To pass the time, Nula accompanies Chela and Américo, who are heading back to Paraná, to their car. They get in line at a register, and when they walk out to the parking lot the warm and somewhat humid air sticks to their cheeks. Although it’s already seven thirty, it’s still not completely dark. In the west, above the city, an enormous, bright red stain extends, smooth and uniform, over the sky, and below, through the shadows on the ground, the lights of the waterfront are visible. Américo suggests, possibly with an implicit warning, that he should leave too, but Nula says that he prefers to stay a while longer, until after eight, in case the girls at the stand need anything. His eyes follow Américo’s car as it drives away, and then he lifts his head toward the tense, brilliant stars in the dark blue sky. Ceaselessly, cars enter and exit the parking lot, they form lines for gas at the service station, they drive around looking for an open space, and their occupants come and go with their carts, empty or full of merchandise, all distinct and very real in the evening, yet at the same time improbable and somehow vague. The extensive facade of the supercenter, with its many entrances, the one to the hypermarket, to the mall, to the multiplex, illuminates the dark air with its neon signs, its geometric, outward projections of light, its lamplights indicating the edges of the cement that separates the sidewalk from the parking lot. Nula goes back in through the multiplex, studies the show times, and sees that there are lines forming for the eight o’clock show. Then he passes through the cafeteria, which is now full, and observes the crowd from the entrance: the line that fills the passageway between the main room and the dishes and beverages; the customers who, leaving the registers, carry their loaded trays, moving slowly, uncertain and somewhat discouraged, looking for a table. Farther off, the small room where they were selling tickets to the Sunday match is closed, and a small sign taped to the wooden door announces: TICKETS FOR THE CLÁSICO SOLD OUT. A man and a woman practically running from the parking lot freeze, stupefied, when they see the sign. Nula walks into the hypermarket, and, moving slowly through the crowded aisles, without stopping once to look at any of the many products on display, eventually arrives at the stand and stops a certain distance away. The prospective tasters of the new line of table wines swarm around the counter. As she’s serving a customer, the girl who offered Moro the wine, and who’s seen him approach, gives him a friendly gesture, and so Nula walks up to her.
— Everything alright? he says.
— Perfect. There’s barely enough to go around, the girl says.
— Do you need a hand? Nula says.
— No, no. Don’t worry about us. Ms. Virginia is sending someone at nine to help us pack everything up. You can leave if you like, she says, handing a cup of red wine to a man who was watching every one of her movements carefully.
Nula looks at his watch: it’s five after eight.
— Alright, Nula says. I’ll leave before the return of Affife.
The girl doesn’t get the joke, but she laughs politely and starts to fill another cup, this time of white wine. Nula turns around and starts walking toward the exit. The infinite loop of musical soundtracks heard in every elevator of every luxury hotel, in every supermarket, in every mall, in the variety shows on planes and in airports, the infinite wave of saccharine music that has been assaulting the West, and probably the East as well, for decades, like a soft requiem for the slow extinction of a species dying from a plague of conformism punctuated here and there by a marketing campaign, the thin molasses propelled by a plethora of violins, at the very moment when Nula crosses the exit, is playing “The Godfather,” and as if he’d been infected, without knowing it, by the virus of that same plague, as he steps into his car, Nula starts, softly, humming the melody. Because he still has time, he decides to get in line for gas at the service station, which takes awhile, and then he drives on, not really knowing what to do. After crossing the road bridge, rather than continuing along the boulevard, he turns up the waterfront along the edge of the lagoon, all the way to Guadalupe. At a bend, he sees the water glowing through the trees; it makes him want to get out and he starts to slow down but immediately changes his mind and drives on. At the Guadalupe roundabout he turns west and then back onto the same road, to the south. Thirty blocks later he reaches the boulevard, and, two blocks west, the bar Déjà Vu, but because he can’t park on the boulevard he turns at the corner, to the north, and parks halfway down the block. He walks slowly under the trees, in the warm night air. At nine fifteen on the dot he walks into the bar; Virginia is already there, not at a table but rather behind the counter, talking on the phone.
The bar is full, and although it’s been open for over a year and Nula has passed it many times in his car, looking at it curiously, it’s his first time inside. It’s a simple and pleasant bar, with French posters on the ochre walls and wooden tables and chairs. It’s full of young people—a hip place, Nula thinks with a hint of arrogance that he immediately regrets, and sidestepping the tables, which are all full, he walks toward the counter. Virginia sees him arrive, and as she talks on the phone she gestures for him to wait. As she talks she looks through the window at some vague spot on the dark boulevard, and Nula is able to examine her ample, firm body, her wide back and her well-proportioned, slender arms, their tanned, smooth skin revealing, discreetly, below the short sleeves of her marble-colored shirt, hard muscles. After a couple of minutes, Virginia hangs up.
— Muriel, my daughter; on Fridays she and her five friends all sleep over at someone’s house, Virginia says. Like old ladies getting together without their husbands.
— Like some of them, enjoying the liberties of widowhood, Nula says.
— What are you drinking? Virginia says, using tú unexpectedly. It’s on the house.
Nula, with a half smile, slowly shakes his head, unsure. Despite being a wine seller, he has a strong preference for more colorful, eccentric drinks, like Kir Royales, Bloody Marys, screwdrivers, Negronis, San Martín Secos, or Lemon Champs. Finally he decides:
— A Negroni, he says.
Virginia pours the liquors in a cylindrical glass, over three or four ice cubes, mixes them with a long-handled spoon, and, folding a paper napkin in half, puts the glass on top and slides it to the outside edge of the counter. Before touching it, Nula observes, admiringly, the deep red of the liquid mixture that Virginia has just prepared.
— Well? she says.
— Aren’t we going to toast? Nula says.
Virginia pours a small amount of seltzer into a glass and raises it. Nula raises his own, and the glasses, when they touch, produce a faint, momentary tinging. They take a drink, and Nula, with a gesture of approval, pursing his lips, concentrating on the flavor of the drink, looks up slowly.