María came over that afternoon and, drunk after we finished off two bottles of white wine to get over the Sunday pain, talking about the party, roaring with laughter, I said: the truth is, I’ve fallen in love again. Holding her cup with her skinny little fingers, she pronounced—as was her norm—one of her ironic little phrases: but you’re a married woman; to which I responded, also cynically, again dying with laughter, with a gesture in which I raised my glass and nodded with my whole body, I said yes, I am a married woman.

2

I WENT BACK to the cave countless times. In my car, speeding down the highway, I wondered why I kept returning. What was I doing there? Every Thursday. Or every Friday. I went back to the cave, and each time the place would get wilder; it grew mounds and crests of dirt that turned to dust. I returned so often that one day I woke up dressed in clumps of moss. In truth I woke up with my torso pale and naked; my tits declaring themselves like soft little hills looked smaller, as if someone who wasn’t him but an animal had sucked them. My pink nipples, somewhat irritated and hard, hanging over the deep curve of my waistline, my arms covered by the sleeves of what remained of a now shredded sweater, purple sleeves with white stripes. A sheet gathered with a cord at my waist, a brown skirt from which moss also sprouted, my large feet, my curly hair with pieces of grass rippling in it. Standing, holding onto the doorknob behind which another door opened and another door and another door; at my feet, a hairless black cat who appeared to have sprouted wings. It wasn’t a dream. Or the ecstasy. It was my birthday, and I was there that morning, transformed, in the cave.