I walked toward the door and saw on the nightstand, next to the bed, the portrait of a pale woman, a beauty unique because of its asymmetry: large nose, short teeth, immense eyes, blonde bangs, and I felt jealous. Just a little jealous. And I focused on something that moved me to tears, without knowing why, or perhaps shamefully intuiting it: a folded uniform on the bed, pants and a sweater next to a white shirt and lace-up shoes. A little uniform illuminated by a red solar light that entered in that moment through the room’s enormous window. A uniform that was hands carefully washing it and ironing it and folding it on the bed. A uniform that was the big hands of someone putting the little legs of someone else in it. The silent hands of someone fastening the buttons, the agile or clumsy hands of someone putting the sleeves on other arms that, asleep, would accept the care, the clumsiness, or the diligence of the other hands. Shoes that were the hands of someone skillfully or patiently pressing them on another someone’s heel until they slipped on, grazing the shin, pulling up the tongue, tying the laces, and of some feet, little feet walking in those shoes. And I again felt jealous, but this time the jealousy and sadness took over my body. I trembled as I heard the metal door open and knew this time it was the man, and I left the room, closed the door, and ran to the bathroom and turned on the shower and bathed in the freezing water. The bathroom, unlike the room, was crumbling with age, but like everything in that cave, it was also something else; that shower felt like a waterfall. The freezing water paralyzed my ribs, those same ribs he caressed knowing the nerve is there, in the space between one rib and another, it’s the most delicious place to be caressed, there isn’t anything you can do. He came into the bathroom and got naked, and I said there isn’t hot water, and he hugged me. I covered my breasts as was my custom when I was cold and the wet hair touching my back felt like a smack. His erect cock made me kneel and go toward him, suck him softly and then turn off the tap and let him enter me. Both standing, me shivering, while through the little bathroom window you could see the green of some trees that foretold a forest, the forest that had a board in the middle, a forest that was also a thicket and from which emanated a smell of seafood and wildflowers. In the moment of orgasm that came softly and warmed my body, I saw on the soap dish a hairband with red bobbles next to a little comb (some hands resignedly untangling long hair, unintentionally pulling the strands, a voice apologizing, again skillfully freeing the knot and placing the hairband, the last time: jealousy. Not jealousy for all the beauty and tenderness of those hands, but jealousy as something coming from or a complement to or a sibling to that ancient melancholy, that secret pain).