“We met your Mr. Canetto and his wife,” Susan said.

“So?”

“It’s a nice house. We took a look around.”

“Have you eaten yet?” I asked.

“No. Let’s go and eat.”

We walked up through the garden and past a small group playing Brazilian dance music. By now, the cooks had set up an elaborate asado, with carcasses spread out on poles being cooked in their entirety. On the grass in front of the house, tables were set; the oil executives were sitting there, drinks in their hands, looking around them with the same alert, hungry concentration that they would accord a balance sheet or a bottom line. Jorge came toward us; he too was dressed all in white. He had chains of paper flowers in his hands and he made us all put one on. Susan looked beautiful with the colors around her neck. The lights made her look delicate and desirable, almost soft. Donald stood apart, bored, as Jorge talked to her. Jorge laughed at everything she said with a strange, forced, hysterical edge that unsettled me and made me wish he would go away. But it was clear that he was going to stay with us now that he had found us. He called one of the waitresses and arranged for us all to have fresh drinks. I saw Donald turn his gaze on Jorge and keep it there for a while as couples passed and the music grew louder.

Only once that night did I see Pablo. He was wearing blue jeans and an embroidered blue shirt. He had put wax or gel in his hair, which made it seem thicker and blacker than the last time I had seen him. He looked at us with the same disinterest as he had shown me in his father’s study the first time I saw him. I was stunned by the color of his eyes. He came up to Jorge and whispered something to him and Jorge walked into the house with him, arriving back alone a while later. A few times I was tempted to go and look for him, but I did nothing.

As we were eating our steaks, Jorge’s father stopped by, once more accompanied by his wife, and greeted us, gesturing with his hands and smiling warmly at Susan. His wife stood back, adopting a pose of serious dignity. She looked coldly at me, but said nothing. I wondered how long it would take for Jorge and Pablo to resemble their parents now, to develop their father’s rough skin and hanging jowls, their mother’s cold stare. Tonight there seemed to be an infinite gap between the parents and the children. I knew that it had to do simply with time, that in twenty years Jorge and Pablo would be middle-aged men with rasping voices like their father and bodies that no one would lie in bed in the early morning thinking about.

When they had gone and Jorge was busy talking to the oil executives, Donald and Susan sized up Senñor Canetto.