“You might be able to find something at the fisherman’s club grill, but let me call and ask, because it’s a hike to get there.”

A hike, thought Juan. Impossible—in this little town nothing could be very far. He took in the lobby walls with wood panelling halfway up, the laminated brown floor, the keys dangling from a board. Gaspar had gone over to a small tank and his finger was following a little swimming fish. No answer, said the woman, after letting it ring for a while. Okay, said Juan, guess we’ll just go to bed without eating. He smiled, and noticed that the woman—who was young, not yet forty, though she looked older in the sad light of that hushed hotel—was openly staring at him. I fell asleep, he explained. It’s a long drive from Buenos Aires, and I was already tired.

Outside, the silence was total. He saw the blue lights of a patrol car pass by but barely heard its engine. So, they patrolled even this tiny town?

“Excuse my indiscretion,” said the woman, coming out from behind the counter. She was fanning herself, though the ceiling fan was spinning. “Are you in room 201? My front desk clerk told me he thought the guest in 201 wasn’t feeling well. We were worried, but since we didn’t hear anything and you didn’t call, we didn’t want to disturb you.”

“How do you know he was talking about me?”

Somewhere between shy and flirtatious, the woman replied:

“The clerk described a very tall, very blond man with a child.”

“Thanks for your concern, ma’am. I’m feeling okay now, I just needed to rest. I had surgery six months ago, and sometimes I think I’m fully recovered and I end up overexerting myself.”

And deliberately, theatrically, Juan lightly rested a hand on the dark shirt he wore unbuttoned halfway down his chest, making sure she couldn’t miss his enormous scar.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll make you some sandwiches, at least. Does the little one eat pasta? We’ll just steam it with a little butter, nothing to it.”

“What’s pasta?” asked Gaspar, who had left the fish tank.

“Noodles, mitaí,” the woman told him, kneeling down. “You like them with butter and cheese?”

“Yeah. With sauce, too.”

“We’ll see what we can do for you.”

“Can I watch you cook?”

“He likes to cook,” said Juan, shrugging his shoulders in bemusement.

An hour later Gaspar had learned to use the can opener, they’d both eaten somewhat sticky pasta with a delicious sauce and had drunk some fresh ice water, and the woman had joined them with a glass of sweet wine and a few cigarettes. When they finished, Juan offered to wash the dishes so she could return to reception, and the woman agreed; I hope you get well soon, she told him before she left. Gaspar helped dry, first thanking the woman with his tomato sauce–stained lips; she gave him a kiss on the forehead in return.