They walked south through El Canal, holding their noses when they passed the open sewer. The occasional old summer villas interspersed among fishermen’s cottages gave way to three-story brick buildings. She wanted to turn, to leave Tamara on her own, but continued to follow her, as though they were walking through a long narrow gorge instead of along city streets. She fixed her eyes on her friend’s back, the long mane of black hair, or on the ground so as not to trip. The sidewalks seemed unusually dark, and once or twice she almost fell flat on her face, not because of the cracks in the pavement, but from the sensation that she’d come across an unexpected step. That feeling—which lasted the milliseconds it took her foot to find solid ground, and made her body think it had dropped into a hole, an abyss—also had its origin in Tamara’s long, thick hair. She was scared that her friend would turn around and have a different face, the features of that fat, deformed grandmother who had floated in the air—a fact that she suddenly remembered. Her fear contrasted with the peaceful night. It was past one in the morning and the bars were closing. Groups of people who had come out for dinner were slowly disappearing, like the embers of a cigarette thrown on the ground. They came to a square where some boys were sitting on the curb, drinking from large plastic cups. They whistled as the two girls passed.

“That was my grandparents’ apartment,” said Tamara, pointing to a long, narrow rather depressing balcony.

“I must have gotten muddled,” she replied.

The impression of madness or that Tamara was pulling her leg vanished.

That summer they wandered together through the empty city, never thinking that it was the last time they would be together in those deserted summer streets in just that way. On a number of occasions they explored El Canal, walking along the dirt tracks in the orchards that wound down to the beach, where trash was burned in the late afternoon and everything was clouded by a layer of bluish smoke. Only bikers and dogs haunted such godforsaken places. Once or twice they ventured into other neighborhoods to see what they were like with the stores closed—it was mid August and midweek—and the dim orange streetlighting filtering through the leaves of plain trees in the smooth humidity. They never sweated. They were at that age when the body deals more easily with heat than cold, and they spent that month alone. Their parents and siblings were on vacation for the month. They bought marijuana and smoked it in a tasca where reefer was allowed, and then they bared their souls to each other, lying on the grass in the park with a liter bottle of beer that was always too warm, and from which they only drank to quench their thirst.