It’s a Thursday at 1am. A visitor in the city quickens his pace. He’d decided to walk the 25 blocks back since it was his first day in the city, but he lost his way. Now he’s worried whether anyone will be up when he gets back to the house where he’s staying with some friends of his parents. He doesn’t want to make a bad impression.

He asks for directions to San Telmo at the junction of Juncal and Ayacucho. A gentleman with thick-rimmed glasses answers with extreme precision. Too much precision for the visitor’s elementary Spanish, but following the man’s effusive hand gestures he manages to interpret the direction in which he should head.

A hundred metres on, he crosses a group of five people who are taking a long time to say goodbye to each other outside a restaurant. They’ve finished dining but their continuing conversation seems to be a natural extension of the meal. “So late, and so little hurry?”, the tourist thinks to himself in surprise, as he checks his watch.

He checks the names on the street signs as he walks. Without knowing it, he’s passed from the neighbourhood of Recoleta to San Nicolás. The fresh September spring air is cool but the sweater he left with earlier in the day is enough to keep comfortably warm. He looks at the people he passes walking in the opposite direction. An elderly lady walking her dog, a group of friends sharing a litre bottle of beer, an elderly man with messy grey hair dressed in a tracksuit like he’s just finished a late-night jog through the city. Dozens of diverse faces.

He reaches the junction of an avenue where cars pass as if it were 2pm rather than close to 2am. “Will there be any moment in the day when there aren’t cars passing this corner?”, he wonders. He stops on the sidewalk, while he observes that fellow pedestrians wait standing directly in the road itself. He asks one many for the street he’s looking for. “Take the next right”, the man says.  

He arrives and rings the doorbell, worried that nobody will be awake. The owner of the house opens the door, a lady of 60 years who he’d imagined would be sleeping. He makes his apologies and she answers without appearing to hear him,

               -Are you going to stay in tonight? You’re not going to go out?