He pressed the bell four times, thumped on the door, shouted. There was nobody at home, and he jumped up and down, the almost palpable lavatory had aroused an urgent desire to piss, he couldn’t hold on and thumped on the door again.
“I’m hungry, so hungry and nearly pissing myself,” the Count blurted out before greeting her or kissing her on the forehead and then rushing to lower his head to receive her womanly kiss. It was a tradition from the time when Skinny Carlos was very skinny and the Count spent every day in that house, and they played ping-pong and tried with dubious success to learn how to dance and studied physics in the early hours before their exams. But Skinny Carlos was skinny no more, and only he persisted in calling him that. Skinny Carlos now weighed in at more than two hundred pounds and moved around in fits and starts in a wheelchair. In 1981, in Angola, he’d got a bullet in the back, waist-high, and it severed his spinal cord. None of the five operations he’d undergone since had improved things, and Skinny awoke each morning with a new pain, another nerve or muscle that had been stilled forever.
“Hey, my boy, you look bloody awful,” said Josefina when she saw him coming out of the lavatory and handed him a glass of watery coffee.
“I’m on my last legs, Jose, and incredibly hungry.” And gave her the glass back after taking only one sip of coffee.
Much relieved and cigarette already lit, he entered his friend’s room. Skinny was in his wheelchair, in front of the television and looking worried.
“They say they’re seeing to the ground, and the game will go ahead. Hey, no, for Christ’s sake, no,” he protested as he saw his friend unwrapping a bottle of rum.
“We need to talk, my brother, and I need two shots of rum. If you don’t…”
“Fuck, you’ll be the death of me,” rasped Skinny, and he started to swing his chair round. “Don’t give me any ice, that Santa Cruz is so sweet.”
The Count left the room and came back carrying two glasses and a corkscrew.
“Well, how are things going?”
“I’ve just been to Tamara’s, Skinny, I swear to you, the wench is hotter than ever. She doesn’t get older. She just gets better.”
“Women are like that. Do you still want to marry her?”
“Fuck off. You’re right about this rum. It’s really good.”
“My friend, take it gently today. You look really shit.”
“It’s a combination of sleep deprivation, hunger and incipient baldness,” he said, pointing to his receding hairline before taking another sip. “No news, the man’s still missing and no clue as to where the fuck he’s got to or why he’s vanished, whether he’s dead or alive…”