“Did you bring the shit?” Bebo asked, pulling him by the sleeve to show him a laptop playing animations he’d add behind Samanta in postproduction, a series of concentric circles in different colors that Argenis, nodding, judged as better suited to a screen saver than a music video. Bebo called time on the shoot and the team dispersed onto a little open terrace, led by Samanta, who’d covered herself with a very fluffy wine-colored terrycloth robe. Bebo might be a fag, but he was surely doing it with la china, Argenis thought. They walked to Bebo’s bedroom and locked the door. Argenis pulled a strip of Temgesic vials from his pocket as Bebo tore open the packaging of the disposable syringe with his teeth. Lying on his side on the bed, he offered it to Argenis, who stuck it into the ampoule, then felt for Bebo’s vein under his athletic socks. They touched each other with the familiarity of addiction, a familiarity Argenis shared with no other man. Bebo had recently cleaned himself up in a private clinic in Santo Domingo, but both of them would have found it suspect or offensive if the other hadn’t asked if in Cuba there was any “H”, which is what they’d called heroin whenever they shot up listening to Lou Reed in Bebo’s parents’ music room.

To get Bengoa to open the door, he’d had to show the fifty-dollar bill Bebo had given him for the errand through the window. Bengoa sold him thirty-five dollars’ worth of Temgesic, Argenis had given him an extra five as an incentive, and he’d kept the remaining ten. That five-dollar tip he’d given the doctor had made Argenis feel quite comfortable, so much so that he asked, in a voice too nasal to be natural, if Bengoa was still nailing Susana. “You’re such an idiot,” Bengoa said, counting out the vials. “She only did it for you, so that I’d bring you food and medicine.” The revelation had hit him like a ton of bricks. He was still trying to get it out of his body when Bebo, ready as ever, closed his eyes so that Argenis could inject him in the orange afternoon light by which they always did these things.

Under the effects of the synthetic morphine, Bebo was even more beautiful. His muscles, toned by sports like the tennis and swimming he’d practiced in his parents’ backyard, were covered in a soft, smooth, golden fuzz. Whenever they were open, the fleshy mouth and gypsy eyes stood out from his face. Bebo also had a telephone, one of those devices that in Santo Domingo you’d only find in the Little Haiti flea market behind the Mercado Modelo, and from which no international calls could be made.

He was tempted to take a vial himself. A burst of pleasure traveled down his spine just thinking about it. He glanced at the ones that were still lying on top of a Cuban edition of Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares on the nightstand. Injecting Bebo without injecting himself was the proof that he was healthy, that this time he was clean for real. He had displaced the desire and that desire had been transferred to his friend’s body so that Argenis could keep feeding it there, like a father responsible for his ex-wife and children. He had a thousand reasons to start shooting up again but an even more powerful one for not doing it: his Aunt Niurka, who was expecting his call. His Aunt Niurka, who had promised to help him. The memory of his Aunt Niurka playing “I Spy” with him on the way to Boca Chica in the minivan she’d rent whenever she visited the DR with her Spanish friends who smoked like chimneys.