The whole previous week they had watched on TV as the Carapintadas took over the Campo de Mayo military base. An attempted coup d’état, but this time the people had taken to the streets to defend the democratic government. Luis wanted to go to the demonstration, but he decided to stay with Gaspar instead. Negro Sánchez and Julieta did go into Buenos Aires, and they stayed in the plaza until Alfonsín came out onto the balcony and said, “Happy Easter,” the greeting that put an end to the attack on the base. Gaspar had said to him: “With me being crazy and all, we didn’t even notice the country was going to hell.” Instead of worrying him, the joke had given Luis hope. When Carlos Menem won the election in the midst of a disaster that scarcely resounded in the house in Villa Elisa, there were fireworks at a Peronist meeting house a block away, and Luis took Gaspar. He ran into an acquaintance who started raving about the new president; Gaspar sipped a Coca-Cola and wandered out of Luis’s view. When he came back, he was eating a sausage.

“You’re hungry! It’s a Peronist miracle!”

“It’s delicious,” Gaspar said with his mouth full. That night he ate a sausage and a half, more than he’d eaten all week. Two months after that, Luis noticed that the flashbacks, those terrifying blackouts, were no longer as relentlessly frequent. By the end of the year, they were happening so sporadically that even Gaspar dared to say out loud, over breakfast: Now I’m scared I’ll have an episode, because I’m having them a lot less, right? That’s what he called them, “episodes,” surely a term taken from therapy. Luis started to invite people over, friends of his, friends of Julieta’s. They stayed up late talking about politics, drinking beer, and smoking. Gaspar was suspicious at first—Who are these people you’re inviting? he’d ask. Eventually, he accepted it. And once he gained confidence, he stayed up with them, eating pizza and asking curious questions. By the end of the year Gaspar was eating almost normally, so much so that he even requested different pizza toppings and wanted to make sure Julieta would be there to keep the sauces from burning, and enough with the zucchini torte, it’s gross. He also agreed to go to the neurologist. When Luis watched the news or political programs and shouted at the TV, Gaspar would tell him, “Uncle Luis, don’t act crazy, they can’t hear you,” and the two of them would laugh. He wanted to sign up at the club to swim and run; only then did Gaspar tell Luis that he was bad at soccer. Luis wouldn’t believe it until they played a pickup game and ended up rolling with laughter on the ground, clutching their bellies, because they were both equally clumsy.

“So what team do you root for? And show some respect, jackass, don’t laugh at me like that.”