“Undoubtedly,” Solange said,
“Perhaps you would like to accompany me,” Ireneo said,
“I’m going back there right now,” Solange said,
“Well then, good-bye,” Ireneo said, and he stopped and Solange continued, and, as she caught sight — though she couldn’t quite believe it at first — of Raimon waving his cigar at her from down the block, she thought, “I will run so fast they won’t see me coming,” though unfortunately, in the event, they did.
The stairs Harry climbed after leaving the globe-lit courtyard were made of fine marble and the banister with which he supported his sore knee was polished ebony and the walls were encrusted with gold leaf and mother of pearl and the door he decided corresponded with the connoisseurs, not least because it stood ajar, was a richly burnished slab of solid oak in the center of which had been sunk a peephole of cyclopean proportion, and if something like the smell of old fish hadn’t seemed to emanate from it, Harry likely would have been more than mildly surprised to step out of all that careful elegance into a small, badly lit and even more badly ventilated room, on the filthy floor of which lay scattered more than one delicate fish carcass, along with miscellaneous small bones, scraps of paper, soda bottles, portions of moldy fruit, and a half-eaten box of brandy-filled chocolates, which one of the connoisseurs, who were still standing by the room’s only window, picked up and held out to Harry, who looked at it for quite some time before shaking his head,
“Well then, fuck you, friend,” the connoisseur said and lifted out one of the chocolates and handed it to the one of the other connoisseurs who popped it into his mouth and said as he chewed,
“What my colleague means is, welcome Knight of the Woeful Countenance, welcome to our fucking abode,”
“Thank you, I was following Solange and Ireneo,” Harry said,
“Who aren’t here,” said one of the connoisseurs,
“Then perhaps they’re in another apartment,”
“They’re not in another apartment,”
“There are no other apartments, it’s all offices, this isn’t even an apartment,”
“This is our office,”
“Our orifice,”
“Nice, huh?”
“Connoisseur central,”
“Where we do our business, direct traffic, etc.,”
“Sorry about the mess,”
“It is messy,” Harry said,
“Yeah, well, it’s been a long week,”
“A long century,”
“I should go find Solange and Ireneo, I’m sorry to have troubled you,”
“They aren’t here, not in this building, you won’t find them,”
“Believe us,”
“Although if you want to step over to the window here in about five seconds, you’ll see one of them,”
“Yeah?” Harry said,
“Come on over, stand between us,”
Harry went to the window and, with connoisseurs on either side of him, watched a rather red-faced Solange burst through the street door, hurl herself halfway across the courtyard, then vanish,
“What are you thinking she’s good for?”
“Once more, twice?”
“Twice, at least, this guy’s got real charm,”
“And she knows he’s here,”
“She does indeed,”
“You sure you don’t want a chocolate?”
“I should be going,” Harry said,
“What’s the rush?”
“Yeah, what’s the hurry?”
“Alfonso’s here too, in the other room,”
“Care to see him?”
“I bet he’d like to see you, he’s not feeling too well,”
“Got something at the market, didn’t sit right,”
“Alfonso’s here?”
“That traitorous son of a bitch,”
Harry looked first at one connoisseur, then at the others, and then at his pale reflection in the window,
“What’s he doing here?”
“Alfonso? we were talking,”
“Deliberating on the subject of loyalty, or the evils of being a blabbermouth,”
“Now he’s resting,”
“I think I understand,” Harry said,
“Understand what?”
“This, you three, I mean not exactly, but sort of, this is bad, right?”
“What’s exactly? Who cares?”
“Not I, said the fat, fucking fly,”
“He’s getting it,”
“You think so?”
“It’s finally coming back to him,”
Harry looked at their reflections, took a deep breath then another then took a step backwards, and saw that the three of them formed a kind of tripod upon which, Harry thought, a terrible, almost invisible camera could sit and snap photographs of his misery,