to give his arm a rest, and he stuck his big toe into the crack to open the door. At the end of the hall in the living room, Bengoa was fucking Susana on the rattan sofa. He was sticking his sausage-colored penis in from behind, holding her by the waist, both of them facing Argenis’s room and lying on their sides on cushions patterned with tropical flowers. The doctor’s khaki-colored balls were hanging to one side and, still wearing his glasses, he was sticking out a long, red tongue which he used to touch the little round pink one Susana offered him.

Motherfuckers, Argenis yelled with a strength he didn’t have. When she realized that she’d been caught, Susana struggled to free herself, but the doctor held her firm and increased the speed of his hip thrusts until he pulled out his already-shrinking penis and came, his cum thick as a strand of fresh pasta. Argenis tried to get up out of bed as Susana fought with Bengoa, but like the little stars that go around Donald Duck’s head when they whack him, the Reebok Classics, Bengoa’s feet, and his father’s tailor’s gold tooth were whirling around his brain. His rage filled him with a strange vigor. He went out to the living room, dizzy but decisive. Bengoa was buttoning his pants with a little smile as vulgar as his hairy chest and Susana was crying in the kitchen, her clothes on all wrong. Argenis seized Dr. Bengoa’s neck, but Bengoa was bigger and he wasn’t sick. He extricated himself from the improvised noose with one hand, and foiled Susana’s attempt to help Argenis by throwing them both to the ground. He punched his patient’s ear, grabbed him by the T-shirt, opened the front door, and threw him out.

With the sun hidden, the stairway was in shadow. A modest erection foretold the end of the abstinence syndrome. As Argenis lay there on his side on the freezing cold floor, his ears buzzing, he remembered the tailor with his measuring tape, coming over to him with an anise candy in his hand to say, “One day, when you’re big, I’ll make you a suit.” He touched the modest erection under his pants, put his hand inside and grabbed the little car. It was the car Santa had brought him that one Christmas, the little red “Made in China” car that his father, new plastic-wrapped suit over his shoulder, had made him choose from a display case full of old, dusty wholesale toys on Mella Avenue.