Episode 02: The Keys and the Envelope

All characters are 18 or older. Fiction.

Episode 02 begins with a handover that should be simple: a landlord, a set of keys, a signature. Then the envelope opens and there are two things inside it, and only one of them is metal. The Angel of Bogota episodes like their debts small enough to count and large enough to hurt, and this one is counted twice, once by the landlord and once on a bare mattress at two in the morning.

Andres is twenty-four and works the night shift at a call centre in Chapinero, which means he sleeps from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. He talks fast. He talks the way people talk when the silence in a room has started to feel like a bill.

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Senor Molina owns the building on 63rd, four floors of rented rooms with a courtyard full of laundry, and he has sold it to a company that intends to turn it into offices with a coffee shop on the ground floor. Molina is not cruel about it. He is apologetic, which is worse. He sits Andres down at the plastic table in the courtyard and explains that the new owners take possession in thirty days, but that he has another building, and there is a room, smaller, and he can have the keys tonight if he wants them.

"What is the catch," Andres says.

Molina puts a brown envelope on the table. Inside are two keys on a wire ring and a single sheet of paper folded in three. The paper says that Andres Reyes owes one million four hundred thousand pesos in arrears, accumulated over fourteen months, and that the debt transfers with the tenancy.

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"Fourteen months?" Andres says. He laughs, once, without any humour in it. "I paid you every month. I have the receipts on my phone."

"The receipts are for the rent," Molina says. "The arrears are for the room."

Andres looks at the paper for a long time.

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"There is a number on the back," Molina says. "If you want to clear it before the new owners come. It is not my number. He pays in cash and he does not negotiate, and he has helped other tenants in this building."

Andres turns the paper over. There is a number in blue pen, and underneath it, in smaller letters: after ten.

He calls at ten past ten from the stairwell, because the courtyard has no signal. The voice on the other end is low and slow and does not say hello, only: "Who gave you this number."

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"Molina. The building on 63rd."

"Ah." A pause. "The room with the blue door?"

"Yes."

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"I know it. Tonight, or not at all. I am in the north until one."

Andres says tonight. He says it before he has thought about it, which is how most of the decisions in his life get made.

The room is on the fourth floor and has nothing in it but a mattress, a chair, and a bulb hanging from a wire. Andres has swept. He has also put on his good shirt. At half past midnight there are footsteps on the stairs, unhurried, and then a man in a dark jacket fills the doorway with a briefcase in one hand and a phone on a gimbal in the other. Cardamom and rum arrive before he does.

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"You are the one with the debt," the man says.

"Andres. Yes. Hi." Andres stands up too fast and knocks the chair. "Sorry. Yes. It is one million four hundred. I have it written down. I have the paper."

"I know the number." The man sets the briefcase on the chair, opens it, and takes out a stack of notes bound with a rubber band, which he puts on the mattress. Then a second stack. "One million four hundred. For Molina. He will sign it paid."

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Andres stares at the money. "That is the debt."

"That is the debt." The man takes out a third stack, smaller, and sets it beside the others. "This is for you. Four hundred. For the night."

The room is very quiet. Andres can hear the bulb humming.

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"For the night," he says.

"You, yes. Me, no face. Camera on you." The man turns the phone slightly in his hand. "You say stop, I stop, and everything stays. Cash is already yours. That is how it works."

Andres sits down on the edge of the mattress because his legs decide to. He looks at the three stacks of money. One million four hundred thousand pesos is fourteen months of a life he thought he was living correctly. Four hundred more is a new phone and a week off.

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"Can I ask something first," he says.

"You can ask."

"Why the camera?"

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The man considers this. He does not look offended, only like a man deciding how much of an answer to give. "Because it pays extra," he says. "And because a thing that is filmed is a thing that happened. Now. Do you want it or do you want me to take the debt money back?"

"No," Andres says. "No. I want it."

"Then take off your clothes. Slow. Talk if you want. The camera does not mind talk."

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Andres talks. He takes off his shirt and tells the man about the call centre, the woman in Cali who shouts at him about her internet, the way his voice sounds like a stranger's in recordings. He takes off his trousers and tells him about the courtyard and the laundry and the soup. The man listens without interrupting and moves the camera in small patient arcs.

"Lie down," the man says. "Hands above your head."

Andres lies down. The mattress is thin and the floor is cold through it. The man kneels beside him and runs one hand from his throat to his belly, flat and slow, and Andres's whole body tightens and then lets go.

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"You talk because you are afraid," the man says. "You do not need to be afraid. This is a transaction. You are not being taken."

"I know," Andres says. "I know. It is just that no one has touched me in a year."

"Then be quiet and be touched."

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The man's mouth is thorough. He works down Andres's chest and stomach and does not stop at the waistband, and Andres's hips come off the mattress and his hands find the sheet above his head and hold on. The man's hand closes around the base of him and his mouth does the rest, unhurried, and the wet sound of it fills the empty room. Andres says something in a language that is not Spanish and not quite a word.

Later, the man turns him onto his stomach and lifts his hips with one hand under his belly. The lubricant is cold and then isn't. Two fingers, then three, and Andres's breath goes out of him in a long shudder.

"Say it," the man says.

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"Yes. Please. Yes."

He is thick and he is slow about it and the curve of him finds a place that makes Andres's hands open and close on nothing. The man sets a rhythm and keeps it, one hand flat between Andres's shoulder blades, and the camera watches from the chair. Andres stops talking. That is how you know it is good. The boy who cannot bear a silence goes quiet, and the only sounds left are the ones he cannot help.

Afterwards the man does not lie down. He wipes his hands, dresses, counts nothing back, and closes the briefcase.

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"Molina will come at nine," he says. "Have the paper ready. He will sign it and you will keep the copy."

"And you?" Andres says. He is face down on the mattress, still catching his breath. "Do I see you again?"

"Maybe." The man is at the door. "Do not spend the four hundred on the debt. That one is for you."

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He is gone before Andres can ask him anything else, which is how the Angel of Bogota ends most nights.

Andres lies there until the bulb stops seeming loud. Then he gets up, puts the three stacks of money inside the folded paper, and sleeps on the floor with his hand on it.

The trailer stops here. The episode does not.

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