We live out our lives here in Bogota, as people elsewhere. In the mornings when we wake, we look out at the weather; and we go to our offices and our shops and factories; we go to the cinema and we gossip with and about our friends, we have our lunch-breaks, and in the evenings we come home to our families, those of us who have families. On Sundays we watch soccer and swim in the ponds, we go to Mass and we eat in our favourite restaurants. We have our regrets and pleasures and we fill the city cemeteries.

We know about the stuff that the rest of the world knows about, the stuff about Bogota: the drugs and the gangs, the killings. We know about them, but they happen in the south of the city, in the poor areas, and most of us don’t live there. We know about it as we know about the horrors of London and Los Angeles. We know about Escobar.

I live a quiet life in a quiet neighbourhood near the old quarter, in a large house left to me when my mother died. That was some ten years ago and just about coincided with my divorce. My wife and child, Sofia, stayed in our home in Suba, and I moved into my mother’s home. It has worked out ok. I still see my child occasionally, when she needs something. It is not often that she needs anything though, they are well provided for.

I am I suppose a man of routine, and the routine is only rarely interrupted. I rise at six-thirty and exercise – nothing too crazy, a few press-ups, a few weights, ten minutes on a treadmill. I keep fit but, unlike many of my compatriots, I have no desire to live forever. I have toast and coffee, I shower, then I make the ten-minute walk to my gallery just off Plaza de Bolivar. We specialise in modern Colombian sculpture – we have bought and sold early Boteros – and indigenous painting. I am no artist myself, but I know what is good and what is not; what sells and what does not, and I make a reasonable living. Christmas Eve, I visit my sister and her family in Tocancipa, there and back with gifts on the same day. They are nice people, but apart from the obvious we don’t have much in common. My nephew I am told is a promising player and is a junior at Santé Fe.

And once every year I close up and go to Europe for a month. There, I meet old friends and, if the opportunity arises, do some business. I like southern Spain so much that it has crossed my mind to buy a place there, maybe open up a gallery, but when I come to seriously consider it, I find that I am too attached to Bogota and to my routines.

There was recently though a disruption to those routines, when I found myself waking in a strange bed. I had seen her in the gallery before, and had taken notice of her. She was not what might be thought of as a great beauty, but there was something about her which drew men’s eyes toward her  – I had noticed those eyes lingering as she studied the works on the walls – and she knew; she knew that she had something which many men desire, and in the light of events, she must have detected that desire in me also.

The first time that she came in, she showed some interest in one of those geometrical pieces by Omar Rayo. It is not the kind of thing I usually take any interest in, but when I bought it I was confident of a good profit. She didn’t buy it, but clearly had some knowledge of art. She dropped a few names, Columbians and Mexicans – some I was aware of, some not – and she gave some hint that she knew the people personally. I noticed that she wore no ring; I may have been fooling myself, but I had the feeling that I was meant to notice the lack of a ring. I thought about her intermittently for the rest of the day, and then forgot about her until she came in again during the Easter period. Then, she greeted me as if we were old friends; she put her arms around my neck and referred to me by my name, Mateo. I told her it was a delight to see her again, although I had forgotten, and maybe had not known, her name.

She came in three or four times over the next few months, and she bought a couple of pieces; one a small sculpture by Piada, the other a large canvas by Gertrude Mansk, an industrial scene in the Rivera style. They weren’t the most expensive items I had on display, but they weren’t cheap. She signed the cheque Hana Morales.

The Mansk was too large for her car, so I offered to deliver it to her; not something I would usually do, in fact I had never done such a thing; I had an assistant, Brian, who made deliveries, and installed the pieces where necessary. But for Hana Morales, I said I would bring the pieces to her. So, she gave me her address, which was out to the east, on Guadeloupe Hill. I didn’t know the area well, but I knew that you needed money to live there.

I spent the afternoon packing the pieces and wondering what the hell I was thinking of. I would usually close around six-thirty, depending on business, and go for a drink and something to eat in one of the bars on the street. I was not particularly domesticated and never cooked. On those occasions when I ate at home, I ordered in or made a sandwich. But here I was, about to go out to the east of the city, sitting in traffic when I should have been sitting in the Downtown Bar with my beer and burger, watching soccer on the screen.

It took an hour-and-a-quarter, the traffic easing only when I was a couple of miles from the house. I had not been in this area since I was at school when we were taken out on nature rambles – they were keen that we learn about our city. As I had expected from her demeanour and her purchases, the house was pretty grand, in the old Spanish style, set back off one of the streets which wound up the south side of Guadeloupe Hill. It had a short drive leading to a terrace and the terrace looked out over the city.

As I got out of the van, she was standing on a balcony above the terrace. She waved and shouted something I couldn’t make out, then a small dark man in a white coat came out and took the items inside, the sculpture first. When he took the Mansk, he didn’t come out again, and I wondered whether that was the end of the matter, and whether that was the last I would see of Hana Morales.

As I was walking back to the van, she came out. ‘Don’t go yet,’ she said. It was an order rather than a request. ‘There’s no need to rush off, is there? Unless you have business elsewhere of course. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your business.’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I was just going back into town. Time to eat.’

‘Eat here, wait until it clears?’ She pointed toward the lines of traffic which I could see creeping along in both directions below us. ‘Why not let me get you a drink.’

I looked out over the city to give her the impression that the traffic, rather than she, was my main consideration. Before I could answer she called for Oscar. The small man who had taken in the sculpture and the painting in came out. ‘Mr Giraldo will be staying for dinner.’ She looked to me for a contradiction which didn’t come. ‘Now Mateo, what will you have to drink?’

Before I had time to express any wish, we were seated at a small white table on the terrace and I was drinking a beer, she a glass of white wine. We talked of the weather, of art, of houses, the Bogota traffic and the transport system, politics – it was soon after Luis Carlos Galan’s assassination. We were both Galan supporters and we wondered what would happen next.

Oscar was a quiet man, and he walked quietly, three or four trips. He brought out ham and chicken, and eggs and tomatoes, and bread and pickled cucumbers. After each delivery she said Thank you Oscar, and Oscar nodded but didn’t speak. She was polite; I had been to houses where they employed people like Oscar and many of them were not so polite; in fact, many of them were so impolite that I never went there again.

The food was good and, she told me, fresh from one of the nearby markets; it was an improvement on the burgers in the Downtown Bar. I’m not saying the burgers in the Downtown Bar are not good, they are, but this seemed like a healthy change. And so did Hana Morales. Even the way she ate, the way she flicked her hair from her face with each small mouthful, thrilled me; the way she sipped her wine and licked it from her lower lip almost brought my heart to a stop.

‘Another?’ she asked when I had finished my second beer.

‘Better not,’ I said. ‘I need to drive back.’

‘Must you. We were having such a nice time.’

I was, I could not deny, having a nice time. Even without the sexual presence of Hana Morales, it would have felt good to be sitting up there in the Eastern Hills, watching the sun fall slowly toward the roofs of the city, the lights coming on in the distant apartments. My hesitation must have given her the answer she wanted, and she shouted, ‘Oscar, can we have another beer for Mr Giraldo, and another white wine please.’

‘You can stay the night, can’t you?’ she said to me. ‘There’s plenty of room.’ She looked back to the house. I think we both knew then that I would be staying the night, and that I would probably not be in the guest room. She smiled, and looked at me longer than the length of our acquaintance warranted and I reciprocated.

I had not been without the attentions of women since my divorce. I knew where and how to find them, particular types of women. I not only have a weakness for intelligent women, but I am thrilled beyond endurance when that intelligence is allied to moments of sexual abandonment; when all of a woman’s intelligence and decorum is subsumed by an animal instinct otherwise entirely absent. And in her bed that night, Hana Morales might have been a foul-mouthed street kid from the southern barrios, so much did she abandon her poise and delicacy. I had not before come across one so wild and loud, so reckless in her pleasure. Her abandon was such that I lost control earlier than either of us wanted. But she came back to me twice more in the night, following which I slept an exhausted sleep.

I slept deeply and woke alone in the bed at around eight. I dressed and stepped onto the balcony. The city was spread out in the sunlight and, using the Colpatria Tower area as a marker, I tried to pick out the districts I was familiar with. My efforts suggested that I did not know a great deal of my own city and I could not locate my own neighbourhood. While I was trying to get my bearings, she came in and said, ‘Will you have time to join us for breakfast?’

Us? Oscar?

I followed her down and into the kitchen. Oscar was laying plates, and baskets of bread and cheese, onto a raised central area, at the other side of which a man was seated. He said hello as I walked in and, without standing, raised his hand for me to shake.

‘Mateo, this is my husband Benjamin,’ she said. ‘Benjamin, Mateo.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said as I leaned across and shook hands with him.

Her husband? Where the hell had this fellow been all night? And what did he think of me being in his kitchen having just spent the night with his wife?’

‘I hope you had a comfortable night,’ he said.

I nodded and looked at Hana Morales, as if for explanation. She said, ‘Benjamin is a complicated man. He has complicated needs.’ 

She spoke as if he wasn’t there.

‘I have just been admiring the new acquisitions,’ he said. ‘I am a great admirer of Gertrude Mansk. We would be grateful the both of us if we could have first option if you come across others.’

‘Of course,’ I said, and poured myself a coffee. ‘You will be the first to know.’

‘Please make yourself at home,’ he said. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me.’

There was whirring noise and his body, still seated, turned away from the counter. He was in a wheelchair. Oscar opened the door for him and he glided out of the room.

I looked at Hana Morales and she looked back and smiled.

‘You didn’t tell me you were married,’ I said.

‘You didn’t ask,’ she replied. ‘Does it matter? We are adults, are we not?’

‘Well, it’s not so much the being married that matters, it’s more the fact of having breakfast with your husband. It’s that detail that seems slightly odd to me, slightly unnerving.’

‘If you are unnerved I apologise. Maybe I should have told you, we have a rather uncommon arrangement, Benjamin and I.’

‘So it seems. The wheelchair?’

‘A shooting, twenty years ago, two months after our marriage. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is paralysed from the chest down.’

‘And he doesn’t mind you bringing me back here?’

‘Mind? No, he wishes me to bring men back.’

‘Men? Are you serious? Why would he wish you to do that?’

‘He wants me to have some pleasure in the bedroom, pleasure which he cannot provide. He would of course wish to be the provider. Can you blame him?’

‘So, where was he when we were…?’

‘In his room, next door.’

‘Next door? He could hear?’

‘Hear. See. It pleases him.’

‘See? Oh my. And me?’ I asked. ‘What about me? Being watched and heard?’

‘You too were pleased, were you not? Did I not please you?’

‘You pleased me, yes. Of course you did.’

‘Then the three of us were pleased. More coffee?’

As I returned to my van, Benjamin Morales was sitting at the table on the terrace, looking out over the city. I noticed how thin his legs were, the knees turned in on each other. He turned to me and said, Thank you, Mateo. I couldn’t think of an appropriate response.

What can you say when a man thanks you for making love to his wife? No problem, don’t mention it?

As I drove away, I could see her in the rear-view mirror, standing behind him with her hands on his shoulders. They watched as I started my journey back into the city, and she waved just before I turned out of sight.

I wanted to shower before opening the gallery. A couple of streets away from the house, a lane was closed and the police were trying to keep things moving. Outside of the cinema, I could see him lying in the road, a fat man on his back, his shirt stained with thick blood, and the blood forming a pool around him. When I lowered my window, an officer told me. ‘A shooting,’ she said. ‘Drugs. Keep it moving, please.’

Further on I saw I saw Sofia on the opposite side of the road. I hadn’t seen her in a long while and I sounded my horn and waved. She waved back, but I had the impression that she hadn’t seen me and didn’t know who she was waving to. She was walking toward where the body lay and I didn’t want her to see that sight, the fat man lying there in his own blood with all those police officers standing around him. It was undignified. Even though she was now an adult, and even though we were now relative strangers, I still wanted to protect her from the horrors of the world, and the horrors looked like they were getting closer. But she was walking in that direction and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

– Ed Walsh