“I was pretty, if you can believe it, as pretty as you, or prettier. And now I'm a hag taking care of a brothel, and glad to have the work. Now I'm reduced to accepting the tolerance and supposed affection of something like that, something that's not even a man anymore, that's not nothing, just another ruin like me … But here I am going on and on about things that don't matter. Don't mind me. What foolishness! And don't tell the others I've been preaching at you. Just a second and I'll put on my dress, some street shoes … there we go … and a scarf … and we're off, the both of us. Wait a second … Diego! Diego! I'm leaving. The bottle is there in the wash basin.”

“You're leaving, what for?” blubbered the recumbent figure, wrinkling his eyes shut tightly against the light flooding in through window and doorway.

“Because I've got to get this kid officially registered and bathed and ready for tonight. Haven't you seen the same thing a hundred times?”

“Get out of here, then, and to hell with you and your new girl,” replied the man, chuckling softly a second time. “But hand me the bottle first, honey …”

Santa followed Pepa as if sleepwalking. They exited by a street door different from the one by which Santa had entered, walked around the garden she had noticed earlier, and ducked into a coach that appeared to be waiting for them. Pepa gave instructions, and the coach tore down various streets, pulled briefly alongside a street car, stopped suddenly to avoid another coach, then careened around a corner, the coach always amid many vehicles, many people, much sun, and much noise. Pepa smiled and smoked a cigarette, hardly paying attention to Santa, to whom she had so recently confided a portion of her hardened sinner's sorrows. The coach halted unexpectedly at another small garden between two churches and beside a larger park, which Santa believed to be the city's tree-lined avenue, or Alameda, and Pepa warned with sudden seriousness:

“Don't contradict me, hear? I'll answer whatever has to be answered, and you let them do whatever they want to do to you …”

“Whatever they want to do to me? Who are you talking about?”

“Don't worry, dummy! It's nothing bad, just some doctors who might insist on examining you, understand?”

“But I'm completely healthy. I swear.”

“Even if you are, silly, there's a law. I'll try to keep them from examining you, but you have to let them do it. Now out, let's go!”