On Friday morning Susan telephoned with arrangements. She was flying to La Rioja that evening, she said, and wanted me to come the following morning. I could collect the ticket at the airport. She was at her most breezy and brisk. She spoke to me as though I were a customer at a bank. We were booked into the Hotel Plaza, she said. It had a swimming pool and we would need a swim in this heat. Also, and here her tone changed somewhat, as if there were something caught in her throat, she would have a friend with her, and they would be at the hotel when I came. I presumed, from the way she spoke, that her friend would be American, and I also presumed, although I did not ask, that her friend would be a woman.

On Saturday morning I carefully folded a number of clean shirts into a holdall. I packed my swimming trunks as well. I enjoyed walking out of the apartments with my sunglasses on, wearing a blue linen jacket and striped trousers which I had chosen myself and summer shoes with no socks. Señora Fernández on the first floor opened her door as I passed and nodded at me sourly. I pulled my sunglasses down over my nose and peered at her. She studied me as though she were about to take a photograph of me. I went on to the street and ordered a taxi.

The plane was half-empty and had seen better days: my window overlooked a wing which had a big line of rust. I could hear the engine grinding as we took off. I slept for a while and when I woke we were flying over creamy clouds. I liked being here away from things, and I would not have minded had the flight gone on for hours more. The airport when we landed was like some final outpost of civilization; a small concrete shack had La Rioja written on the roof. There were a few jeeps and nothing else. The two men who stood watching us as we descended from the plane looked as though they had never seen an airplane before and were deeply puzzled by the new phenomenon of air travel. They studied us with mild disapproval. I asked one of them if I could get a taxi to the city center and he nonchalantly inclined his head to the other side of the building. There were several cars waiting there, and a few people standing around outside, but none of them was a taxi driver.