Gaspar had been unsettled by that information about the owners. Just like the house on Villarreal: no one claimed it. He had never sensed anything disturbing in the Princesa and he trusted his instinct, but he didn’t much care for ghost owners, he didn’t like houses no one wanted that beckoned to visitors with their windows like half-closed eyes, houses like whores showing their legs on the corners, their mouths red and their lights neon, the sickly light that was the same as the lights at the hospital where their friends died and where Vicky did her internships and where he’d said goodbye to his father, whose eyes, at the end, had been black like beetles, and like Omaira’s, who still came back to touch Vicky’s feet at night, black and shining like insects, like the bugs that hit against the patio lights at the Villa Elisa house on summer nights. He had to think less, sometimes, deactivate the connections. Marita always wanted him to smoke pot—it’ll relax you, she’d tell him.

Pablo was finishing his latest project: drawings and photos of lovers with the faces of poets. Gaspar helped him make the masks and was also teaching him to read poetry. I want them all to be thirty and under because the project’s going to be called “30 under 30,” and there’ll be thirty guys, some in photos, others in drawings. Now that I think about it, I could really include some women.