Hipólito went on and on deliriously, speaking very softly, his horrid eyes without irises wide open, turned upward, and somehow luminous.

Evil did not exist, and if it did, would not rule forever. Repentant, Santa would bathe in the waters of the Jordan River and emerge as white as the whitest ermine. It was already happening. Already she was not an impenitent prostitute, nor he a miserable blind man. Already she was out of the brothel. No, now there were no brothels anymore! What could this mean? The day had come! They had started down the road of redemption, freed from the infinite evil of life on earth …

Hipólito's vision was rudely interrupted by the arrival of a group of drunken, frock-coated revelers. They waved money and gave the other girls a squeeze, then asked for Santa and vociferously demanded a bottle, glasses, and a waltz.

“Don't worry, girls, it's just us, and we come in peace, to have some fun and shake a leg! Let's hear it, piano man!”

The party was neither better nor worse than usual, four or five “decent” gentlemen, regular customers, full of tipsy high spirits, addressing each other familiarly like old buddies, ready to keep drinking deeply, keep spending freely, and perhaps stay all night. They were warmly received and immediately served.

“I'm about to run out of steam,” declared one of them, collapsing on the sofa and looking pale.

At that point, more visitors walked in. Well dressed like the others, they too were regulars at Elvira's house and not unknown to the first arrivals, whom they greeted with friendly handshakes and, one or two of them, by name. Pepa, alert to potential frictions, judged that the two groups would get along fine and consented in their mingling, with no notion of what was going to happen. Such chance encounters are frequent in establishments like Elvira's, and frequently profitable, too, because they stimulate spending.

How did the quarrel begin when the party seemed to be going so smoothly? There is simply no telling. Apparently, though, it began when Santa, who had been sitting on the sofa when the “out of steam” fellow sat down beside her, got up without asking his permission and went to inquire something trivial of one of the new arrivals. The seated fellow resolved not to endure her egregious misbehavior, and he found enough steam to rise and approach Santa boorishly:

“When you're with me, you don't talk to some other jerk, because I'm not a pimp, hear?” he said, brusquely pulling her arm.

“Who are you calling a jerk?” asked Santa's interlocutor evenly, in hopes that the aggressor might take back the insult and avoid trouble.

Santa intervened more loudly:

“Hey, let go of me! That hurts! … What's wrong with you, anyway? I'll talk to anybody I want. Since when do you give me orders?”

Fortunately, the rest of the gathering, and most especially Pepa, became aware of the incident, and the friends of the troublemaker—whom they called Rodolfo—struggled to calm him down while Pepa and Santa convinced the other man to pay no attention to insults proffered by a drunk.