The French girl. Her name was Josiane, she was tall and solid, overgrown. She was studying for a postgraduate degree in Latin American studies, and she wore three woven bracelets tied around her wrist: one was a gift from her best French friend, Kallisté; another, from her best friend in Brazil, Paulo; the third, from her best friend in Barcelona, Lupi. Denise smoothed the alpaca wool blanket that covered the bed and looked at her bare arm, which wore not a single bracelet. Before she’d left on her trip to Machu Picchu, Bolivia, and Ecuador, the French girl had warned Denise that she hoped things between them would improve when she got back, and if not, she would look for another place. Denise didn’t understand what she meant; she didn’t think there was any problem with their living situation. In her nearly perfect Spanish, the French girl had explained that what she wanted was for them to have more of a relationship, to talk, spend time together, drinking tea and listening to music in the living room, for example. That was why she traveled, she said, to get to know people, to gain experience. Denise had looked at her with the same overwhelmed expression she gave the condo-fee neighbor. “You don’t gain experience,” she told the French girl, “you accumulate encounters, because all you do is have a good time. Experience makes you suffer.”

The French girl stared at her openmouthed. “See,” she scolded. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

It’s not that she didn’t like Josiane, but she couldn’t respect her. She couldn’t respect any European, the same way she couldn’t respect the sufferings of rich people. That’s why she always said no when Josiane invited her to go out with her foreign friends. But she did like to be in the French girl’s room, among her things. Once, she’d even picked up her Nikon, expensive and much better than her own camera, and she’d taken a couple photos of the hallway. It was dusk, and the sun imprinted reddish tones on the wall that mixed with the shadows of the apartment. She’d forgotten to erase the last one, and sometime later the French girl had put the photo on Facebook, amazed by what she thought was a paranormal event. No, Denise couldn’t respect her.

Of course, there was something of envy there. She envied Josiane’s assuredness, her stride of a European conqueror, her ability to take ownership of the places she inhabited. Denise had spent her childhood in Santiago, her adolescence in Vallenar, and her early adulthood in Antofagasta, and she’d never felt she belonged anywhere. She had followed her mother’s nomadic roaming, and as she was living in shared rooms in other people’s houses, the hope began gestating that when she finally found herself surrounded by her own things, she would feel something in her heart. She’d returned to Santiago to study photography in an institute, and she had decorated her rented room enthusiastically, meticulously. She painted one wall burgundy, went to the market and collected fruit boxes to make shelves, hung photographs by Robert Frank, Eudora Welty, Jill Freedman, and Sergio Larraín, and she even included some of her own in the mix; she made collages; bought an old wooden desk; went to Casa & Ideas for white candles, a mug with a little bird inside it, and a round paper lampshade . . . and then, when the room was finally full, she sat on the bed, closed her eyes, and practically cringed, as if she were waiting for a roller coaster to start its descent. But she didn’t feel anything; she was still a tourist.