Afterward, Juan lay down naked in the bed, on his side, and cried holding Tali’s hand; Tali knew him well enough to listen in silence and wait. Angá, this must be the first time he’s cried for her, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud because she knew Juan couldn’t stand people feeling sorry for him. She caressed his hair, so fine and light, not darkened with age like so many blond people’s. He pulled away from her carefully. Are you going to find someone, one of these days? he wanted to know. Tali lay down beside him, lit a cigarette, and offered him a drag. He smoked with eyes closed and face damp; he hadn’t dried his tears. No, she said, you’re my man. But I don’t have Rosario’s courage. There are things I wouldn’t do for you.

Juan crushed the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table and kissed Tali; behind the nicotine and lemon verbena, she tasted the salt of his tears and the chemical aftertaste of his medication. I’m going to find Gaspar, he said, and he left, barefoot and shirtless, mud still spattered on his legs. After a while Tali heard him talking to Gaspar near the bedroom window. They were still discussing the goddess of night and her twin sons death and sleep, so similar and so different.

Tali moved over for Juan when he got into her bed that night. He’d left Gaspar asleep in the living room: the kid wanted to put the mattress there and not in a bedroom, and there was no point in arguing, he could sleep where he wanted. Juan had taken a bath, and he had that stand-offish air she knew well, so she didn’t touch him. Soon he was asleep, his back to her. In the semidarkness, she could see the scar that started at his ribs and ended on his back, the mark of one of his childhood operations. The first time she had seen him naked, she’d been so shocked by the scars that she’d almost rejected him; plus, she was older, what was she doing sleeping with a sick teenager? It had been at Puerto Reyes, in one of the mansion’s many guest bedrooms. Tali remembered that first time as a careful thing; he was a virgin, and though he was as hormone-charged as any boy his age, he kept a certain distance, as if he were capable of studying the situation and avoiding adolescent nerves. And, in a way, he was. It was the illness, he’d explained to her later. Each thing he did was a negotiation, a calculation. As if he were tasked with carrying and caring for a delicate crystal treasure that he could never set aside, not even in a safe place, and that had to be moved gingerly so as not to damage or break it, so that he had to think out every movement in advance, always tiptoeing, always wondering if this jolt would bring the disaster, the final break.