The waiter watched her from the bar, probably wondering what the relationship was between that man and such an unusual young woman.

* * *

Alicia closed the bathroom door and bolted it. The room stank of disinfectant and was hemmed in by discolored tiles covered in obscene drawings and infelicitous witticisms. A narrow window framed a ventilator through whose blades slanted sharp beams of dusty light. Alicia went over to the sink and leaned on it, opening the tap to let the water run. It reeked of rust. She opened her bag and with shaking hands pulled out a metal case from which she took a syringe and a phial with a rubber top. She plunged the needle into the phial and half filled the cylinder, then rapped it with her fingers and pushed the piston down until a thick, shiny drop formed on the tip of the needle. Alicia then walked over to the toilet, closed the lid, sat down, and, propping herself up against the wall with her left hand, pulled her dress up to her hip. She felt the inside of her thigh, breathed deeply, and plunged the needle a couple of centimeters above the top of her stocking, emptying the contents. Seconds later she felt the rush. The needle fell from her hands, and her mind clouded over while a cold sensation spread through her veins. She leaned against the wall and let a couple of minutes go by without thinking of anything except that ice-cold snake creeping through her body. For a moment she felt she was losing consciousness. She opened her eyes to find herself in a foul-smelling broom-cupboard of a room that she didn’t recognize. A distant sound, of someone knocking on the door, roused her.

“Alicia, are you all right?”

It was Vargas’s voice.

“Yes,” she forced herself to say. “I’ll be right out.”

The policeman’s footsteps took a while to move away. Alicia cleaned the blood trickling down her thigh and smoothed down her dress. She washed her face in the sink and dried it with a piece of thick paper hanging from a nail on the wall. Before leaving, she looked at her face in the mirror. It reminded her of one of Mercedes’s dolls. She put on some lipstick and tidied up her clothes. Taking a deep breath, she prepared herself for her return to the world of the living.

When she got back to the table, she sat down opposite Vargas and gave him her sweetest smile. He was holding a glass of beer, which he didn’t seem to have tasted, and looked at her with undisguised concern.

“I ordered a fillet steak for you,” he said at last. “Rare. Protein.”

Alicia nodded to indicate that she thought his choice was perfect.

“I didn’t know what to ask for, but you strike me as a carnivore.”

“Bleeding meat is all I eat,” Alicia remarked. “If possible from innocent creatures.”

He didn’t laugh at her joke. Alicia caught her own image in his eyes. “You can say it.”