She hadn’t been able to talk to him, not yet. She would try the next time.

Take four hours and make it one. It was always easy to cut, but in this case, this particular party, a ten-minute video would have been ideal. An hour was too long. The editing bay at the journalism school was a windowless room, and Gaspar hated it; he liked to smoke when he edited, and in that confined space even the most insistent smoker would feel suffocated. He didn’t have much time: he rented the suite on Saturdays, when there were no classes. Marita was with him that day; she had asked him to show her his videos before they went for a beer. She was curious. Gaspar hoped she didn’t laugh. He detested it when people laughed at these parties where people were just trying to be happy.

Now he had her sitting there beside him, Marita and her worn-out jeans, sleeveless white shirt, dark skin, and her hair a little longer, but still short. I can’t let it grow out, she’d say, because it gets too frizzy. It’s the genes from my Uruguayan grandfather, who was black. He gave me great skin and complicated hair. Gaspar didn’t want to think about the fact that Marita wasn’t wearing a bra and he didn’t want to look at the way her jeans emphasized her hips, so he handed her a notebook and asked her to mark times. She had taken an audiovisual class and knew how.

The fifteen-year-old girl. Valentina. He had filmed her with tears in her eyes too many times. Her hair mussed. Totally, overwhelmingly aware that her party was falling apart. The adults drunk. Her own father trying to touch her classmates’ asses. Her mother yelling at the waiters because they brought the food out cold and always late. A DJ so bad he couldn’t get anyone to dance.

“I’ve never seen anything more depressing,” said Marita, while Gaspar decided to cut a full hour of small catastrophes, including a shot of the cake ruined by the clumsy hand of a well-intentioned grandma who, when she tried to adjust the pink-dressed figure that crowned the layers of sponge cake and meringue, had pushed it and almost demolished it. The only option left was a backup shot: he’d filmed the cake in the kitchen of the event hall, before they brought it out to the guests. The Carioca carnival was a disaster of sweaty men, women dodging their horny advances, and an exodus of teenage girls: some of the kids had made fun of the quinceañera. Valentina. A lovely name.