She put it out on the cement and kept the butt. She got to her feet carefully so her dress wouldn’t blow up, and at that moment she went back to the same quandary as always: Why choose such a short dress? What was she trying to prove? To then respond that it was her right, that they couldn’t diminish her own legs, that the dress was a symbol of her independence and freedom as a woman. Her freedom! She threw one last glance at the man. He didn’t respond. She turned and walked toward the library door. In the reflection in the glass, she could see him watching her go.

Well, that’s that, she thought. The messages, thousands of floating bottles. So common and at the same time always different and exciting. A little adventure, without any risk. Like seeing the ocean through a porthole.

As she went through the door, the man was already part of her past, like the cigarette butt she would now throw out in the bathroom. The bathroom. The little girl. She was so . . . singular. What would become of her?

She thought, as she walked, that if she’d been the little girl whose father sent her to the bathroom alone, she would run away.

She’d give him a little scare. That’s what she’d do.

She remembered how once, when she was very little, she’d lost her parents at the supermarket. She’d wandered in the dairy aisle until a guard asked her if she was lost. She nodded. He took her to the information desk and left her in the care of a woman with a ponytail and enormous hair-sprayed bangs, who would finish the operation with an announcement over the intercom.

“Are you looking for your parents?” asked the woman, bringing the microphone to her lips.

For some reason the woman asked for her name, not her parents’.

“What’s your name, sweetie?”

She thought for a moment and replied, “Teresa.” It was her best friend’s name.

The woman with the bangs turned on the microphone, and in a robot voice announced that Teresa had gotten lost and was waiting for her parents at the information desk.

Who doesn’t believe a child? Who would doubt a little girl’s motives? Do children even have motives?

No, children act without thinking. They let themselves be carried along. They follow the invisible path traced by their father’s arm, his charming eyes.

So a half hour passed and no one came for her, for Teresa. They sat her on the information counter and lent her some rubber stamps and a blank piece of paper to entertain herself. She stamped thousands of birthdays—hers, her father’s, her mother’s, her grandmother’s, her best friend’s. In the end, she signed the document as if it were a will. Because she was always thinking about that, about her will.