We talked for 5 minutes, in honour of which he invited to another beer and a bag of peanuts, to recover his reflexes. 20 minutes after listening to him recall his 53 years of misbehaviours, exploits and the struggles of someone who has lived by what he learned from the corns of others and not from their books, and who with grizzled cunning defends as an undeniable prerogative the therapeutic beer before paying food and debts, came the two quick trips to the potty and the silences that remind us to look at the clock and the cloudy midday sky, in presage of the tainted pant rolls from the puddles the cement refuses to drink. We say goodbye with that grateful handshake from the quick fraternity of foam moustaches and the luck of having run into a “good person”, a circumstance that is not immune to the fever that sweats these sidewalks: When will you come by again; ´diay´, I don’t know, when I do come by again. Goodbye.
Intentional visits are justified with a ‘no choice’ or ‘look for it in Chepe Centro, there you will find it’; because despite the nature of that vanishing place, the city of San José remains the most diverse collection centre of supplies and services in the country, in which hundreds of thousands make a living, produce their livelihood or take advantage of it as the great transit station to anywhere; a place resorted to with professed faith and anticipated strain.