In One Person

with
everyone
!”
    “With men and women, yes—with
everyone
, no,” I said, smiling back at him.
    “I’m only asking because he
won’t
ask. Honestly, you’ll meet your father, and you’ll feel you’ve had
interviews
that are more in-depth than anything he’ll ask you or even
say
to you,” Señor Bovary warned me. “It isn’t that he doesn’t
care
—I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s
always
worrying about you—but your father is a man who believes your privacy is not to be invaded. Your dad is a
very
private man. I’ve only ever seen him be public about one thing.”
    “And that is?” I asked.
    “I’m not going to spoil the show. We should be going, anyway,” Señor Bovary said, looking at his watch.
    “
What
show?” I asked him.
    “Look, I’m not the performer—I just manage the money,” Bovary said. “You’re the
writer
in the family, but your father
does
know how to tell a story—even if it’s always the same story.”
    I followed him, at a fairly fast pace, from the Plaza Mayor to the Puerta del Sol. Bovary must have had those special sandals because he was a walker; I’ll bet he walked everywhere in Madrid. He was a trim, fit man; he’d had very little to eat for dinner, and nothing to drink but mineral water.
    It was probably nine or ten o’clock at night, but there were a lot of people in the streets. As we walked up Montero, we passed some prostitutes—“working girls,” Bovary called them.
    I heard one of them say the
guapo
word.
    “She says you’re handsome,” Señor Bovary translated.
    “Perhaps she means
you
,” I told him; he was
very
handsome, I thought.
    “She doesn’t mean me—she
knows
me,” was all Bovary said. He was all business—Mr. Money Manager, I was thinking.
    Then we crossed the Gran Vía into Chueca, by that towering building—the Telefónica. “We’re still a little early,” Señor Bovary was saying, as he looked again at his watch. He seemed to consider (then he reconsidered) taking a detour. “There’s a bear bar on this street,” he said, pausing at the intersection of Hortaleza and the Calle de las Infantas.
    “Yes, Hot—I had a beer there last night,” I told him.
    “Bears are all right, if you like
bellies
,” Bovary said.
    “I have nothing against bears—I just like beer,” I said. “It’s all I drink.”
    “I just drink
agua con gas
,” Señor Bovary said, giving me his small, twinkling smile.
    “Mineral water, with bubbles—right?” I asked him.
    “I guess we both like
bubbles
,” was all Bovary said; he had continued walking along Hortaleza. I wasn’t paying very close attention to the street, but I recognized that nightclub with the Portuguese name—A Noite.
    When Señor Bovary led me inside, I asked, “Oh, is
this
the club?”
    “Mercifully, no,” the little man replied. “We’re just killing time. If the show were starting
here
, I wouldn’t have brought you, but the show starts very late here. It’s safe just to have a drink.”
    There were some skinny gay boys hanging around the bar. “If you were alone, they’d be all over you,” Bovary told me. It was a black marble bar, or maybe it was polished granite. I had a beer and Señor Bovary had an
agua con gas
while we waited.
    There was a blue-tinted ballroom and a proscenium stage at A Noite; they were playing Sinatra songs backstage. When I quietly used the
retro
word for the nightclub, all Bovary said was, “To be kind.” He kept checking his watch.
    When we went out on Hortaleza again, it was almost 11 P.M.; I had never seen as many people on the street. When Bovary brought me to the club, I realized I’d walked past it and not noticed it—at least twice. It was a very small club with a long line out front—on Hortaleza, between the Calle de las Infantas and San Marcos. The name of the club I saw only now—for the first time. The club was called SEÑOR BOVARY .
    “Oh,” I said, as Bovary led me around the line to the stage door.
    “We’ll see Franny’s show,
then
you’ll meet him,” the little man was saying. “If I’m lucky, he won’t see you with me till the end of his routine—or
near
the end, anyway.”
    The same types I’d seen at A Noite, those skinny gay boys, were crowding the bar, but they made room for Señor Bovary and me. Onstage was a transsexual dancer, very passable—nothing
retro
about her.
    “Shameless catering to straight guys,” Bovary whispered in my ear. “Oh, and guys like
you
, I