What was Soon doing while they were putting him in handcuffs and taking him away in the van? She was pretending. She couldn’t gather the strength to protest. Her mother hugged her, cried disconsolately, and apologized for not having been able to take care of her as she deserved.

Soon didn’t understand anything.

For some time now the waitress hasn’t taken her eyes off them. Three hours? Three and a half? How long have those two, Soon and Old Man, been sitting there without consuming anything? When they sat down they ordered two sodas, which they drank with their eyes downcast, not exchanging a single word. Then they started to talk, and since then they haven’t stopped. But their way of conversing is strange to any outside observer. First one of them talks and the other listens, for a while. Then the other way around. It’s not exactly a dialogue, more like an exchange of monologues, each one with their subject, unrelated and unreplied-to. Now the old man has started to tremble, and his eyes are closed: the girl has hurt him. The waitress watches them and it occurs to Soon, suddenly, that she could call the authorities, and that the second offense would be viewed in a different light—a worse light. She has to deflect the waitress’s attention, get things back on track and in order. Old Man, Old Man, she whispers, let’s forget about all this, it’s not worth going on. Why don’t you tell me something about Nina Simone. Something you’ve never told me before.

It takes Old Man a while to answer, but the shaking of his hands subsides, his eyes twinkle again, and after a couple of minutes, he finally manages to speak. There was a Colombian choreographer, he says, who staged a dance performance in honor of Nina. It was called “Negra slash Anger.” Not slash spelled out, but the backslash symbol! And it was a performance about racism. Nina Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone, was going to see the show in Cartagena de Indias—where there’s still so much racism! Yes, he has read up on the population there, how many are black, how many mixed, how many Palenqueros, how many indigenous, or with unclear ethnicity. He gives her numbers, percentages, which Soon doesn’t listen to. In the end, Old Man goes on, Lisa couldn’t go because there was a hurricane and her flight was cancelled. Bad luck! But Lisa is a good daughter. She has taken up her mother’s legacy. She sings and denounces inequality. She’s a good daughter!

They didn’t choose that particular cafe because they liked it, but just because it was the closest one, only a few feet away from where they happened to run into each other. It was Soon who recognized him first—he was wearing the same suit, the same shoes, though he’s so thin! He blinked a few seconds before he fully realized who this girl who’d called out to him was, this girl who was looking him up and down, smiling, fearful, glancing around just in case, come on, Old Man, come on, we could go in here for a while.