I said, ever friendly. “No, no, please. You must go first,” she said, but I insisted, and followed them in, thinking about how early it was. We must have been the first ones to hit the buffet—three yellow ducks in flip-flops and terry-cloth robe. The two Belgians, of course, were sans mud, while I bore a frontal smear that peeked out above the neckline of my bathrobe, like the dark body hair of a macho man. And then all of a sudden there he was: Santiago Arce, at a table underneath all the vines, not two steps away from me. What bad luck, I thought. What goddamn bad luck! Had it been possible to do so unnoticed, I would have definitely beat a hasty retreat to the door so that I could return later, looking a bit more presentable. But there was nothing I could do about it. He got up to say hello and smiled as (I imagine) he assessed my rather idiosyncratic look, and I had no choice but to say hello, with the distant conviviality that is the norm here at L’Hirondelle. Then, despite the difficulty of walking in flip-flops without dragging my feet, I somehow made it over to my table and ordered a yogurt and a tea as gracefully as I could, given that I was covered from toes to neck in sulfurous black goo that smelled, I am afraid to say, a lot like sardines.
