The bar of the hotel was darkened against the heat. We ordered coffee and cognac, and then went to the desk and collected our keys. I picked up my bag. They were staying in separate rooms. We walked up the stairs together and arranged to meet at the pool at six thirty. They walked and spoke in an odd, distracted way, making clear to me that while I might be going for a siesta, they were going to make love. I smiled at them and turned down the corridor to my room. I felt elated once I was on my own, and amused at what I had just witnessed, and excited as though the chemistry between them had been somehow passed on to me as well, the way a baby must feel when its parents make love.

I had a shower and dried myself, and then pulled back the crisp white sheets of the bed and lay there thinking about what they were doing now, imagining that I was one of them and then the other. I was too involved to masturbate. I fell asleep for a while and then woke in the sweaty heat of the afternoon, feeling as though several days had passed since I had met them in the restaurant, and that I had spent all the time since trying to absorb what I had seen, trying to work it out, imagining and reimagining everything that had gone on between them.

That night we went out into the crowded square. There was a big platform and a band; people stood around staring toward the platform and then stealing glances at each other, eyeing each other up and down and then looking away again as though nothing mattered. Susan wore a black dress and a black ribbon in her hair; her skin was tanned. Jorge was dressed casually. I could not stop thinking about them being together. We walked up toward the front, where the crowd was thicker, and we waited there looking around us wondering what was going to happen. It was getting dark and small colored lights were turned on in the trees and more people came into the square so we could hear the humming of voices all around us. Susan put her hand on my back and rubbed me as though I had a pain there. She and Jorge did not touch.