The Companion (Part IV)

Facundo was surprised and flattered, his anxiety and concern turned into satisfaction. He had feared that Juan Bernardo had evaluated him negatively, but it turned out to be the opposite.

The client had become fixated on his companion. Since he had seen him for the first time a few months ago, he had been insisting on meeting him. The woman had told him no, but his persistence and power had finally achieved his desire. Now that he had met him, he was not going to let him go. He liked his docility, his way of being, his natural condescension. He had not dismissed him effusively when he left, for fear of showing too much of his feelings.

Juan Bernardo was close to turning 40 and was going through a complex and challenging time in his life. He had divorced five years ago, after a 10-year relationship that had produced two children, who were the central focus of his life. Professionally, he had gone from being a high-ranking executive to starting his own business, with unexpected success, thanks to his vision, determination, security, and drive. One of the reasons for his divorce was a harsh and profound questioning of his sexuality. He had fallen in love with a friend of the same age, who was also married, and he knew that it was not compatible with maintaining his marriage. It was painful and heartbreaking. But later, he did not feel the desire to be with men or women, and he focused only on his work. However, one day he saw this young man and became infatuated with him. He remembered that he had seen him in a couple of TV broadcasts, because one of the businesses he wanted to intervene in was acquiring that TV channel, but it was frustrated by the incompetence of the executives at that time: it was a group of friends and family members without strategic clarity, and he moved away from that possibility.

He saw him at a social gathering after the inauguration of an exhibition of paintings and sculptures. He was accompanied by an executive from a communications company with which he had had disputes. He knew her and approached her to converse for a moment. He was accompanied by this handsome young man, with a tender gaze and a complacent attitude, and he could not help but observe him discreetly. He knew that this person was divorced and assumed that he was his new partner, but later, in an instant, he was able to verify that it was a fictitious relationship: the woman told her companion "Leave!", and the young man obeyed immediately. That moment of brutal, subtle, and powerful authority at the same time made him understand that this man exercised a special profession, and he endeavored to follow the thread that would lead him to him.

It took a few weeks until he was able to identify the woman who acted as Facundo's pimp and began conversations, which were long and tedious, since she indicated that her "pupil" did not perform homosexual services. Juan Bernardo endeavored to indicate that he did not desire sexual se...