“Isabel is old and she knows me too well. I need to get a new therapist. I can’t keep going to my childhood doctor, it’s shockingly immature, I think. Some of the epilepsy medications are antidepressants. So there: I’m already medicated.”

“You should go to school. You could major in literature. I can see you as a professor.”

“I don’t understand why I have to study.”

“That’s what we middle-class kids do, right? Although I guess you’re rich.”

“Don’t you start in on that, too.”

Before going to sleep, Gaspar read to Marita from the poets he’d discovered. This one died at twenty-two, it’s crazy. I found him when Pablo did that show of photos and poets, remember? He was Slovenian. I don’t know how to pronounce his first name, but his last name is Kosovel. He wrote about a thousand poems, and supposedly they’re all good, at least for a kid. I like this one: “In my temples it throbs, throbs. The shadow. The cold muzzle of the gun. Ten tons. In my heart a half-tone in minor key.” And my dad would write names down randomly in his notebook. You can tell they were writers he wanted to read. Here he wrote Sara Teasdale. I’ve been translating her. She’s great.”

“You could teach English, for example. I don’t like you reading about suicides.”

“I’m not going to kill myself. And I don’t need money. That’s the only good thing I have.”

“Enough with the poor me. That account where they deposit your money, is it here? Because it should be in Colonia. Let’s go one day and deposit cash in Colonia.”

“It’s already in Colonia, been there for years.”

“Let’s go anyway. I went when I was little, it’s lovely. Read me some Sara Teasdale.”

“ ‘There will be stars over the place forever; / Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost . . .”“

“I used to want to study astronomy. But I don’t know how to divide by two digits, that’s why I majored in journalism.”

“You never told me that.”

“I don’t regret it, though. Whenever you want, I can teach you the names of the constellations, I’m sure you don’t know them. No one does, it’s weird how people aren’t interested in space. They must be easier to see from Colonia, right?”

That’s what she wanted: to travel. To go to Patagonia and write about the Welsh colonies there. She wanted to go to Valparaíso, though she was afraid of earthquakes. And to Minneapolis, to see Prince’s house. She deserved a better partner. It didn’t matter that she was sincere about wanting to be with him. He had to go, to leave her, and it was so hard. I want us to travel together, she said, and Gaspar replied of course, and he kissed her neck and left his lips there on her throbbing pulse and thought that he would never take her anywhere, because he could only go toward those who were seeking him. There was a black heart that needed him and someday he would fulfill its wishes, because when you can’t fight, the only way to be at peace is to surrender.