‘Ok,’ Christina almost had to shout to be heard over the loud beats of the polka. ‘I’m really stuck here. I’ve run out of things to say to the old sod!’.
Erica laughed into her drink, splattering the spit all over the table. She had been finding her friend’s correspondence a waste of paper and ink.
‘How about this,’ she said, barely managing to take a cigarette from Christina because she was carrying on with her sitting-down dance. ‘’‘I am a worthless waitress currently between jobs and certainly NOT a model. My only claim to fame is that I used to have an English nanny’’…’ Christina tried to interrupt but Erica went on over her, ‘’’AND…and I used to be a bottle blonde for about six months’’. Now, at this point you can write something like: ‘’It’s always been my dearest ambition to baby-sit a blind Englishman… so I say let’s just get on with it!’’’.
Christina drew a long breath from her cigarette and didn’t say anything for a while. Erica might be the closest thing to a friend she had, but she was clearly too uninventive to see that Richard was Christina’s last stab at the beast called poverty. Besides, she always got drunk twenty minutes into the night. Unlike her, Erica had a proper job as a props assistant, albeit in a third-rate theatre, and was unaccustomed to heavy drinking every night.
‘So how was your working day? Any new scandals?’ Christina said, crossing her legs with difficulty. Her denim mini skirt was getting far too tight.
‘No, no, no, no. I can’t live with the dismay in your voice, sweetie. You wanted help and you will get help’, said Erica imitating a nursery teacher tone. Her bleeding mascara was gathering under her eyes enhancing her resemblance to a panda, already strong on account of her round figure and black and white sleeveless dress.
‘Ok’, she went on, changing back into her usual practical voice. ‘Just a little bit of gossip. Raul is quitting.’
‘Your leading character? But why? Isn’t the play opening tomorrow? ‘
‘It most certainly is. Or at least that was the plan until Raul waved bye-bye. Fernando went ballistic when he found out. Apparently Raul got some job in the States at last. Probably as a pizza delivery man – with his qualifications. But you know how everyone in this damn town just want out, no matter how, where or why.’ Erica paused to take a final greedy breath from her cigarette. ‘Come on, then’, she went on as she stubbed the cigarette out. ‘Let’s hear what you’ve written so far.’
With a sigh Christina readjusted the straps of her red vest and opened a bag that was clearly meant to be a special night-out affair. It was beaded, tiny and - in a certain light - still gave a hint of a glimmer. Its beads had turned from golden to black months ago, almost the day she had bought it.  She took out a neatly folded piece of paper and read:

Dear Rico (aka Richard),

It was lovely to hear about your performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Your choir group must be exceptionally good if you were chosen for such a prestigious venue. I really hope you didn’t work too hard in the rehearsals. At the risk of repeating myself and sounding like a nag; I’ll remind you again to take good care of yourself. Your health is what really matters.

‘So? Does this sound caring enough?’ Christina looked up at her friend and was met with a vacant stare. Erica was resting her head on one hand and only just managing to stop her drool from joining the mixture of sticky fluids on the table. In a few seconds she collapsed altogether and started snoring.
Christina had one of these faces that seem to look brazen by nature. It took an unusually imaginative mind to picture the bold black eyes, the thin tinted eyebrows and the rouged lips combining efforts to deliver an embarrassed look. However, it was a face that vibrantly expressed all sorts of other looks. At that moment, it was a classic image of an I-thought-so kind of disappointment.
With the breathing lump sat next to her, Christina decided to carry on with her letter. She toyed with the idea of changing the last sentence into something like ‘You know how precious your health is to me’; but decided against it. Undoubtedly, things were moving in the right direction between them – far better than they were with the German schoolboy or the American widower– but it was best to wait a little before proceeding to the next level.
She picked up her pen and looked around for inspiration. The bar was as ever; dark worn furniture, red lights, air full of smoke that vast electric fans failed to disperse. An unknown band was playing something tuneless in the background. She began to write:

It’s my day off today and I’m writing from the most beautiful spot. You see, I decided to visit the Jardin Botanico. The weather is lovely and sunny, and a red and green bird is singing in a tree nearby. I spent the best part of this morning watching the fishes in the artificial pond. There is quite a collection you know, small golden fishes and larger ones in the strangest shades of purple.

Richard had told her how much he liked to read about the colours of things. It was a surprisingly powerful way to take him back in time to his life before the accident that cost him his eyesight. He was just twenty five at the time. One of his biggest fears was to forget what colours looked like.
Just then she heard loud voices and the sound of glass smashing. Apparently, some sort of fight had erupted at the back - where the jukeboxes were. Against a backdrop of indiscernible obscenities, Christina wrote:
 
Oh, just now a group of children began singing. It seems they’re visiting on a school trip. Their voices are just so angelic. I wish you could hear them.

Soon enough a couple of bouncers appeared from inside dragging the troublemaker between them. He was a teenager, no older than eighteen. By the looks of him, he was totally drunk. His left eyebrow was dripping blood onto his shirt and he was struggling to break free and shouting at the bouncers, ‘Get off me you bastards. Don’t fucking touch me.’ Christina watched half-interestedly as he was thrown out then went back to her writing.

I just had to pause there for a minute, Rico. The children just passed me by. They look so innocent and pretty; the girls with their braided hair and little pink dresses
and the boys with their blue jumpers and snow-white shirts.

She stopped and reread what she had written so far. She couldn’t help feeling uncertain about it. Children and parks and definitely anything preceded by the adjective ‘angelic’ were uncharted waters. The truth was, nightlife was the only life Christina had ever known. As the daughter of a super model in a country that idolised beauty, she was exposed – as a child – to rather unusual things. For instance, by the age of ten she had travelled to seven countries. She smoked her first cigarette at eight years old and tasted her first sangria a few months later.
Her mother’s career had started plummeting when Christina was in her early teens, and with it the lifestyle of foreign nannies – the English Sharon was her favourite - and expensive luxuries that had lasted all these years. Then, suddenly the mother died from a drug overdose when Christina was seventeen. It was a tragedy made just bearable by the small fortune Christina found herself in possessions of. However, the fortune was actually small; and Christina – a failure at school - did not have the looks or the figure to follow in her mother’s footsteps. In the space of months she degenerated from the owner of a villa in Asuncion’s classiest quarter to a tenant in a run-down, cheap-rent building in the slums.
Her mother’s ‘friends’ turned their backs on her. She moved from a menial job to another, finding the concept of work itself incomprehensible.
For over twenty years - along which she lost any advantages Youth might have bestowed on her - she sailed through life, god knows how.
And now she was sailing on - under a host of false colours - through to Richard.