Santa never could remember how that night ended. Where did she find the young guy in whose arms she awoke in a third-rate hotel after noon the next day? The guy, whose appearance and behavior suggested a young man of fairly good family, was dressing quietly with the windows still shuttered as if he meant to slink out embarrassedly. He saw Santa open her eyes and froze, blushing and holding the towel in the air where he had been drying his dripping neck.

“You're awake now?” he asked, looking into Santa's wide-open eyes and calling her usted, with awkward formality.

“No kidding,” replied Santa impatiently. “Who are you? Why am I with you? And where are we?” She addressed him as tú, a professional habit.

The agitated adolescent—who was sixteen years old at most—responded in a fit of boyish sincerity. Standing in the middle of the room wearing only his underwear, with his freshly-washed hands and face still glistening and unconsciously waving the white towel as if asking for a truce and parlay, he explained everything.

“I'm gong to tell you the 100-percent truth. There's no way around it, and I don't want you to get the wrong idea. If you want to call the police, okay.”

“Me call the police? Really? … So what did you do to me?” asked Santa with new interest, lifting herself up with one elbow on the pillows, so that her silk blouse sagged to expose a shoulder and the beginnings of a breast. “What did you do to me? 'Cause you don't look too scary …”

Still blushing bright red, the kid confessed his feat.

He was an impoverished preparatory student whose family did not live in Mexico City. It had been some time, at least a year, since he had first set eyes on Santa at the theater. Elegant, bejeweled, and beautiful, she was with another girl and with two nicely dressed fellows who sat at the rear of their box trying not to be noticed. Infatuated with her, he had asked around and learned where she lived and how much it cost to visit her—also that a visit was hard to arrange because of so much competition, even were he to be able to raise what was, for him, an intimidating purchase price. Nonetheless, by dint of relentless economies and privations over a period of months, he was able to save ten pesos in small change from the living allowance sent by his family. He exchanged the coins for a brand-new ten-peso note and carefully hid it in a human skull that belonged to his roommate, a medical student, hoping the cleaning woman would not dare look inside the grisly conversation piece. But the money just sat there, in spite of his rabid desires, because he could not make up his mind to act on them and, instead, simply daydreamed about how fabulous it would be to visit Santa when the desires finally overpowered his shyness, a shyness that seemed inexplicable in a young man whom his school friends regarded as bold and resourceful. He had a girlfriend, and a pretty one, and on the evenings when he was able to talk with her at the window of her family's house, he got a goodnight kiss between the bars of the window grill. And he had enjoyed more substantial loves with a couple of humble girls, a seamstress who worked on Plateros Street and an employee of the American place with large mirrors on the walls that serves soda and ice cream on that same street. Both had been receptive to his initial flirtations, delighted to receive his bouquets of violets, and willing to accept his invitations to go out alone with him at night to see the lights, only until ten o'clock, of course …