Juan didn’t have to tell him to swallow to the last drop; Andrés savored it with unnerving voracity. Of all the things someone could use to hurt him, nothing was more convenient than semen, and Juan didn’t want to leave a trace of it anywhere. He went over to the door to keep watch so no one would enter while the photographer masturbated in a corner. Andrés had no way of knowing what was really happening. The double current, they called it in the Order. He, like everyone, had always had companions of both sexes: the magical androgyne. The rituals, of course, were complex, and had little to do with an encounter like the one he’d just had with Andrés, but Juan, as always, walked along the edge of heresy and danger. Also, he did enjoy it. He let the photographer kiss him on the lips, then put his shirt back on and heard Andrés go to the restroom at the back of the store to clean himself up. It was an outdoor restroom, but apparently it had a rudimentary tap, because Andrés returned with wet hands that he dried on his pants. In his own hands, Juan felt the power of the energy he had summoned. It would be enough for what lay ahead, for the invocation he wanted to perform.
“Stay tonight,” said the photographer. “Osvaldo and his son won’t be back until tomorrow.”
Juan didn’t answer. He checked the time: barely two in the afternoon. Still without answering, he went to the car, where he took from his bag a few blank pages he kept for Gaspar to draw on. And his medication. His son was waking up.
When he returned to the grocery, Andrés had brought him a grapefruit Fanta. This you can drink, don’t tell me you can’t. Yes, this I can drink, Juan told him, and he swallowed the pills with the soda. Andrés was gazing at him with damp eyes. Juan thought he had been selfish, he should have fucked Andrés against the grocery counter until he screamed, but he was tired. He left half the soda and went to find Gaspar, who was sitting up in bed and looking around with more curiosity than fear.
“How do you feel?”
“Hungry.”
“Then you’re fine.”
He picked him up and crossed the patio slowly. I have to buy the kid a hat, he thought. Then he asked Andrés to make a milanesa sandwich for Gaspar, and while the boy ate, Juan smoked a cigarette. He left the money for the sandwich on the counter.
“I need a portrait of you two,” said the photographer.
“No. I hate photographs.”
“I’m a good photographer, really. I’ll make you famous.”
“Even worse.”
“With that body and that face, you can’t hate photographs. How hard can it be? A souvenir.”
Andrés posed them against the white wall of the grocery. Gaspar left his sandwich on the table, though the photographer assured him he could hold on to it. It’ll look bad, said the boy, and Andrés laughed. Juan crossed his arms; his shirt was open to the middle of his chest. Andrés went over to smooth his hair, and Gaspar put his arms around his father’s leg. Before taking the shot, the photographer looked at them: the boy with round blue eyes and dark hair, a little hollow-eyed after his nap and headache, his T-shirt smooth and clean; the beautiful man who put his hands under his dark shirt and looked at the camera with a calm expression that hid his haste. His cleft chin with its deep dimple, his eyes that were mostly green but also yellow, the scar that shone a little as if smeared with a layer of wax. He took two black-and-white photos and one in color, and when he tried to ask them to do something else, to pose differently, Juan told him absolutely not. You’re gonna send us the pictures, right? Gaspar asked, as he picked at the sandwich he no longer wanted to eat.
“Have you been to Posadas?” asked Juan suddenly.
“No, but I plan to go soon.”
“We’re going to be there for two weeks. My father-in-law’s house is very easy to find. When you get there, look for the Hotel Savoy. It’s historical, everyone knows it. It takes up half a block. The other half block is my father-in-law’s house.”
Juan saw the hope in the photographer’s eyes and he kept lying.
“Just ring the bell. Gaspar, finish your soda now. If you don’t want to eat, leave the sandwich, or we’ll put it in the cooler. Does your head hurt? No? Okay, let’s go.”
The photographer walked them to the car.
“I’m going to go to Posadas and find you. You drive me crazy. I’m telling you, seriously, I’ll be there.”
“Easy now,” said Juan as he got into the car. Before pulling away he told the photographer again to go to the Devil’s Chapel, don’t forget, you’ll like it. And please, give this to Mrs. Karlen.
He handed Andrés a piece of paper. It was a short thank-you note. As he pulled away, the photographer ran behind the car a little and shouted, I don’t know your last name! Juan, who was driving slowly, pressed the brake. Dinesen, he said. Like the writer. What writer? asked Andrés, his hands on the window. Isak Dinesen, replied Juan. Come on now, you’re a boy who was educated in Europe. The photographer remained standing there in the sunlight: Juan realized how young he was. Twenty-one, twenty-two years old. He hadn’t asked his age. He didn’t care. Then he pulled away again, and Gaspar put his head out the window and waved to Andrés, the grocery, and the fat dog that was barking at the car’s wheels.
Gaspar talked the whole way to the city of Corrientes, and Juan tried to pay attention without getting annoyed. He remembered a cold afternoon in Buenos Aires when a chauffeur was taking him and Rosario from their house to his in-laws’ apartment on Avenida Libertador—they always sent a driver even though Rosario loved to drive. He was uncomfortable in the backseat with his long legs, the closed windows stifled him, and Rosario was insisting on a monotonous guessing game with Gaspar: what has a long neck and four legs and eats leaves from the trees? A giraffe! the boy shouted, and in the closed space the noise was deafening, Gaspar’s peal of laughter and his mother’s infantile voice congratulating him. Juan tried to concentrate on the city outside but could not block the sensations from the street: 1978, and the slaughter was everywhere. Juan hated to leave his house. He didn’t have the strength to cover the echoes and the tremor of the rampant evil: he’d never felt anything like it. It had even distanced him from his son, who was at a noisy and demanding age, very different from his adored baby from those first years. Rosario would tell him, “Close yourself off, I’ll help you,” and she didn’t want to believe him when he told her the usual methods weren’t enough, that the protection needed to be reinvented and he didn’t have the tools to take it on. The first two years of the dictatorship had been like that: what had been unleashed felt to Juan like a direct attack. Rosario kept going: what barks and has a cold nose? What has whiskers and likes to scratch? What has eight legs and climbs the walls? And Gaspar’s shouting. He remembered how the violence made him feel feverish, how he felt sure that if the boy didn’t shut up he was going to snap his neck like a stem or a small animal. He had asked the driver to stop, and he got out of the car without a word to Rosario: he preferred the vibration of evil in the street, he felt like it was closer to him, and in any case it was easier to bear than the shouting in the car. Rosario followed him, and he remembered telling her, don’t touch me, I’m not going back, leave me alone. Or what? she’d asked. Or I’ll kill you both, he’d replied. And although he didn’t think he would be capable of even hitting Rosario, at that moment he was saying what he truly felt. He walked for hours, listening and shivering, until he had to sit down on a park bench, lost and woozy, his breathing ragged and strained. The city was screaming, its air full of pleading and prayers and peals of laughter and howls and sirens and vibrating electricity and splashing, but he couldn’t convince himself to go home, and there was no one to turn to besides his family.