Two Hours in La Candelaria

La Candelaria, Bogota. 11:55 p.m. Six hundred and ninety thousand pesos, plus two hundred. One hundred and nineteen minutes on camera.

All characters are 18 or older. Fiction.

The man in room 307 came down at twenty to twelve with his briefcase and his jacket and put his card on the counter, and the machine said no. It said no three times. The second time he looked at the card as if it had personally insulted him, and the third time he said something quiet in Spanish that I did not catch, and then he asked me, very politely, whether there was an ATM in the plaza that was still open.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

There was not. The bank on the corner closed at five and the machines in the arcade had been out of service since the storm on Tuesday. His bill was six hundred and ninety thousand pesos and his flight was at six in the morning and the boy from the front had already taken his bag down.

I want to be clear about what happened next, because the version that went round the staff room was not the version that happened. He did not ask me for anything. He asked me for the name of the manager, and I told him the manager was in Medellin until Monday, and he stood there with his hands on the counter and did the arithmetic of a man who is not used to being stopped.

"Then I will leave the bag," he said. "And the briefcase. And I will come back on Monday with cash."

See what the camera actually caught → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Senor, if the bill is not closed the room is not released, and I have to explain it in the book, and the book goes to the manager." I was already tired and my shift had two hours left on it and I heard myself say the next part before I had decided to. "I can cover it. From my own pocket. Then the book is closed and nobody knows."

He looked at me for a long moment. "You would do that."

"You would come back on Monday."

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"I would come back on Monday." He said it without any particular warmth. "But you would be trusting a stranger with six hundred and ninety thousand pesos and a story about a card, and that is a bad way to spend a Friday."

I did not answer, because he was right.

I did not know then that the porters called him the Angel of Bogota, or that he had been in room 307 for four nights and had never once asked for clean towels.

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He opened the briefcase. He took out a phone on a small gimbal, and a thick fold of notes, and he counted six hundred and ninety thousand onto the counter in front of me, and then he counted two hundred thousand more and put it on top and squared the whole pile with the edge of his hand.

"Your bill is paid," I said, confused. "You do not owe me anything."

"The bill is paid because I paid it. The two hundred thousand is for the two hours." He looked at the clock behind me. "It is five to twelve. I have a car at two. You would come up to 307 and I would lock the door, and I would film it, and my face would not be in the frame. If you say no, I take the six hundred and ninety back and you keep your book open and I keep my bag."

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I have thought since about how many ways that could have gone, and how none of them did. What I remember is that I was twenty-two and it was the end of a double shift and the money on the counter was more than I made in a month, and that when he said two hours he did not say it like a man who thought he was going to get them.

"Two hours," I said.

"Two hours." He put the phone back in the briefcase. "Bring the key. Not the spare."

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Room 307 was at the front, with the tall window and the balcony that looks over the plaza, and the bells of the church were still going when we went in. He locked the door and put the chain on it, and set the phone on the dresser with a menu card propped under it for the angle, and drew the curtain halfway so the room was orange from the street and dark at the edges.

"Undress," he said. "Slowly. I want to see how you do it when nobody is telling you how."

I undressed slowly. He sat on the end of the bed in his shirtsleeves and watched me with his hands on his knees, and when I was down to nothing he said, "Turn," and I turned, and he said, "Again," and I turned again, and I felt the heat come up my neck and chest and I did not mind it. That was the surprise. It was the least frightened I had been all week.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Come here."

He pulled me down onto the bed by the wrist. He kissed me then, which I had not expected, one hand in my hair and the other flat between my shoulder blades, and it went on long enough that I forgot about the camera entirely. His mouth tasted of rum and something like tea. The wedding ring was cold against my jaw.

He turned me over and did the rest from behind, slowly, with his hand on the back of my neck and his knee between mine, and the bed was old and the headboard knocked against the wall once and he reached up and held it still with one hand, and I laughed into the pillow, and he said, "Quiet," but he was almost laughing too.

See what the camera actually caught → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

At some point the church bells stopped. At some point the street below went quiet. He was not in a hurry and I stopped wanting him to be, and when I came it was with his hand over mine on the sheet and his breath hot on my shoulder.

We lay there afterwards for a while without talking, which I did not know was allowed.

Then he got up and dressed and checked the phone and put it away, and he wrote something on the hotel notepad by the lamp, tore the sheet off, and left it on the pillow. It was a phone number and the words, in careful capitals, FOR THE BOOKS. I did not understand it. I still have it in my wallet.

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

At two the car was at the door. The driver was a young man called Mateo with a shaved head and a stick of gum going in his jaw, and he did not ask me anything when I got in the back, and he did not ask anything when Angel got in the front, and he drove me to Kennedy with the radio off.

At my corner he stopped and Angel turned around in his seat.

"Monday," he said. "You will not need the money for the room. It is already in the book." He looked at me for a moment. "The Angel of Bogota pays his bills. It is the one thing about him you can write down."

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Then the car pulled away, and I stood on my street with a sheet of notepaper and no explanation, and went up to tell my mother I had been kept late.

File closed. Subject paid in full. Camera card retained.