“You’re going to come with us, you are, come on, you are?” Mart linked arms with me as we walked along.

“And when I meet you in the steam room, or when I watch Pablo getting into a cubicle with some kid, what am I meant to do?”

“We’ll all be good,” Mart said.

We walked casually in the direction of the sauna. At the door the other three stopped and looked at me.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming in too,” I said. Pablo squeezed the back of my neck with his hand.

At first we were loud, but soon the sullen rules of the place had their effect on us. It was strange, as we all began to strip, how quiet we became, how self-absorbed, as though we had nothing in common, except the beginnings of desire. Slowly we watched each other becoming anonymous, items on a fiercely competitive and merciless sexual market. Mart left his T-shirt on and tied a towel around his waist. He said that he would go and sit at the bar and he would see us all later. I said that I would sit with him.

“Look at those two bastards,” I said to him as we walked away.

“Look at us four bastards,” he replied.

We ordered beers and sat on stools at the bar. I did not feel bad about Pablo wandering around half-naked. As a few men came into the bar to have a coffee or look for cigarettes or, in the case of one very dark man, some condoms, I wondered if he would take any interest in them. Mart talked about Pablo and me coming to California, how we could stay with them and use their car to travel around and see things, go into the desert. For most people, I explained, Argentina was not Buenos Aires, it was everything except Buenos Aires and the next time—I had mentioned the next time, having promised myself that I would not do so—Jack and he would have to go to Patagonia and Mendoza and Tierra del Fuego. He nodded and sipped his beer.

After a while I decided to go and look at what was happening. The place seemed to be filling up. I walked into the main area, where the small pool was, but I saw neither Jack nor Pablo. I looked into the sauna, and they were not there either. I walked down a corridor toward one of the cubicles and I saw Jack standing against the wall. He did not see me. He looked dark and predatory; he had taken on a whole new personality. I moved slowly toward him in the half-dark and crouched down low until I was right beneath him. He still could not see me. Suddenly, I sprang up and said “boo” to him and put a grotesque expression on my face. He was startled for a moment and then he laughed.

“You look like a different person in here,” I said.