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doesn’t matter. Explain to me why you’re living alone in this apartment if you’re not queer. This looks to me like a place to bring your boyfriends, and when they get their claws into me, they’ll tear me apart. Tell me the truth. Are you an honest bachelor or do you have a thing for boys?”
    I poured a third round and put on a Pérez Prado album.
    â€œSo why don’t you invite me to eat somewhere?” Anabela demanded. “You don’t want to hold me hostage until the police find me here, do you?”
    â€œMaybe I’ll invite you for stuffed tortilla pockets and a bowl of soup.”
    â€œI haven’t eaten that kind of peasant food since I started wearing shoes, boy. And don’t tell me you got that Rolex by saving the labels from Aunt Chucha’s soup cans.”
    â€œThey don’t give prizes for soup labels any more.”
    â€œYou just told me the prizes come in envelopes from Arteaga. Take me to the Champs Elysees.”
    â€œThey don’t serve stuffed tortillas.”
    â€œAsk for the menu and select a white wine from France to go with the fish. White wine goes with fish, doesn’t it? The waiter comes by, you snap your fingers, and you ask for a 1928 vintage. And for me Smirnoff on the rocks because as far as I’m concerned all that French piss is for queers, right?”
    It was about seven when we emerged into the strangeness that holidays bring in Mexico City. Though cars were few and far between, the streets were brimming with people, large young families with children climbing up the backs and arms of their fathers and women with bodies made for having babies. The women looked prematurely worn out, their bodies fresh, new and, at the same time, devastated.
    We went to the Champs Elysees, a restaurant with a terrace overlooking
Paseo de la Reforma.
The place had become a haven for politicians and deal making, and it featured a menu whose offerings to Mexican diners varied from the ostentatious to the refined. Anabela asked for an inside table and the imported wine list.
    â€œPick a white to go with the fish like we agreed.” She held out the list to me when it came. “And choose the fish, too. Whatever. Just make sure it’s good and dead.”
    I ordered trout sauteed in butter and a bottle of Chablis that went down like water.
    â€œThat’s pretty good grape juice.” Anabela drained the last few drops from her glass. “Tell the little queer looking after us…”-she meant the waiter-”…that he can bring another bottle.”
    Another bottle was uncorked and dispatched as quickly as the first. It was gone before the trout arrived. We talked about the newspaper, about politics, and Anabela’s female acquaintances in Veracruz. The wife of the government secretary ordered a Mercedes Benz with purple velvet upholstery direct from Germany. The governor’s secretary collected 100 peso gold pieces and had them engraved with her name. The governor’s sister-in-law amassed a collection of 204 live insects, called
maqueches,
from Yucatan with emeralds encrusted in their carapaces. At a fiesta in honor of the President’s wife, the chief delegate from Oaxaca was so eager to be seen that he agreed to play the part of a giant
ahuehuete
tree during a medley of Oaxacan folk dances. The mayor of the port of Veracruz was a known homosexual, and his taste for gangbangers from the district of La Huaca was duly catered to. And the number one provider of both boys and girls in the port was an old woman who enjoyed the protection of the governor. She also went through the motions of presiding over the local Red Cross and named herself godmother for life of the Veracruz Sharks, a professional soccer team renowned for its record of 14 consecutive defeats on its home field.
    â€œWhen you get a close look at those limp-dicked soccer players,” Anabela said as she finished off the second bottle of