tables in the lobby and order a tea with milk that a waiter brings me on a silver tray and for which I’m charged an exorbitant sum. I lie there in wait, among people hurrying about, waiting for the right moment to approach one of the desk clerks to ask for the guest register for that weekend; if they’d let me see it, I’d at least have a list of names, and behind one of those names would be a person who could tell me what I need to know, but of course I’m afraid to ask for it because they wouldn’t give it to me, they’d tell me not to stick my nose into matters that don’t concern me. But it does concern me, I’d shout at them, it’s the only thing in the world that matters to me, though then they’d have even more reason to call security, seeing me as a potential kidnapper.
Although maybe not. Among the clerks on the night shift, I’ve noticed a girl with a lot of spirit, a fearless girl. I see it in the way she carries herself, like a woman fighting tooth and nail to make a living, in the way she has of looking people straight in the eye, in her skirt, four inches shorter than those of her fellow workers, in the brisk gesture with which her hand with its painted nails pushes back her ringleted hair. She shows every sign of being ready to ignore the hotel rules and risk her job in exchange for nothing, in exchange for helping someone in need; in fact she must already be irritating the manager with that disco miniskirt and nonregulation hairstyle, and all just because, because that’s how she seems to be, strong and staunch and used to doing as she pleases. This country is full of people like her, and I’ve learned to recognize them in a flash. But what if it isn’t true? I’m afraid of being wrong, and in the end I can’t build up the courage to ask her anything, though of course the main obstacle is really the conviction that as soon as I return to the scene of events, what happened will repeat itself in a kind of unbearable replay; what’s really holding me back, I mean, is the suspicion that those events are still pulsing in the place they occurred, and I’m afraid to face them. Tomorrow I’ll do it, I tell myself as I leave the Wellington, tomorrow I’ll be back, I’ll wait until the Fearless Girl finishes her shift, I’ll ask her to come with me to a café far from the hotel, far from the gaze of her supervisor, and I’ll interrogate her.
OF COURSE I DIDN’T BELIEVE shit when Spider told me to bet with confidence because his pecker wasn’t all the way dead yet; if I took the bet despite everything it was because ultimately I didn’t mind losing, or at least that was how I explained it to myself, since after all I’d skim the money they won from the wad that Pablo Escobar sent them through me and they wouldn’t even notice, how could they, when they were flapping their ears in delight at the rapturous and hygienic way they were getting rich, not sullying their hands in dirty business or being driven to sin or lifting a single finger, because all they had to do was wait for the filthy money to fall from heaven, already washed, laundered, and disinfected.
Or could you possibly have thought things were any other way, princess? Can it be that you didn’t know where all those dollars came from, the dollars flowing to your brother Joaco and your father and all their buddies, and so many others from the Las Lomas Polo Club and the society circles of Bogotá and Medellín, the dollars with which they opened those fat bank accounts in the Bahamas, Panama, Switzerland, and every fiscal paradise in existence, as if they were international jet-setters? Why do you think your family welcomed me into their house like a sultan, Agustina kitten, why they dusted off the Baccarat crystal and the Christofle cutlery for me, and served me mousses and pâtés and blinis that your mother made with her own hands, even though I had gotten you pregnant and not even threats could make me marry you as your father
Although maybe not. Among the clerks on the night shift, I’ve noticed a girl with a lot of spirit, a fearless girl. I see it in the way she carries herself, like a woman fighting tooth and nail to make a living, in the way she has of looking people straight in the eye, in her skirt, four inches shorter than those of her fellow workers, in the brisk gesture with which her hand with its painted nails pushes back her ringleted hair. She shows every sign of being ready to ignore the hotel rules and risk her job in exchange for nothing, in exchange for helping someone in need; in fact she must already be irritating the manager with that disco miniskirt and nonregulation hairstyle, and all just because, because that’s how she seems to be, strong and staunch and used to doing as she pleases. This country is full of people like her, and I’ve learned to recognize them in a flash. But what if it isn’t true? I’m afraid of being wrong, and in the end I can’t build up the courage to ask her anything, though of course the main obstacle is really the conviction that as soon as I return to the scene of events, what happened will repeat itself in a kind of unbearable replay; what’s really holding me back, I mean, is the suspicion that those events are still pulsing in the place they occurred, and I’m afraid to face them. Tomorrow I’ll do it, I tell myself as I leave the Wellington, tomorrow I’ll be back, I’ll wait until the Fearless Girl finishes her shift, I’ll ask her to come with me to a café far from the hotel, far from the gaze of her supervisor, and I’ll interrogate her.
OF COURSE I DIDN’T BELIEVE shit when Spider told me to bet with confidence because his pecker wasn’t all the way dead yet; if I took the bet despite everything it was because ultimately I didn’t mind losing, or at least that was how I explained it to myself, since after all I’d skim the money they won from the wad that Pablo Escobar sent them through me and they wouldn’t even notice, how could they, when they were flapping their ears in delight at the rapturous and hygienic way they were getting rich, not sullying their hands in dirty business or being driven to sin or lifting a single finger, because all they had to do was wait for the filthy money to fall from heaven, already washed, laundered, and disinfected.
Or could you possibly have thought things were any other way, princess? Can it be that you didn’t know where all those dollars came from, the dollars flowing to your brother Joaco and your father and all their buddies, and so many others from the Las Lomas Polo Club and the society circles of Bogotá and Medellín, the dollars with which they opened those fat bank accounts in the Bahamas, Panama, Switzerland, and every fiscal paradise in existence, as if they were international jet-setters? Why do you think your family welcomed me into their house like a sultan, Agustina kitten, why they dusted off the Baccarat crystal and the Christofle cutlery for me, and served me mousses and pâtés and blinis that your mother made with her own hands, even though I had gotten you pregnant and not even threats could make me marry you as your father
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