Cars passed over the top of the café: there were businesses built all along the space beneath the highway. In recent years some tennis courts had opened and a few pools were under construction, even some schools and one or two plazas with cement ceilings. Gaspar liked to look at the walls of what had once been two-floor houses or apartment buildings: the wallpaper in the children’s rooms, with monkeys and tortoises; the showers and taps set in dark tiles; even a wall that still had the marks of the paintings that once hung there.

“I swear I see him. His legs are wide apart and his hands are really big.”

Betty sighed.

“I believe you, dear,” she said. Gaspar couldn’t decipher her expression: whether she really believed or was just saying she did so that Adela would forget her obsession and eat her ham and cheese sandwich on Vienna bread. Gaspar had ordered a grilled cheese. That day he’d gone to do his homework at the café because his father was restless and pacing around the house, and it was best to avoid him when it was impossible to guess what was bothering him or why.

Suddenly, Betty asked:

“Do you see things too, Gaspar? Like Adela does?”

She was looking for his complicity? That was weird. Parents, in general, preferred their kids not to talk about things like the hanged man’s shadow over the highway. Betty still seemed anxious, and she adjusted her shawl. She had very long hair that she always wore loose.

“No,” said Gaspar. “Those things don’t exist.”

“So, nothing, not ever.”

“Do you, Betty?”

Adela interrupted them.

“You know what would be awesome? To go to the refrigerator cemetery. That’s what they call it. It’s close to the school’s sports field.”

“I don’t know why they’re there,” said Gaspar.

“The factory threw them out when it shut down,” explained Betty. “It’s one of the many national factories that closed. They couldn’t sell them because production stopped. It’s a dangerous place because that model of refrigerator has a door that locks, and it’s easy to get trapped inside.”

“Exactly,” Adela went on. “I heard people leave their dogs inside the refrigerators when they don’t want them anymore.”

“That’s dumb,” said Gaspar, after taking a sip of his milky coffee. “Why would they stick them in there when they could just let them go?”

“Dogs come back, they even stay at the hospital when their owners die, or sleep on top of their graves.”

“Again with the dogs that come back! You’re obsessed. If you give them a really bad beating, they won’t come back, they’re not stupid. There’s no need to stick them in a fridge. You’re making that up.”

“No I’m not. And people also say that women leave their unwanted babies there. And murder victims. Disappeared people. Come on, take me there, Gaspar.”

Betty poured sugar into her tea and said nothing. She knows I’m not taking her there, thought Gaspar.