“I like seeing patients,” he said. I supposed he meant that seeing patients was better than rats and mice and test tubes in laboratories, but as he said it, it sounded almost callous. I knew that he did not mean to sound like that; he wanted to sound warm and obliging. I thanked him again and got into the car. We waved to him as I drove off.

I took a day off work and drove Mart and Jack to an estancia with a swimming pool where Jack and I could swim and Mart could lie under an umbrella. I was surprised at how strong and bronzed Jack looked when he was in his bathing togs. I almost fancied him as he rubbed suntan oil on my back. I was careful when he went into the water not to get too close to him, but I felt that he knew the rules better than I did.

I wanted to talk more to Pablo about Frank, but he did not want to. I could imagine the rest, he said. Or he would tell me some other time, but there were things that even Mart and Jack did not know, that nobody knew, that he was not sure he would ever be able to tell.

“I don’t believe in God or the Devil or evil,” Pablo said, “but in those days, it was hard not to feel that something unnatural had taken hold of his body.”

“There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you,” I said. “I think I have to ask you if you have been tested.”

He gripped me and started to whisper.

“I didn’t take the test. Frank told me not to. I thought I would and then I didn’t. Maybe I should.” He was silent for a moment.

“I inherited the agency, and sold it. The money is still in a bank account there. Frankie left his house and what money was in the bank to his family. I was thinking recently, when I heard you talking with my father, of investing my money in oil shares.” He kissed me. “I love you,” he said. “I came back here. I met you within a few weeks of coming back. I have never taken the test. I think I’m okay. Have you taken the test?”

“No,” I said.

“I think we’ve been careful, haven’t we?”

“Yes.”

“I love you,” he said, “and I need you more now that I’ve told you. But there are some things that happened at the end I haven’t told you. Maybe I will tell you some time.”

ON JACK AND Mart’s last night in Argentina, a Saturday night, we went to an old-fashioned steak restaurant in the city center. Pablo told them the story of my old apartment, how I still paid the rent on it, but had abandoned it, and never went there.