He’s faithful, Laura said. I really love him, I replied, and I miss him. We sat down on the grass and I heard squirrels skittering along branches. Laura handed me a bottle of wine she’d bought at Hive. Who took your eye? I whispered into her ear. I liked the oily smell of her hair, and also the color it shone with when it was so dirty. Your mother, she said. She did it at Florence’s house. Without anesthesia, but I didn’t faint from the pain. You’re strong, I told her. No, I was just surprised.

Someday, we’re going to get rid of her, I assured her. If Juan doesn’t do it, someone else will.

Juan came to London in the summer of 1969. His health had deteriorated after the Ceremonial earlier that year. The surgery that they had been planning—because the one when he was little had only been palliative, or at least had become obsolete as he grew up—was set for the month of July. It would be at the Heart Hospital, where my uncle had studied and was regularly invited to give classes, though he rarely accepted because he couldn’t bear to be away from Juan. He wasn’t going to perform the operation himself, of course, because the Darkness had taken his fingers. He was even more legendary after the mutilation—attributed publicly to a hunting accident—or maybe thanks to it. It was going to be a long and risky operation.

It was hard to keep calm when the arrivals door opened. Juan looked weak and exhausted; he wasn’t carrying a single bag and he needed to lean on Graciela Biedma, the doctor who would be with him from then on. My uncle was already in London preparing the team of surgeons. Brown Oxfords, white shirt, and blond hair almost down to his shoulders; he was already six foot five, and he wasn’t at all awkward like other tall boys. He was elegant and slow, regal, as the British would say, and he had the air of a giant cat. He let go of the doctor to hug me: he could cup my whole face in his hand, his fingers tangled in my hair, his palm on my cheek, wrist at my chin. He’d lost any remaining trace of adolescence, and he was all aggressive cheekbones, a chin so cleft it looked wounded, darkened eyes. Not even his smile of recognition was the same: Juan used to smile with a touch of shyness, and now it was a dry, sideways expression, which only I could perceive as happy or relieved, because I knew him so well. I buried my face in his chest, smelled his sweaty shirt. I don’t know if he had a fever, I suppose he did, because I could feel him breathing with difficulty, his heart beating fast and irregular, always the same, so many nights spent sleeping at his side, next to that body. He bent down to kiss me, and I put my arms around his neck and received his breath that was heavy with the hours of confinement and the ordeal of flying, his soft lips and the ferocity of the beard that was already growing in like a man’s. He was about to turn eighteen years old; he looked twenty-five, at least. I caressed his forehead with my thumbs so he would stop frowning: his head hurt. He caressed my back under my shirt. I closed my eyes; Juan’s hand on my back reminded me of a claw. I forced myself to pull away from the hug because if I didn’t, someone else would break it up for us, possibly my uncle or Florence, who were waiting anxiously.