Free Mexico City Noir by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

four stories down to the ground, is there any possibility of survival?
    Movement.
    Stop!
    There’s a blonde who looked up my name and info and asked to meet me here. The signs are clear: this is an affair. And I, who am not at all stupid, had been certain that a blonde could only be bedded every two centuries.
    This was my century.
    The guy with the gun shows up midcentury.
    The blonde disappears as the century comes to an end.
    Anachrony.
    When fleeing, it’s important not to leave behind the people you love.
    A dark tunnel. The same way you come into life, the same way you leave.
    Can a tomb be considered a dark tunnel? Is a vagina a dark tunnel?
    Is a penis a dark tunnel?
    Jean Valjean carrying Mario through the barreling darkness …
    The Count of Monte Cristo fleeing through the dark …
    A stethoscope bringing a sign of life is a dark conduit …
    Big bang, the damn dark barrel, the fucking quarks are all black holes …
    Blondes are not good companions for adventures.
    Guns are better companions for adventures.
    Brunettes are not good companions for adventures either.
    The day has not been good.
    More than seventy years old, the lady paces the apartment and a cat follows; she watches it with distrust. Perhaps the cat is just anxious, it almost always gets this way when it rains, maybe because of that thing about how cats don’t like water, but this is a strange cat, it almost never goes outside so it shouldn’t be afraid of the rain; in fact, the lady has never seen the cat outside the house. What’s the cat’s name? The cat has a peculiar name, her husband says it and the cat jumps into his lap, but for a while now she’s been forgetting things, because of that damn disease whose name she would say but it’s obvious she’s also forgotten that, like with so many other things in this world, and she thinks that at this point in her life it may be better to forget things, to loosen the ballast, like a balloon that needs to stay light to withstand—what do they call that?—yes, the last reverses of life. God, if only she knew what a reverse meant, a reverse was a stitch she once learned in her youth which she used when sewing and embroidering and all those things that make a woman more of a woman, manual tasks such as ironing and cooking in order to keep a man happy enough so he’ll maintain the household; so now what can a reverse in life possibly mean? How it is possible that life has a reverse, and if it has a reverse then it must have a forward, but she has never experienced a forward. Life has only been difficult, as she certainly knows. They came to that room in the neighborhood forty years before, just for a while, but the years piled up and a while became always and they’ve lived there ever since, and they had children, of course, three of them, two boys and a girl, all stillborn. That’s why they didn’t want to try a fourth time—why bring the dead into this world when supposedly this is the world of life? No, no children, it was imperative to accept the loneliness and the cats her husband brought to the house, many of which left, tired of the lack of food and the smell of poverty and grease all over the place. Only that one cat stayed with them and lived there, hiding under the furniture, but that night the cat seemed nervous, perhaps because of the rain. She could smell the scent of humidity, her muscles sensed it would rain that night, she was positive. The best thing to do would be to close the window to make sure the armchair in the living room didn’t get wet. She took a step, watched the cat arch its back, and pushed the curtains to close the shutters—and that’s when she saw a man hurrying up the stairs. That struck her as odd; perhaps it was somebody on the way to the roof to collect his laundry before it got wet on the line, but no—in that neighborhood, the men never went up on the roof, much less to gather laundry. She knew she was right when she saw another guy go up after the