Luis pushed Gaspar into a chair and then sat down facing him across the table.

“You’re not going to piss me off, Gaspar. You’re not even going to get a rise out of me. You don’t know what I went through and what I didn’t, and your opinion about my decisions doesn’t matter to me. Not in the slightest. If you’re trying to get me to lay a hand on you, know this: I will never, ever hit you. You can call me a coward for hours if it floats your boat.”

Gaspar brought both hands to his head and suddenly, before Luis could stand up and move to stop him, pounded the table with his wounded hand, over and over, hard, and Luis stopped him when he was about to start hitting his head again. He embraced him from behind and asked him into his ear to calm down, the way he’d done when Gaspar was little. But it was harder to restrain him now that he was a man, the two of them the same height and Gaspar in extraordinary physical shape, with all the strength of a trained athlete.

“What do you want, son?”

“I want someone to beat the shit out of me,” said Gaspar, and although his voice came from a hardened throat, though his voice was thick, he wasn’t crying and he wasn’t going to cry. “To be beaten to death, that’s what I want. I killed a girl, I deserve it all. Marita left me, she’s with another guy, I’m a piece of shit.”

“You didn’t kill anyone. This again?”

Luis grunted and let go of Gaspar, who rested his hands on the table and stayed quiet.

“You brought her to the house. But to go from there to thinking you killed her. How many times with the same thing, Gaspar? Well, in this house you will not be punished for what you didn’t do. You can go get your ass kicked over some girl if that’s what you want. You’re not going to lack for girls. Are you really that mad? You really love her?”

Gaspar got up to get a bottle of water from the fridge and held it against his head. Then he poured two glasses. He was shaking. Luis asked him for wine. They drank in silence for a while.

“We all screw up, son. I cheated on Mónica, and you can’t imagine how much I loved her. You might just end up forgiving Marita.”

“If she didn’t want to be with me, she could have broken up with me a long time ago. Two-timing me is an asshole move.”

“Don’t be so hard on her. Life is different in practice.”