The breeze was still billowing the curtains, and the sun had not stopped shining: it would be a genuine shame to waste a day like this. In September, the weather changes so quickly. He glanced over at the bed. Lilia was still sleeping in that spontaneous, free position of hers: her head leaning on her shoulder and her arm stretched over the pillow, her shoulder bare and one knee bent, poking out of the sheet. He walked over to the young body on which that first light was gracefully playing, illuminating the golden down on her arms and the moist corners of her eyelids, her lips her blond underarms. He bent over to examine the pearls of sweat on her lips and to feel the warmth that rose from this body of a small animal at rest, burned by the sun, innocently lewd. Wishing to turn her over so he could see her body from the front, he reached out his arms. Her half-opened lips closed, and she sighed. He went down to breakfast.
When he finished his coffee, he wiped his lips with his napkin and looked around. It seemed that only children and their nannies had breakfast at this hour. The smooth, still-dripping heads belonged to the ones own hadn't resisted the temptation of a pre-breakfast swim, who were now getting ready, wet bathing suits and all, to go back to the beach, the beach that offered a time without time in which the imagination of each child would impose its own rhythm on the hours, long or short, of castles and walls under construction, of happy preludes to burials, of splashing strolls, and wrestling in the surf, of bodies stretched out without time in the time of the sun, of shrieks in the intangible wrapping of the water. It was strange to see them, at such a tender age, already looking at the hole they'd dug as the bizarre shelter of a fictitious burial, for a sand palace. Now the children were leaving, and the adult hotel guests were coming in.
He lit a cigarette and got ready for the slight vertigo that for the past few months had accompanied his first smoke of the day. He looked far away from the dining room, toward the well-defined curve of the beach that snaked its foamy way from its farthest point on the open sea along the calm half-moon arc of the bay, which was now dotted with sailboats and the growing noise of activity. A couple he knew passed his table, and he waved hello to them. Then he bent his head and inhaled his cigarette again.
The noise level in the dining room rose: forks and knives on plates, teaspoons banged against cups; bottles uncapped and mineral water beginning to bubble, chairs moved, and conversations taking place between couples and among groups of tourists. There was also the growing noise of the surf, which did not resign itself to being overwhelmed by human clamor. From his table, he could see the esplanade of Acapulco's new frontage, which had been hastily erected to provide comfort for the huge influx of travelers from the United States, which the war had taken from Waikiki, Portofino, and Biarritz, and to mask the squalid, muddy land behind it where naked fishermen lived in shacks with their swollen-bellied children, their mangy dogs, streams of sewage, trichinosis, and bacteria. Two ages are always present in this Janus-like community with its double face, so far from what it once was, and so far from what it would like to be.
Seated, he went on smoking, feeling a slight swelling in his legs, which even at eleven o'clock in the morning could not stand this summer clothing. Surreptitiously, he massaged his knee. It must have been the cold inside him, because the morning was bursting into a single round light, and the skull of the sun was burning with an orange plume. And Lilia walked in, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He stood up and helped her into her chair. He motioned to the waiter. He took note of the married couple's whispers. Lilia asked for papaya and coffee.
"Get a good night's sleep?"
She nodded, smiled without parting her lips, and patted the man's dark hand, which stood out against the white tablecloth.
"Do you think the Mexico City papers are here yet?" she asked as she cut her slice of papaya into tiny pieces. "Why don't you find out?"
"Right away. But hurry, because we're expected on the yacht at twelve."
"Where will we eat?"
"At the club."
He walked over to the desk. Yes, it was going to be another day like yesterday, with difficult conversations consisting of pointless questions and answers. But the nights, when there were no more words, were a different matter entirely. Why should he ask for more? The wordless contact between them did not require true love, not even the semblance of personal interest. He wanted a girl for his vacation. He got her. On Monday it would all be over, and he'd never see her again. Who could ask for more? He bought the papers and went to his room to put on his flannel slacks.
In the car, Lilia immersed herself in the papers and commented on some movie reviews. She crossed her tan legs and dangled one shoe. He lit his third cigarette of the morning, neglected to tell her that he was the editor of the paper she was reading, and let his mind wander as he read the billboards on the new buildings and observed the strange transition from the fifteen-story hotel and the hamburger joint to the bald mountain that spilled, red-bellied, onto the highway, its guts torn open by a steam shovel.
When Lilia leapt gracefully onto the deck and he tried to keep his balance as he cautiously stepped aboard, the other man was already there. It was he who lent them a hand so they could get off the swaying pier.