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her back, and I could hear her rubbing them together. She lowered her eyes, then raised them again. It seemed to me that her whole body was quivering imperceptibly, but maybe I was only drunk.
    “You want to use the telephone?”
    “Yes.”
    Once again, I went into the bedroom; once again, I stroked the tobacco-colored chenille bedspread. I looked at the telephone. I looked at it as though it were made of plastic, a toy that wouldn’t put me in touch with anybody or anything. I didn’t even touch it. I closed the dresser drawer. I straightened out Jesus on the wall. Then I stood up and walked toward the door. I just wanted to get out of there. The vodka had left me with a dull headache and no manners.
Maybe I won’t go to the beach house; maybe I’ll go back to the city
and get in bed, I don’t want to do anything or see anyone.
    “No answer?”
    “No.”
    There’s that cold fireplace behind her, empty and black as a toothless mouth. I catch her by the arm and hold on. She breathes through her mouth; her breath is like a rat’s breath. Suddenly, her face is quite close to me, and it changes shape. Her eyes with their dark shadows look huge; they dart about under her eyebrows like two imprisoned insects. I’m twisting her arm. She’s so alien to me, and so close. I think about hawks, about how frightened of them I was as a little boy. I raise my hand to knock her far away from me, her and her knickknacks and her poverty. But instead, I grab the paste flower on her shirt and pull her against me. She tries to bite my hand, working her jaws in the air. I don’t yet know what she has to be afraid of, I don’t know what I intend to do. I only know that my other hand is pulling that coarse hair of hers very hard, I’ve got a handful of it, and I’m holding it like an ear of corn. Then I go at her with my teeth. I gouge her chin and her hard, frightened lips. I let her groan, because now she has a good reason, now that I’ve torn that paste flower off her chest and seized her skinny breasts and started to knead them. And now my hands are between her legs, between her bones. She averts her eyes from my fury, lowers her chin to her neck, raises one vague arm above her head. And that arm trembles, because I find her sex, as lean as the rest of her, and I’ve already got mine in my hand. I thrust her quickly against the wall— no, more than quickly—and her yellow head jerks downward. She’s a loose-limbed puppet, slumped backward against the wall. I pull her up by the jawbone, drooling into her ear. My saliva runs down her back while I thrash inside her bony cavity like a raptor in a captured nest. And thus I make an utter ruin of her, of myself, and of that muddled afternoon.
    I don’t know if she was panting afterward; maybe she was crying. She lay on the floor, clasping her body. Quite beside myself, I retreated hastily to the other side of the room. The blind dog’s muzzle, resting on one paw, protruded from under the sofa. I could see his hanging ears, his clouded eyes. The unmoving monkey on the wall kept sucking his bottle. My glasses were on the floor near the door; one lens was broken. I took a few steps and bent to pick them up. Then I stuffed my wet shirttails back into my pants and left the house without a word.
    The car was parked in front of the mechanic’s shop with the key in the switch. I started the engine and drove away. Soon I was going down the long, straight highway, past stands of wild pine and thickets of withered reeds. I hit the brakes but failed to come to a full stop, then opened my door and vomited while the car was moving. I fumbled around under the seat and brought out my bottle of water. The plastic container was hot, and so were its contents. I rinsed out my mouth, stuck my head out the window, and poured what was left in the bottle over my head. The road ran on, as did the smell of great heat, mingled now with the odor of the sea, which was very close. I let go of the steering