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The stupor starts to shake off Alfredo at dawn. Dust settles around him in sickly rivulets, and a light migraine oppresses his temple. He is lying on the wooden floor, face down. Ada is absent; whenever she is, Alfredo thinks he dreamt her Lorelei hair and lunatic eyes, her hysterics and avarice so similar to his. He knows he would be like her, were he a woman, pronouncedly insane from the bloodletting. Often, by simple association, Alfredo remembers his hand slapping a labor-roughened cheek, the giddiness of a chase, the sweet humiliation of a body pressing into his, his clothes wrinkled and dirtied from the struggle all the way through to the white undershirt to his chest.
Early bluish light - not yet sun - caresses Alfredo’s side. He feels wooden, old, pained. Ever the petulant type of drunkard, he drags himself against the bedroom floor to the bell, feeling his trousers bunch up against his thighs like a toddler and basking in his helplessness like an old matron.
He rings. A grubby little annoyance comes in his sleep clothes to witness his shame. He demands and waits, reclining against the yellow-papered wall, drug-damp.
When Olmo arrives, unshaven and puffy from sleep, Alfredo is struck anew by the sour tenderness that empties into his throat, that last secret place storing his guilt for a lack of heart. He did not expect him to come. They barely see each other, these days.
“My old friend,” Alfredo says quickly, smiling, and knows he looks deranged. “It is so dirty in here, yes?"
A nod. A shrug.
"Clean up, why don't you."
Olmo looks down at him with disappointed hatred, and then he comes down to his knees. A flash of a vision: him bowing lower, lower, and licking right next to the soles of Alfredo's socked feet.
Olmo slaps Alfredo, twice, and yanks him up by the armpits with violence.
"You child," Olmo tells him almost lovingly, almost laughing, although his eyes are still worse than pale. "You dirty, spoilt little brat. You lazy whore. You lunatic."
Alfredo looks at him, endazed, and smiles, and smiles, and smiles.