“You’ve always been like that, a mixture of such good sense and an amazing lack of something. I don’t know what it is.”

Donald was enjoying his new role of cuckolded husband about to transport his wife from the scene of the crime. He could not stop talking about it.

“So you can tell Jorge then to take his Argentinian pecker and stick it somewhere else,” he said.

“I’ll tell him nothing,” I said. “I hardly ever see him. Does he know you know?”

“No,” Susan said. “Donald can only talk about him behind his back. He’s not a courageous man, Donald, that’s one of the things I like about him.”

“You’re the one with the courage,” I said.

“I don’t claim credit for much,” Susan said, “and there won’t be any statues put up to me or to anybody else. And there are people around here who think Ronald Reagan is some sort of joke and he is—he certainly is—some sort of joke. But we set out to create democratic structures here, and we had his full support for that, and we did it, and we’re going. It’s made up for other things in the past that I told you about once, things that happened when we were younger that we are not proud of. But you have money now, and you’re not yet forty, and you’re gay, and you know you’re gay, and you should get out now, there’s nothing for you here, and everything for you elsewhere. That mixture in you, whatever it is, makes you very attractive. Don’t grow old down here. You’d be insane to do that.”

“Is Pablo circumcised?” Donald asked.

“He has beautiful nipples,” I said. “They go hard when I lick them.”

“I was going to say something,” Susan said, “but I think I’ll make no comment.”

THE TAXI DRIVER who drove me home wondered who I was that I would visit a house so strangely guarded as Susan and Donald’s and live in a place so isolated with no other houses around. I hardly spoke at all. I was too drunk. I got into bed beside Pablo without waking him and went into a deep sleep.

SOON AFTERWARD, I went to New York for the first time. I believed as I traveled due north that I was moving from a shadow world into a world of substance. I expected everything to be ordered and opulent, shiny and glamorous. And instead it was chaotic and run-down and also amazing in its wealth and sense of energy and expectancy.

I think Americans who knew the oil business were surprised at how little serious opposition there had been to the plans for privatization. I began to think about it one night after another of those all-male dinners, where people are friendly and jaunty and half-familiar with each other. Argentina after the humiliation of the war and the disappearances would have done anything to please the outside world, and privatization was the price the outside world required. Everything the country had that was valuable would be sold, and this would tie Argentina to outside interests so that it would never be able to behave badly again. I thought about this as the rest of them were talking and laughing. They asked me what I was thinking about, why I was so serious.