Free Holy City by Guillermo Orsi

round a table with the other labor bosses to decide whether they are going to support the government or plot against it.
    Pacogoya stares back at all the queers he meets in the night world. Sometimes one of them follows him and accosts him; it is only then that he puts the record straight. Although not always: when he feels very alone, as he is tonight, and very lost, like a new-born babe in a world devastated by a nuclear catastrophe, he accepts their invitation. And then in some charming apartment nearby, he fucks or is fucked and earns himself a few pesos or dollars. A reward for taking it up the ass or leaving his manhood to one side, like an umbrella in its stand on a rainy day.
    Tonight he is about to agree to one of these deals with a man who like him is around forty, although he looks over fifty. He is bald and paunchy, wearing a suit but no tie, his shirt collar unbuttoned to show a scrawny neck. Two days’ growth of stubble at least. He makes it clear he is not a pansy, what he is looking for is a warm, inviting ass. Pacogoya’s ringtone interrupts their bargaining: “It’s Uncle, you stinking faggot, get away from me.” He pushes off the decrepit forty-year old, who spits at his feet like a guanaco in the Atacama desert, then waddles off, his bulk heavy as a cow that’s already too old for slaughter.
    Uncle is calling, but it is not Uncle. A murderer’s voice always sounds muffled because of the hood he is wearing. To a killer, a head separated from a body is nothing more than an anatomical curiosity, a subject without its predicate, a flower plucked from its bunch. “We were following you,” the voice says. “In the end we had to overtake because you were fast asleep. What happened, did your Porsche get stuck in second?”
    Whoever it is using Uncle’s phone does not expect him to answer. The caller knows that at the far end of the line there is someone who is about to wet himself with fear, but who wants to do the deal, to keep his promise to his cruise-liner customers. “You can come and get your stuff,” he hears. “It’s on the bed. Leave the dough on the bedside table, on top of the
Playboy
magazine Uncle jerks off over every night. Don’t touch anything or go looking for Uncle. We’re in charge now.”
    Pacogoya’s first reaction is to get out, run away as he did from San Pedro. But it will not wash to present himself to his customers like a popcorn seller who has had his cart stolen. He has to be able to offer them at least half of what they ordered. He could even up the cost. “The market’s difficult,” he could tell them. “Lots of cops on the lookout.” The other option, which he dismisses as moral cowardice, would be to end up in the arms of the pansy for a couple of pesos.
    He has never been to Uncle’s place. He has the card with his address—“but don’t ever even think of coming here unless I invite you,” Uncle warned him the first day they met. It is only three blocks away, on Viamonte. The tenth floor of an old building with windows you can see the river from.
    He has known him fifteen years but never got the invitation. He knows nothing about Uncle’s way of life. They have always talked about business, women, football occasionally—although Uncle prefers polo: “A sport for gentlemen,” he says, “with no riffraff, where it’s the horse that is in control.” He has no children; perhaps that is why he is called Uncle. He does have nephews and according to what little Pacogoyahas heard of them—from Uncle himself—they are all up to no good. “They’re like you,” he would tell him. “Nobodies, lightweights, nothing solid, chancers.”
    At first Pacogoya bridled at this. He would get up and leave the Florida Garden. Uncle would sit there watching him walk off, with a wave to him in the distance, mouthing “you’ll be