Abreu came back with ice-cold beer and two glasses. Céspedes searched for his lighter with an open hand on his shirt pocket. Argenis noticed the clean nails that someone had apparently cut for him. The painter lit the cigarette and the nicotine took two or three years off him. Argenis couldn’t stop looking at the two paintings with their floating cathedrals, the solidity of those animals, trains, and shoes that the clouds drew in the sky and which lasted as long as the air took to unmake them. Céspedes’s paintings, although figurative, had always had a light consistency: he translated the excessive impact of the tropical light on the city into white areas, spaces with no paint. There, where the sun hit the hardest, was where the void was found. Santo Domingo, his favorite subject, was a luminous, crystalline place in his paintings. Maybe he’s always been blind, thought Argenis. As the old man coughed into a handkerchief, he recalled an atypical green series, in which Céspedes had depicted himself talking with internationally known painters like José Luis Cuevas, Wifredo Lam, Warhol. And there was a pink series in which he painted himself with diva songstresses, but especially Cher – Céspedes was obsessed with Cher. He couldn’t stop coughing, and Argenis asked for some water for his friend. When Abreu brought the water, Céspedes stood up, still coughing, and accidentally knocked it to the ground by accident. He made a move to help pick it up and Argenis could see the disgusting contents of the handkerchief.

The cough forced the old man to sit down again, and Argenis got up to pay their check. At the cash register, Abreu asked him to walk the painter home. He did it every day, but it wasn’t yet closing time.

“Did you really sell the paintings?” Argenis asked.

“No, mijo, they’ve been there for weeks,” the waiter confessed. Argenis went back to the table, gathered up the maestro’s little cathedrals, and put them into the green suitcase, then helped him to his feet with the funny “upa, upa” sounds one makes to a baby. They started on their way to the old man’s studio, an enormous one on El Conde Street that Argenis had always envied.

The stores were beginning to shut their noisy metal doors, and the street filled with employees in uniforms of different colors. The rain had stopped and a pleasant breeze was blowing. Céspedes walked in silence, dragging his worn Florsheims; Argenis didn’t want to break the silence with banalities. He knew the way, populated as always with male prostitutes in tight jeans looking for business with Europeans; Goth chicks with piercings all over; and boiled corn on the cob vendors who were pedaling their way back to Los Mina.