Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa Page B

such a hurry to help animals when the world was filled with desperate human beings, and remembering that, I hesitated, and didn’t know what to do, so I took the dog to the kitchen and asked Felicity, our Haitian cook, to give it a plate with some leftover meat and rice, and then went to tell Walter, because I didn’t want him bothered the next day, after all he was the owner of the house and the founder of the Ministry.
    I went up to his private area and Jessica told me he was in the gym, so I headed there, but when I opened the door I saw a scene that left me horrified, though those of you more accustomed to the plots of novels may already have seen it coming. Walter was lying on one of the weight machines, moving as if he was dancing reggeaton, which was the music they’d put on, as it happens, while Jefferson, his fitness trainer, was supporting his legs or something, but on looking closer I realized that what they were doing was fucking, I didn’t look too closely because I didn’t want to see it properly, but it seemed obvious to me that they were on the verge of an orgasm, and just at that moment the song finished, imagine the shock, my friends, so I held my breath, closed my eyes and kept quiet until another song started and I was able to get out without them hearing me, as silent as a ninja, calm in the midst of danger and dangerous in the midst of calm, because something deep down, that instinct for self-preservation that doctors say is located in the cerebellum, but for me is somewhere between the prostate and the balls, told me, if they see you, you’re in danger.
    By the time I got out of there, my heart was pounding irregularly, like an out of order washing machine, and I thought, that’s it, it’s all up for me, my heart’s going to stop, time to check out, goodbye to all this, and I don’t know how I managed to get to my bedroom, but I lay down on the bed and cried for a long time, in that harsh, bitter way that grown men cry, and you may wonder if deep down there wasn’t a little bit of jealousy involved, but I hasten to say, no, what there was fear, was a fear that chilled me to the bone and made my hair stand on end, that made me think I was at the bottom of a dark abyss, at the bottom of a well, covered with ice-cold water, in other words, I was already dead, because, to me, seeing Walter with Jefferson was irrefutable proof that he wasn’t the son of God at all, just a piece of shit like me and everyone else, a man with his human passions and mistakes, and that made me scared, I felt defenseless, I didn’t have the voice of something great by my side anymore, just a traveling companion, and so life started going downhill again.
    And what if it was a hallucination? could it be that Satan had played a dirty trick on me to confuse me? it was possible, that damn struggle between good and evil was always unpredictable, except that you knew good would win out in the end, but, yes, it must have been that, I said to myself, Jefferson was helping him to train and Satan made me see it as sex in order to create a rift between us, the best thing to do was go to sleep and forget about it.
    I pressed my eyelids shut, hoping that by the next day everything would have been blotted out, but it was no use, because when it was time for prayers I saw them arrive at the chapel together, and at breakfast, from the things they were saying, I realized they had been jogging together, early in the morning, so I didn’t open my mouth, I just ate my food, my friends, and when I left it was as if I’d been expelled, or maybe I should say, repelled, and I went for a walk by the sea, because there’s a kind of conversation with yourself that you can only have in spaces like that, facing the sea or in demolished aircraft hangars, anyway, I tried to calm down, saying, well, you have to understand, José, the man is flesh and blood and he likes to dip his wick like anyone