The story I am going to tell begins on a night the police violated the Constitution. It was the same night the Chamuca and I threw a party to celebrate the fifth anniversary, not of our wedding, because we aren't married, but of the thirteenth of April, the day she "gave herself to me" on one of the drafting tables in the Government Planning Office....

I don't know where I got the nerve to walk out into the corridor in a house as respectable as my uncle Ramon Tarragona's. Not only naked, but with an erection. Luckily, not even the cenzontle saw me, because Zenaida covers his cage with an old towel. The moon was out. I came to Lucero's bedroom door and turned the knob....

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Selections from Two Crimes by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. Published by Chatto & Windus, 1984. Translated by Asa Zatz.