‘The reconciliation with my friends from Caterina Albert Street was a done deal, but towards the middle of that autumn, without any shrillness or bad vibes, also without any explanation — as if it were obvious that our friendship had run its course and given all it had to give — I began to spend less time with them and more with a group of students doing their COU (Curso de Orientación Universitaria), in their final year of high school before going on to university. That’s how I met the first girl I ever went out with. Her name was Montse Roura and, despite the fact that she wasn’t doing her COU at the Marist Brothers’ school (she was actually only in her second year, and with the Carmelites), she was part of the gang because her brother Paco was. Montse and Paco were from Barcelona, had moved to Gerona two years earlier, when they were orphaned, and they lived in a building with several of their aunts and uncles in the old part of the city, a building where they had a flat to themselves. This made them the centre of the group, because their door was always open and not many Friday or Saturday nights went by when we didn’t get together at their place to listen to music, talk, drink and smoke. Also to take drugs, although that only happened once I’d started hanging out with them, simply because I was the only one who knew anything about them and how to get them, which turned me into the group’s dealer. In short: that was a magnificent time in my life, full of changes. During the week I studied hard and on the weekends I cut loose with my friends and Montse. I recovered my self-esteem and then some. I signed a definitive peace accord with my parents. I almost forgot Zarco and Tere.
‘It was my role as weekend drug dealer that led to my seeing Tere again. I already told you it happened in the middle of December; however, I haven’t told you that on that day I was with two of my trusty escorts on those weekly incursions into the underworld: one was Paco Roura and the other Dani Omedes, another regular in our gang. Paco had passed his driving test that summer and had the use of a Seat 600 belonging to one of his uncles, so every Friday evening he’d drive me over to the Flor, in Salt, where a couple of the dealers Zarco, Tere and the rest of us used to buy drugs from in the summer still hung out: Rodri and Gómez. That evening neither of the two was in the bar, and no one could tell me where I might find them. We waited for more than an hour, and eventually had no choice but to start driving around the city, first looking for them and then looking for any small-time dealer. We asked here and there, a bit by chance, in some bars in Sant Narcís and in the old town — at the Avenida, at the Acapulco, L’Enderroc, La Trumfa, the Groc Pub — and didn’t find anything. At some point I felt tempted to go back to La Font, but I resisted. It was almost ten when somebody told us about a bar in Vilarroja. Without much hope we went up to Vilarroja, found the bar, I left Paco and Dani in the car and went in.
‘As soon as I was through the door I saw her. She was sitting at the back of the bar, a tiny place, filled with people and smoke, with porcelain plates adorning the walls; beside her, around a table full of beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays, were three guys and a girl. Before I could get over to her table, a smile of recognition lit up her face. She stood up, made her way through the crowd, came up to me and asked me the same question she’d asked three months earlier, when I went to look for her in the prefabs, except in a cheerful and not suspicious tone: What are you doing here, Gafitas? As I already told you, during those three months I’d almost forgotten Tere and, when I did remember her, I only remembered the domestic, miserable, defeated quinqui that I’d fled from that day in the shithole of the prefabs; now I saw her again as I’d seen her the first time I laid eyes on her at the Vilaró arcade and as I saw her all summer long: sure of herself, teasing and radiant, the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen.
‘I avoided her question by asking if she wanted a beer. She smiled, accepted, we went to the bar, ordered two beers and she asked again what I was doing there, on my own. I answered that I wasn’t on my own, that two friends were waiting for me outside, in the car, and I asked her how she was. Fine, she answered. While they poured our beer it occurred to me that Tere could probably get me some gear, but also that I was obliged to ask another question. I asked the other question: How’s Zarco? Tere replied that he was still in jail, that like Gordo and Jou, he was still awaiting trial in the Modelo, and that she’d gone to Barcelona two or three times to see him and he’d seemed fine. Then she went on: she told me that — unlike Zarco, Gordo and Jou — Chino and Drácula had been tried and sentenced to five years, which they were serving in the Modelo; she told me that she hadn’t been going to La Font or the district for a few months now because after the arrest of Zarco and the others things had got ugly and there had been raids, arrests and beatings; she told me that the raids, arrests and beatings had not been confined to the district but had reached the prefabs and some bars in Salt and Germans Sàbat, that harassment from the cops had ended up dispersing the remnants of the gang and that, although none of the rest of them had been arrested, many people had ended up in jail. Do you remember the General and his wife? asked Tere. Of course, I answered. He’s in the nick, said Tere. They accused him of selling weapons to Zarco. But they killed his wife. Well, they had to kill her: when the cops went to pick them up at their house, she started shooting at them; in the end she took one of the pigs down with her. Tere looked at me with an expression of joy or admiration, or maybe of pride. You see, she said. And there we were thinking the old gal was blind.
‘She finished bringing me up to date with a piece of good news or what she considered good news: she didn’t live in the prefabs any more; actually, the prefabs no longer existed: they’d torn them down and, just over a week earlier, the people who were still in them had been relocated to La Font de la Pòlvora, nearby, where they had gone from living in barrack huts to living in recently constructed flats in recently constructed tower blocks in a recently constructed neighbourhood. While Tere was talking about her new life in La Font de la Pòlvora, it occurred to me that the end of the prefabs meant the end of Liang Shan Po, the definitive end of the blue border, and when she finished talking I feared she would ask about my life since we’d last seen each other. Before she could change the subject I did. I need some hash, I said. I went to the Flor, but neither Rodri nor Gómez were there, and I’ve spent all evening trying to find some. You need it right now? she asked. Yeah, I answered. How much? she asked. Three talegos should do me, I answered. Tere nodded. Wait for me outside, she said.
‘I paid for the beers, went outside and walked over to the field where my friends were waiting in the Seat 600. Dani rolled down the window and asked: What’s up? We’re in luck, I said, standing beside the car. Paco looked like he hadn’t taken his hands off the steering wheel, as if he was ready to start the engine and get out of there. I hope so, he said. This place gives me the creeps. After a few minutes Tere came out of the bar and I walked over to meet her. She reached into the pocket of her raincoat and pulled out three thin little bars of hash wrapped in tinfoil; she handed them to me: I took them in one hand while passing her three one-thousand-peseta notes with the other. Having made the exchange, we looked at each other in the shadows, standing between the long light extending out the door of the bar and the circle of light shining from a nearby streetlamp. The night was damp and cold. We weren’t very close to one another but the double spiral of vapour coming from our mouths seemed to envelop us in a shared mist. I pointed vaguely towards the Seat 600 and said: They’re waiting for me. Three men came out of the bar and walked past us; while they walked away up the street talking, Tere turned towards them and, without taking my eyes off her in the dimly lit street, I suddenly thought of the washrooms of the arcade and Montgó beach and for a moment I wanted to kiss her and almost had to remind myself that I was no longer in love with her and that she had just been a strange and fleeting summer fling. Tere turned back to me. I have to meet some friends tonight, I said very quickly, with the feeling I’d been caught red-handed and that I’d already said that; I asked: Are you busy tomorrow? No, answered Tere. If you want we could meet up, I suggested. You’re not going to stand me up this time? asked Tere. I immediately knew she was referring to the last time we saw each other, at the door of her hut in the prefabs when we’d arranged to meet at La Font the next day as we said goodbye and then I didn’t go. I didn’t want to pretend that I’d forgotten. Not this time, I promised. She smiled. Where should we meet? she said. Wherever you want, I said, and remembered the moment when Tere taught me, in the Marocco, that to dance you don’t have to know how to dance you just have to want to move, and added: Do you still go to Rufus? Not any more, said Tere. But if you want we can meet there. OK, I said. OK, she repeated. She kissed me on the cheek, said see you tomorrow and went back inside the bar.