Scene 21:

Leave the university along the youth. Take the main street, pass the market, the hardware store, the bakery, the restaurants, and reach a bar. You enter, and discover a space that avoids metal and glass. Wood and candles provide a comfortable, even homey atmosphere in which to relax. The sound from the speakers is tinny, even cheap, but the instrumental of some centuries-old salsa harmonizes perfectly.

Settle at the bar. At the other end of the bar, a group of strikers clamor and argue while watching a live baseball game on the television set on the ceiling. Lions vs. Magallanes... The Lions are winning.

"What would you boys like to drink?" asks the nice waitress in charge of the place. She has a bold, attacking smile. She seems to know Gustavo and the rest of the guys, so she looks at you, the discordant factor, with interest. "A new recruit"

"A classmate, I try to make good friends. And I don't know, Andreina, do you still keep that zambo piss call cocuy?"

"Don't be greedy. You want some good crumbs? Buy some level. I got a box of Carúpano rum that will come in handy"

Gustavo looks at his chest.

"As far as I can see, I'm still not made of gold"

Andreina wields a half-smile.

"I'll bring you the bottle"

Gustavo's friends pat him comfortingly on the shoulders and back. Although from the laughter and jokes they share, they are quite happy that Gustavo "gets off the mule" to give them a proper strike.

You join them, at first hesitantly and cautiously, but soon the rum inhibits your reservations, and you find yourself joking and laughing with Gustavo and his friends as if you had known each other all your lives. You learn that Gustavo has a pretty fiancée. That Rodolfo sings in the school choir. That Daniel wants to be a veterinarian. And Michael, well, Michael seems to have forgotten his own name.

They share in the bar until Andreina takes them out to close (It is forbidden to sell liquor after 10 PM), and walk down the street, going in a line holding each other by the shoulders, singing hymns and military marches.

"When we die we will be immortal!" shout in unison.

Gustavo, in spite of his deep state of drunkenness, kept the temperance to write with a marker on your arm, the ingredients of his grandfather's super-anti-hangover, the antidote you would need the next morning to attend classes without being an inoperative mess.

Go to your dorm room and rest. You need it (Scene 16)