At two or half past two, when the bars all closed up, the others had already gone home and there was just Elena, Raúl, and me. We talked about walking to the Drug Store on the Ramblas, but we were too drunk. I put one arm around Raúl and the other around Elena and we walked slowly back to the pensión. I thought that maybe Raúl had been leading up to this; maybe he knew what I was thinking about. I left the door of the room unlocked. I got into bed and lay with my hands behind my head still drunk, wondering when Jorge would come back, wondering if Raúl would come to my room.

I woke alone in the room in the morning with a hangover. I turned and tried to sleep again, but instead I lay there without moving. If I stayed still, I thought, I might feel better. I turned and looked at the door and noticed that it was locked. I must have locked it during the night. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. I waited for some sound in the corridor.

When Raúl knocked on the door and said that he was going for coffee, I asked him to come in. I opened the door for him and then got back into bed. He said that he was feeling bad. He smiled, and went over to the window and looked out. He was wearing baggy jeans and a navy blue pullover. He came and sat on Jorge’s bed and rested his head against the wall. Too much beer is bad for you, he said. Too much brandy as well, I replied. He closed his eyes and put his head back. Neither of us said anything for a while, and then he noticed the English novel on the bedside table. He picked it up and looked at it, but could not understand a word, he said, though he had heard of Graham Greene. I told him that my mother was English. This means, he said, that you could live in England. I nodded. He said that it was hard to get into England now.

We felt too sick to eat anything. We drank water in the Plaza del Pino and decided to go to the movies again. There was a western on, Elena said, and this meant that we would have no trouble following the plot. White man has technology, reason, and need, she said, while the Indian rides bareback and causes trouble and loses in the end. Raúl laughed and said that she was always good at making speeches.