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number. “They said to carry that instead of your passport. It’s safer.”
    Hugo plucked at a cord around his neck, which she hadn’t seen before. It ran under his shirt. He smiled. “I always wear this. These people will kill for a passport. Of course you have a safe in your room, don’t you? I’m in a casa particular , in Centro. Consulado. They say you can leave stuff with them but I don’t trust them—after all, it’s just a room in somebody’s house.”
    He wrote everything down and then handed back the card. She wondered if she’d done the right thing. She had, in any case, done something. He was probably just being polite, and wouldn’t visitCalle K; but if he did, it now occurred to her, he would meet Enrique. “There’s something I ought to tell you,” she said. “I don’t know if it makes any difference, but Almado is gay. So was . . . my friend.”
    Hugo rocked back in his chair, sitting as she’d first seen him. “Oh,” he said.
    â€œMurray met Almado here, you see. On a holiday. They became friends. It was that sort of thing—”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œWell, Murray ended up sponsoring him, with immigration, trying to get him into the country. There’s a way you can. But it takes a long time. And then Murray had a heart attack. It wasn’t AIDS. I know people sometimes lie about it, but that’s all it was, a heart attack. He never really got better, so he couldn’t go through with it. He wrote Almado and explained but he still wanted to help him. So he left him the money.”
    â€œSo Murray was older?”
    â€œYes.”
    Hugo shrugged. “I can never figure out gays. It would be like looking into a mirror and seeing a different face looking out at you. But it’s okay. It doesn’t bother me.”
    She was surprised, somehow, by this turn of phrase, “looking into a mirror and seeing a different face”; it was not so ordinary. Perhaps he was remembering it, quoting. She was relieved however; and partly on Murray’s behalf. She looked at Hugo again. It was still uncanny—he looked so . . . whatever Almado looked like. Maybe it was his eyes, which certainly could have been Cuban, or Mexican, that was true, for they were dark brown, almost black. She smiled. “You’ve been very kind. I really should leave you. Your friend will be coming.”
    â€œOkay. Look, I’ll try. Don’t hold your breath, but you never know.” He grinned—he had very white, even teeth. And then he added, “On that card, it said your name was . . . it was hard to read . . . Lorraine—?”
    â€œI’m sorry. Heavenly days . . . can I say it again?” She laughed, holding out her hand. “Lorraine Stowe. It was wonderful to meet you.”
    He took her hand, in a firm, straightforward clasp. “You too.”
    She turned—but as she did so, he called her back. “Lorraine?”
    She turned around. He was looking at her. And now, all at once, she finally did see that he was not Almado, however much he resembled him. He was someone other: not who she imagined or pictured . . . someone altogether different, someone she didn’t know at all. He smiled, and for a second creases formed along the sides of his mouth and he looked much older, as if his youth, not precisely a deception, was now rather worn. But then, as if to reassure her, he passed his hand over his hair and was almost an adolescent once more. “Look, if I find him,” he said, “if I was actually to meet up with him—what can I say? I mean, if he wants to know, is it worth his while? This is money, right?”
    â€œYes—”
    â€œWhat he’s getting?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut you don’t want to say how much?”
    Lorraine hesitated, and then she felt her face going pink. “Ten thousand dollars,” she said, and she was going to