“They take a lot and pay zilch,” she explained to the girls, who had the most to lose by nonpayment, “and worse, they scare away young gentlemen.”

With el Jarameño, it went differently. To begin with, it was young gentlemen, precisely, and of the most excellent sort, who brought him to the house; and secondly, he treated the girls like silver pesos, and pesos, like grains of anise, spending just as much as his rich friends did and giving generous tips to the servants, not to mention the piano player. But he really consummated his triumph when he played guitar and sang, and the girls, most of whom were Spanish, clapped along and rewarded him with kisses that seemed aimed more at their distant homeland than the clean-shaven face of this particular young man from southern Spain. El Jarameño noticed Santa immediately, of course, not only because she was eye-catching but also because the rich kids swarmed around her. A lightning bolt of desire ran through him, making his macho, southern Spanish blood boil.

“Hello, good looking,” he said in his marked Andalusian accent, “you've got no beau?”

Holding her wrist in his powerful grip, not hurting her at all, but, to the contrary, almost caressingly, yet with a touch suggestive of a Herculean, primitive, animal power kept totally in reserve, the torero awaited her answer, staring hypnotically at her until Santa, subjugated by his will, finally stared back, extremely flustered in spite of the forced laughter with which she tried to respond.

“What's it to you whether I do or not? And what's that about a beau anyway?”

El Jarameño let go of her calmly, without anger, as one might put down some delicate object that looked good from afar but has lost all appeal on close examination, and took up the guitar again. In true Flamenco style, amid the whirl of drinks and rhythmic clapping, he poured out his heart in melancholy lyrics: Two things in the world / Can cost your life, oh …

Santa was miffed by the behavior of the torero, who paid no further attention to her, and she felt the impulse to make him suffer by lavishing her affection on the young men around her. She sat on this one's lap, drank from that one's glass, allowed this other one to take her shoe off, and grimacing a thousand times, she took two puffs on some fellow's cigar. As the party really got going, she broke open an uncorked bottle of wine. Some of the guys proposed that Hipólito play for them in their private dining room, and they sent two of their fairly inebriated number to parlay with Elvira, whom they convinced to put aside her air of lofty detachment as mistress of the harem and drink a glass of whatever she wanted in good fellowship. Amid the increasing disorder, someone proposed an outing for the next day, an outing with the girls in rented coaches:

“Elvira will go along, I guarantee. And we'll take el Jarameño … hey, want to go with us to hear the Cry?”