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"I'm
an accidental sportswriter," said Fate, and then he told the two Rosas and
Charly Cruz the story of the real sportswriter and his death, and how he'd been
sent to cover the Pickett-Fernandez fight.

"So
what do you write about, then?" asked Charly Cruz.

"Politics,"
said Fate. "Political things that affect the African-American community.
Social things."

"That
must be very interesting," said Rosa Mendez.

Fate watched Rosa Amalfitano's lips as she translated. He felt
happy to be there.

The fight was short. First Count Pickett came out. Polite
applause, some boos. Then Merolino Fernandez came out. Thundering applause. In
the first round, they sized each other up. In the second, Pickett went on the
offensive and knocked his opponent out in less than a minute. Merolino
Fernandez's body didn't even move where it lay on the canvas. His seconds
hauled him into his corner and when he didn't recover the medics came in and
took him off to the hospital. Count Pickett raised an arm, without much
enthusiasm, and left surrounded by his people. The fans began to empty out of
the arena.

They
ate at a place called El Rey del Taco. At the entrance there was a neon sign: a
kid wearing a big crown mounted on a burro that regularly kicked up its hind
legs and tried to throw him. The boy never fell, although in one hand he was
holding a taco and in the other a kind of scepter that could also serve as a
riding crop. The inside was decorated like a McDonald's, but in an unsettling
way. The chairs were straw, not plastic. The tables were wooden. The floor was
covered in big green tiles, some of them printed with desert landscapes and
episodes from the life of El Rey del Taco. From the ceiling hung pinatas
featuring more adventures of the boy king, always accompanied by the burro. Some
of the scenes depicted were charmingly ordinary: the boy, the burro, and a
one-eyed old woman, or the boy, the burro, and a well, or the boy, the burro,
and a pot of beans. Other scenes were set firmly in the realm of the fantastic:
in some the boy and the burro fell down a ravine, in others, the boy and the
burro were tied to
a
funeral
pyre, and there was even one in which the boy threatened to shoot his burro,
holding a gun to its head. It was as if El Rey del Taco weren't the name of a
restaurant but a character in a comic book Fate happened never to have heard
of. Still, the feeling of being in a McDonald's persisted. Maybe the waitresses
and waiters, very young and dressed in military uniforms (Chucho Flores told
him they were dressed up as
federales),
helped create the impression.
This was certainly no victorious army. The young waiters radiated exhaustion,
although they smiled at the customers. Some of them
s
eemed lost in the desert that was El Rey
del Taco. Others, fifteen-year-olds or fourteen-year-olds, tried in vain to
joke with some of the diners, men on their own or in pairs who looked like
government workers or cops, men who eyed them grimly, in no mood for jokes.
Some of the girls had tears in their eyes, and they seemed unreal, faces
glimpsed in a dream.

"This
place is like hell," he said to Rosa Amalfitano.

"You're
right," she said, looking at him sympathetically, "but the food isn't
bad."

"I've
lost my appetite," said Fate.

"As
soon as they put a plate of tacos in front of you it'll come back," said
Rosa Amalfitano.

"I hope you're right," said Fate.

They
had come to the restaurant in three separate cars. Rosa Amalfitano was riding
with Chucho Flores. Charly Cruz and Rosa Mendez were riding with silent
Corona
. Fate drove alone,
following the other two cars closely, and more than once, when they seemed to
be driving in endless circles around the city, he thought about honking his
horn and abandoning the convoy—there was something absurd and childish about
it, though he couldn't say exactly what—and heading for the Sonora Resort to
write his story about the brief fight he'd just witnessed. Maybe
Campbell
would still be
there and could explain whatever it was he'd missed. Although it's not as if
there was anything to understand, if you thought about it. Pickett knew how to
fight and Fernandez didn't, it was that simple. Or maybe it would be better to
skip the Sonora Resort and just drive straight to the border, to Tucson, where
he was sure to find a cybercafe at the airport, and write his story, exhausted
and without thinking about what he was writing, and then fly to New York, where
everything would take on the consistency of reality again.

But
instead Fate followed the convoy of cars driving around and around an alien
city, with the faint suspicion that the only object of all that driving was to
wear him down and get rid of him, although they'd been the ones to ask him
along, they'd been the ones who'd said come eat with us and then you can leave
for the United States, a last supper in Mexico, speaking without conviction or
sincerity, trapped by the formulas of hospitality, a Mexican rite, to which he
should have responded by
t
hanking them (effusively!) and then driving away down a
nearly empty street with his dignity intact.

But he accepted the invitation. Good idea, he said, I'm
hungry. Let's all go get some dinner. As if it was the most natural thing in
the world. And although he saw the expression in Chucho Flores's eyes change,
and the way Corona was looking at him, even more coldly than Chucho, as if
trying to scare him off with his stare or blaming him for the defeat of the
Mexican fighter, he insisted on going to eat something typical, my last night
in Mexico, what do you say we get some
Mexican
food? Only Charly Cruz
seemed amused by the idea that he would stick around with them for dinner,
Charly Cruz and the two girls, although in different ways, in keeping with
their different personalities, although it was also possible, thought Fate,
that the girls were just plain happy, whereas Charly Cruz found himself
presented with unexpected possibilities in a landscape that up until then had
seemed fixed and devoid of surprise.

•

Why am I here, eating tacos and drinking beer with some Mexicans I
hardly know? thought Fate. The answer, he knew, was simple. I'm here for her.
They were all speaking Spanish. Only Charly Cruz addressed him in English.
Charly Cruz liked to talk about film and he liked to talk in English. His
English was fast, as if he were trying to imitate a college student, and full
of mistakes. He mentioned the name of a
Los
Angeles
director, Barry Guardini, whom he'd met
personally, but Fate had never seen any of Guardini's movies. Then he started
to talk about DVDs. He said that in the future everything would be on DVD, or
something like DVDs but better, and there'd be no such thing as movie theaters.

The only movie theaters that were worth anything, said Charly
Cruz, were the old ones, remember them? those huge theaters where your heart
leaped when they turned out the lights. Those places were great, they were real
movie theaters, more like churches than anything else, high ceilings, red
curtains, pillars, aisles with worn carpeting, box seats, orchestra seats,
balcony seats, theaters built at a time when going to the movies was still a religious
experience, routine but religious, theaters that were gradually demolished to
build banks or supermarkets or multiplexes. Today, said Charly Cruz, there are
only a few left, today all movie theaters are multiplexes, with small screens,
less space, comfortable seats. Seven of these smaller multiplex theaters would
fit into one of the
o
ld theaters, the real ones. Or
ten. Or even fifteen. And there's no sense of the
abyss
anymore, there's
no
vertigo
before the movie begins, no one feels
alone
inside a multiplex.
Then, Fate remembered, he began to talk about the end of the
sacred.

The
end had begun somewhere, Charly Cruz didn't care where, maybe in the churches,
when the priests stopped celebrating the Mass in Latin, or in families, when
the fathers (terrified, believe me, brother) left the mothers. Soon the end of
the sacred came to the movies. The big theaters were torn down and up went the
hideous boxes called multiplexes, practical, functional. The cathedrals were
felled by the wrecking balls of demolition teams. Then the VCR came along. A TV
set isn't the same as a movie screen. Your living room isn't the same as the
old endless rows of seats. But look carefully and you'll see it's the closest
thing to it. In the first place, because with videos you can watch a movie
all
by yourself.
You close the windows and you turn on the TV. You pop in the
video and you sit in a chair. First off: do it alone. No matter how big or
small your house is, it feels bigger with no one else there. Second: be
prepared. In other words, rent the movie, buy the drinks you want, the snacks
you want, decide what time you're going to sit down in front of the TV. Third:
don't answer the phone, ignore the doorbell, be ready to spend an hour and a
half or two hours or an hour and forty-five minutes in complete and utter
solitude. Fourth: have the remote control within reach in case you want to see
a scene more than once. And that's it. After that it all depends on the movie
and on you. If things work out, and sometimes they don't, you're back in the
presence of the
sacred.
You burrow your head into your own chest and
open your eyes and watch, pronounced Charly Cruz.

What's sacred to me? thought Fate. The vague pain I feel at
the passing of my mother? An understanding of what can't be fixed? Or the kind
of pang in the stomach I feel when I look at this woman? And why do I feel a
pang, if that's what it is, when she looks at me and not when her friend looks
at me? Because her friend is nowhere near as beautiful, thought Fate. Which
seems to suggest that what's sacred to me is beauty, a pretty girl with perfect
features. And what if all of a sudden the most beautiful actress in Hollywood
appeared in the middle of this big, repulsive restaurant, would I still feel a
pang each time my eyes surreptitiously met this girl's or would the sudden
appearance of a superior beauty, a beauty enhanced by recognition, relieve the
pang, diminish her beauty to ordinary levels, the beauty of a slightly odd girl
out to have a good time on a weekend night with three slightly peculiar men and
a woman who basically seems like a hooker? And who am I to think that Rosita
Mendez seems like a hooker? thought Fate. Do I really know enough about Mexican
hookers to be able to recognize them at a glance? Do I know anything about
innocence or pain? Do I know anything about women? I like to watch videos,
thought Fate. I also like to go to the movies. I like to sleep with women.
Right now I don't have a steady girlfriend, but I know what it's like to have
one. Do I see the
sacred
anywhere? All I register is practical
experiences, thought Fate. An emptiness to be filled, a hunger to be satisfied,
people to talk to so I can finish my article and get paid. And why do I think
the men Rosa Amalfitano is out with are
peculiar'?
What's peculiar about
them? And why am I so sure that if a
Hollywood
actress appeared all of a sudden Rosa Amalfitano's beauty would fade? What if
it didn't? What if it sped up? And what if everything began to accelerate from
the instant a
Hollywood
actress crossed the
threshold of El Rey del Taco?

Later, he remembered vaguely, they were at a few clubs,
maybe three. Actually, it might have been four. No: three. But they were also
at a fourth place, which wasn't exactly a club or a private house either. The
music was loud. One of the clubs, not the first one, had a patio. From the
patio, where they stacked boxes of soft drinks and beer, you could see the sky.
A black sky like the bottom of the sea. At some point Fate threw up. Then he
laughed because something on the patio struck him as funny. What? He didn't
know. Something that was moving or crawling along the chain-link fence. Maybe a
sheet of newspaper. When he went back inside he saw
Corona
kissing Rosa Mendez.
Corona
's right hand was squeezing one of her
breasts. When he passed them, Rosa Mendez opened her eyes and looked at him as
if she didn't recognize him. Charly Cruz was leaning on the bar talking to the
bartender. Fate asked him where Rosa Amalfitano was. Charly Cruz shrugged. He
repeated the question. Charly Cruz looked him in the eyes and said she might be
in the ladies' room.

"Where
is the ladies' room?" asked Fate.

"Upstairs," said Charly Cruz.

Fate
went up the only stairs he could find: a metal staircase that wobbled a little,
as if the base were loose. It seemed to him like the staircase on an old-time
boat. The staircase ended in a green-carpeted hallway. At the end of the
hallway there was an open door. Music was playing. The light that came from the
room was green, too. Standing in the middle of the hallway was a skinny kid,
who looked at him and then moved toward him. Fate thought he was going to be
attacked and he prepared himself mentally to take the first punch. But the kid
let him pass and then went down the stairs. His face was very serious, Fate
remembered. Then he kept walking until he came to a room where he saw Chucho
Flores talking on a cell phone. Next to him, sitting at a desk, was a man in
his forties, dressed in a checkered shirt and a bolo tie, who stared at Fate
and gestured inquiringly. Chucho Flores caught the gesture and glanced toward
the door.