I was saved by Verraco, who whirled in shouting at me without saying hello. ‘What are you up to! You haven’t installed it yet? They’re all waiting.’ I said goodbye to George, who in his drunken stupor had perhaps mistaken my hand for one of the Islands and wouldn’t let go, and stepped out into the corridor. An unmistakable, welcoming, almost homely aroma filtered under the door of my old office, and in my enthusiasm I knocked loudly, without noticing that the old wooden door had been replaced by a press-board one, into which my knuckles sank, making a dent, at the bottom of which a fine crack appeared, and in my attempts to grout it with saliva my finger went through to the other side; but before I could pull it out again, I felt someone grab it and cried out, backing my arm up with such force that it took the skewered door with it. ‘I’ve got him! I’ve got the spy!’ screeched an indignant voice from the other side, without letting go or showing itself, the door still suspended between the two of us. I tried to circle round him, but that only made him turn too and we’d started to get dizzy when, with a shove, I managed to pop the door back into its frame, this time with me on the inside and my dancing partner on the outside. While I was holding the fort against the battering of his fists, I checked out the alterations they’d made: it was narrower owing to a new partition, and a lot of the old computers had been replaced, but something intangible preserved its identity. The smell probably, I thought, as I scanned the place until I spotted a wisp of smoke and let go of the door to open a drawer which, as if it had been holding its breath, exhaled a blast of white fumes. Catapulted forwards, a gangling nerd burst into the room and trained his bright, glassy eyes and chinless jaw on me, and shouted at me in that shrill and brittle voice affected by young men who’ve been given too much authority:
‘You haven’t touched anything, have you?’
I pulled furiously on the spliff to breathe life into its embers. Then I held it aloft.
‘This.’
‘You from narcotics, are you? What section?’
‘I’m from the outside.’
He brushed aside a greasy cowlick that had got in the way of his disbelief. He looked as if he’d just woken up from a nap in a tin of sardines.
‘Outside? Are you pulling my leg?’
‘Can’t. No hands free,’ I said, puffing merrily away. ‘Verraco sent me.’
His face changed the second he heard the name; even his hair suddenly perked up as in a before-and-after shampoo ad.
‘But then you must be … Forgive me, Master, I didn’t recognise you, come in and sit down. Félix, Felipe Félix, my God.’ He offered me a seat, another joint, a right hand with long, serrated, black-rimmed nails. ‘You don’t know how often I’ve imagined this moment …’
‘And who are you?’
‘Your disciple.’
‘Didn’t know I had any.’
‘I applied for this job so I could study your designs in depth. I tried to follow in your footsteps, you know. If you’ve got time, I’d like to show you some improvements I’ve made, I mean changes … I always wanted to be like you.’
‘I didn’t.’
He eased the tension floating in the air with conciliatory gestures of his long, fine fingers, flat-tipped like spatulas, adapted to the computer keys the way bats’ fingers are adapted to flight or seals’ to swimming.
‘I know, I know. I don’t belong here either. This is just a temporary thing. So I can be close to them,’ he said, caressing the nearest computer. ‘That’s the price, isn’t it? Did you bring the game? I’m dying to try it out.’