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the trail of admirers that followed her through the Humanities wing at the university inspired by her body and her careless high spirits.
    â€œBut what if you had married me?”
    â€œI’d have given one of my balls to marry you.”
    â€œI don’t believe you.”
    â€œYes, you do, but it’s too late now.”
    â€œIt’s been less than ten years,” Anabela was quick to point out. “How old are you?”
    â€œTwo years younger than Rojano and two years older than you.”
    â€œIf you’re two years older than I am, then you’re only twenty-nine.”
    â€œTwenty-nine plus the presidency of Echeverría.”
    This brought another burst of sonorous laughter.
    â€œYou know politics don’t interest me,” she said. “I don’t have a single gray hair. If you’re two years older than I, then you’re twenty-nine. You can’t count your age by presidents.”
    â€œAlright then, twenty-nine. More vodka?”
    â€œMake it a double so you won’t have to get up again. And if you have a José Antonio Méndez record, you can play that twice, too.”
    I put the record on, and poured the double shot. José Antonio Méndez began crooning in the background:
    Anyone can have a blemish,
    nobody is spotless…
    Anabela removed her leather jacket. Underneath she was wearing a sweater that accented the width of her shoulders and her small, perfectly formed breasts. Small rolls of flesh had begun to form just below her bra strap and across her stomach which was once as flat as a ballerina’s.
    â€œA toast to your twenty-seven years,” I said as I handedher the vodka. “May you still be twenty-seven when the new president is long gone. And may old Smiley go fuck his mother.”
    (Smiley was the nickname of the ex-governor of Veracruz, whose sister-in-law shot him in the face, and left him with a indelible smile that couldn’t be wiped off.)
    Once again Anabela smiled her smile from another time, and once again the Anabela that used to be flooded my memory. Entering the coffee shop in the Political Science faculty, she was like an apparition, her body lean and athletic, her gait full of energy as she crossed the room on long, slender legs, the curves of her arms and neck crowned by the democratic naturalness of a face with no makeup and a head of boyishly short hair.
    She drained her double vodka before starting in again.
    â€œAre you a corrupt journalist or do you just have a price?”
    â€œI’m a journalist from Veracruz.”
    â€œIs that an obstacle or do you make it pay?”
    â€œI follow Arteaga’s rule to the letter.”
    â€œAnd what is Arteaga’s rule?”
    â€œIf the money won’t corrupt you, take it.”
    â€œAnd how do you know if it won’t corrupt you?”
    â€œYou don’t know.”
    â€œSo do you take it or not?”
    â€œOnly if it doesn’t corrupt you.”
    â€œAnd who’s this genius Arteaga?”
    â€œHe’s a reporter for
Excelsior,
the author of the universally applicable aphorism that ‘There’s no such thing as a small hangover or an idiot without a briefcase.’ And you?”
    â€œWhat about me?”
    â€œIs being married an obstacle or do you make it pay? Are you a faithful wife or just a wife?”
    â€œI’ve always been a dutiful wife.”
    â€œNight after night?”
    â€œChild after child, though I have no idea why you ask. It’s not as if it mattered to you. I get the impression that in the years since we’ve seen each other, what with politics and all, you developed other tastes. When journalists get mixed up in politics, they all end up semi-queer. At least that’s what I think because politicians are all queer. They court, hug and seduce each other, and then they fight like the natives in Africa, like spurned lovers.”
    â€œI’m not a politician.”
    â€œIt