Elvira continued to bellow as she climbed the stairs, and those still in the parlor heard a loud bang when she entered her bedroom and slammed the door. Hipólito, still extremely upset, got Pepa's permission to stay with Santa that night in case her illness worsened and someone needed to go to a pharmacy or bring a doctor:

“If she lets you, it's all right with me,” decided Pepa as she sorted through various bottles in the cabinet to prepare the potion that Santa was to drink.

Santa, who had gone up to lie down as Elvira finished her tirade, signaled her own permission with a shrug of her shoulders. The chill had returned and was shaking her hard underneath the mountain of quilts and blankets. A high fever was making her groggy.

The girls entered her room on tiptoes to say goodnight, touching her cheeks and forehead, pensive and superstitious in the presence of their wounded comrade, feeling vulnerable, all of them. When would a soft, treacherous little draft, or something else infinitely trivial, cause them to get sick when least expected? Disparaged and alone, a sick prostitute is quickly judged useless for the sad art of selling sex, and she is shunted first to the hospital and finally to a trash heap if some charitable soul does not intervene and secretly claim the corpse that once served as an urn of temptation and delight, to return it to its holy mother Earth, which will accept and cover it, just as it accepts and covers the righteous who, if they sinned, did so no more than seven times a day.

And, more to cheer themselves than their sick comrade, after sensing her fever, they said:

“Don't worry, honey. It's probably nothing. I bet you'll feel fine in the morning …”

Getting to go to bed alone, even for just a few hours, tempered the melancholy that Santa's illness inspired among the other girls. How wonderful to belong to themselves! To be able to roll in the fresh, clean sheets, adopt any position, extend an arm, bend a knee, obey nobody, not pretend what they do not feel, recuperating, if only for a while in their indefinite captivity, a little bit of liberty! For that short while, they did not have to overcome revulsion or sleepiness or tolerate breath stinking of alcohol or worse things. With the exception of a pair of lesbians who went to bed together with all the repressed excitement of a couple of newlyweds, the rest of the women entered their perfumed bedrooms with the placid attitude of a prisoner who has been allowed temporarily to remove his shackles and chains. They looked at their deserted beds with the thrill of a kid unwrapping candy, and they laughed with glee. To really rest, without suffering filthy, painful, degrading demands! Tomorrow, things would return to normal, and nothing could be done about that. But tonight, for a few hours, they were free! Eager to enjoy their precious freedom, they undressed as quickly as possible, regretting only the absence of their boyfriends with whom they slept willingly, at no charge, whom they had not been able to notify of this rare and unexpected good fortune.