While Abel thinks about what transpired on Holy Thursday, while he attempts to forget and instead remembers, while that transpires, the man who fired him, Johnny Mara, could not stop thinking about it either. Johnny is in a meeting room with four important men, two Chilean businessmen and two commanders of the Mapochina intelligence. A singular meeting where everyone is standing up, everyone except for the owner of the morning paper and owner of the lives of more than 300 employees (except of Abel's, who he fired yesterday). Today is Friday, Good Friday, and both are reliving what transpired on Holy Thursday.

At the meeting they are discussing a journalist giant who at the same time suffers of economic dwarfism. His company owes to practically everyone. For example, several million dollars in taxes to the Bolivian government and tens of millions of dollars to those four men.

On a board there is a list of action items, waiting for a decision and perhaps a toast. The items are:

They must choose between decision A or decision B. Everyone walks away and thinks. One of them, standing in a corner of the room, seems to be talking to the wall. Another one is leaning on the fireplace mantle, scribbling rectangles and diamonds on a piece of paper. The third one paces back and forth, stops, sways for a moment while he scratches his left eyebrow and paces again. The last one seems to be staring through the window at the Illimani mountain, but in reality is staring into space while smashing his right fist into his left palm. Johnny Mara seems to be considering the choices too, but in reality he is remembering the parsimonious anger he felt as he approached Abel and said, "You are a son of a whore". Then, with his famous smirk walked away, while staring at Abel's stupid face. He is remembering too how he never imagined Abel would have had the balls to respond. No one had ever responded to him. He was sure there were too many sons of a bitch working for that newspaper, and according to him, the only way to treat them was nastily. "That is how these fucking indians will understand", he would say when one of his friends would question. Besides, until yesterday, no one had responded, everyone had remained silent. "Damn fuckers," he thinks, or believes he thinks, for at this moment Johnny Mara cannot let his neurons wander, for in his mind is bouncing what Abel said to him: "The whore is your mother, the whore is your mother, the whore is your mother." And it bounces and it bounces.

The voting starts and one of the men takes charge by asking the others, he then writes down the vote next to each item on the list. The four foreigners voted the same way, and now it is time for Johnny Mara to stop screwing with his memories. They ask him: "Are you in accordance? We are the majority but we need your vote? He says he is in accordance. He then thinks that choosing (a) or (b) is the same to him, nothing mattered to him before and nothing matters now.

More than 40 years ago the Chilean intelligence set roots and since then the founders of the newspaper are turning in their graves, they want their name to live, they need the lord to continue being a "Mara". They are the dead reminding him that the newspaper was born in defense of the national interests, and particularly against the Chilean interests. But this Mara is a man who does not listen to dead ancestors, he only hears the chin-chin of the glasses, the alcohol, the drugs, the whores, and also the clap-clap of the ass-kissers who make him feel as the President-Director.

The decision has been made and the host brings out some champagne. He goes along with a toast, with the smiles and the jokes.

If Abel were present for the toast he would understand why, early on March 23 (day of the Bolivian Littoral), the President-Director burst into the editing room wanting to change the front page. The change was not possible as the front page had already been printed. He then ordered the change to be done to the internet edition. What was the change? To erase an anti-Chilean headline.

But Abel can not see this scene, he can not even see what is happening around him, he is reliving completely different scenes. He is consuming the same bitter drinks he had to swallow in that work environment. He is again bleeding over the past. It pains him to know that an inferior, in complicity with the Chief Editor, set him up and taped a phone conversation. Yet, they didn't obtain anything incriminating, and innocently Abel turned them in to the President-Director. And what was the result of that? The following day management issued a general memo indicating that "personal calls were prohibited as they would be recorded by a security system." Abel did not understand the message; he expected a different response. He is also remembering when he was fined two paydays because no one saw him work on January 2^nd. And how could have anyone seen him? He worked in the morning and everyone worked in the evening. Besides, he worked 36 continuous-hours on December 30 and 31. That time Abel didn't understand the message either. Nor all the other times they didn't pay him for the extra hours he worked, or for working on Sundays. And all the messages the past is showing him and only now he begins to understand.

At the same time, Johnny Mara is absorbed looking for that fiber he does not have, that integrity, that vision, that love for the work of the Mara forefathers. Now, to say Mara is like a common last name, it no longer means that strong wood, beautiful and long lasting. It is no longer a name, a headline, a newspaper. It is nothing. Johnny is reflecting, wondering if that is why he likes to yell at his employees, if that is his defense mechanism. If what he likes to see is their stupid faces when he yells, the way they drop their heads, the way their shoulders seem to melt when he shouts: "If you like, you can leave this very moment!" And the silence that follows, like old chewing gum that remains stuck for a long time, a silence that stretches while the employee shrinks. Then, the employee exhales the appropriate words to keep his job, because he knows well the newspaper can condemn him to civil death, and because of the unemployment problem, he may not find any other job. When Johnny thinks about all that, he smiles to himself, he feels strong, he feels big. Yet, he can not forget the way Abel responded on Holy Thursday. He can not forget when said to Abel "resentful," and Abel replied: "Sir, please, let's not get personal, let's continue talking about work." He can not forget Abel's stupid face, staring into space, his voice saying "yes sir, no sir," until he stopped and suddenly said: "you pay me to work, not to yell at me." And he remembers how that shook his neurons. He remembers thinking for a moment he was wrong, that he was yelling too loudly, that he didn't have enough fiber, that he was too excited, that he didn't seem like a Mara, that the Maras did not behave that way. He wanted to leave the editing room; he wanted to ask his employees to forgive him, to ask them to understand… But instead he did the opposite, and enraged he moved closer to his employee to present him with the last of his insults and said: "Abel, you are the son of a whore." He remembers feeling he had screwed up and wanted to leave, but stupid Abel responded, responded to him, the lord of the press, the great-grandchild of Bolivia, the President-Director.