In addition to picking at my fingers, I’d also pick at my gums; that I did softly, with my nail scraping the flesh that protrudes along the upper part of my teeth, the same nail with which I’d later scratch the spongiest part of my vagina. I’d imagine that if he wasn’t dead, he was screwing a new lover, and it turned me on a little. But the desertion was imminent. Toward the end of the night, with cuticle-less fingers and inflamed gums, I’d go buy cigarettes and sit to watch the sunrise, now with lighter ideas, thinking another pill, surely, would make me sleep. I’d hesitate, but I’d take the pill and feel myself dissolve without fully releasing my sphincters, and that could go on for several nights. Or months. One night, it was the last time I waited. Why it was the last time I waited isn’t relevant, it has something to do with a pistol and a series of other things; those things, in turn, have everything to do with the fact that the threat of his abandonment was no longer fatal for me. I’m not clear how it happened, any threat of abandonment has always been fatal for me. I think it really had to do with some idea of mine about a future happiness that imposed itself, the recurrent idea of a possible new love. Could it also have to do with the fact that the whole question of waiting was out of my hands? What started happening was that, sometimes, with my nose pressed to the glass, my sphincters clenched, my breath tense, I’d sense him sitting or standing or lying there and turn around. What started happening was that I’d be waiting for him when he was there, his silent figure watching me or sleeping and me waiting for him like a madwoman. The realization that in the center of that love was a disturbance. María looks at me and asks were you going crazy? Something like that, I answer. But nothing’s that simple, no explanation is sufficient, and I don’t really understand why it ended. I was, I suppose, desiring the end for a long time as a verification of some original suspicion, some inevitable destiny that I imagine was mapped out for me. What’s true, I tell her, gathering a little strength, is that during that last wait I decided to make a list of what we had as a way of settling things. Then I take out the little folded piece of paper and read: