“No, I was detailed to tell you.”

We walked in silence to the front of the house.

“Do you know where you’ll go?”

“Back to Washington. At least for the moment.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know.” He said nothing. We turned and walked back toward the garden.

“How long have you known that my wife has been seeing your friend Jorge?”

“Seeing?”

“You know what I mean. I mean fucking.”

“For a long time.”

“Well, he won’t be doing it much longer. Maybe you could tell him that.”

“I’m not really in the business, Donald, of conveying messages of that sort.”

“Then maybe I’ll tell him.”

We walked in silence for another while. And then we went into the kitchen, where Susan was setting the small side table. They were in a melancholy mood that evening until the wine took hold. Susan told Donald about me and Pablo.

“You mean he’s fucking Jorge’s brother? Well, in that case I get regular blow jobs from his father while his mother sticks her tongue up my ass. Are there any sisters?”

“Hey, Donald, give us a break,” I said.

“You mean, you’re serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious.”

“Well, that’s good because I think Pablo’s cute. He’s cuter than his brother. His brother’s an asshole.”

“Go easy on the language, Donald,” Susan said.

“Maybe you should go easy too,” he said.

“Maybe we should all go easy,” I said.

He began to laugh.

“What a stupid thing to say: ‘Maybe we should all go easy,’” he said. “You’re beginning to sound like an asshole too.”

“We all love you, Donald,” Susan said snidely.

“It was all done right in front of my nose,” he said. “One weekend we decided to redecorate the bedroom, and Jorge came to help us. We had fun, all of us, except I didn’t know that Jorge and Susan would be swooning in one another’s juices before the paint was even dry. I’m busy rewriting the past two years with these two on top of each other every time I turn my back.”

“I said we all love you, Donald,” Susan repeated.

“Everybody here is up to something,” Donald said. “You can trust nobody. I think we’re going to go home and open a store. Something straightforward. A shoe store. A deli.”

“We all love you, Donald,” I said. Susan and I began to laugh.

“So you’re just a fucking fairy. Well, we knew that all along. A fat-assed fairy.”

“That’s what I am, Donald, a fat-assed fairy.”

“Stop calling me Donald. I don’t like your tone when you call me Donald.”

“I don’t mind you calling me a fat-assed fairy.”

“I think we should all have another drink,” Susan said.

They told me that night that they thought I should get out of Argentina, that I should talk to the British and American public relations companies about finding work for me, that it was and would always be a dreary backwater here. I said that I was happy now and would make no plans. Susan shook her head.