It was July and the ice cream started melting the moment you left the Palazzo parlor; we’d been going there for months, like a ritual or religion that helped us hold out until nightfall when the heat dissipated in slender currents of air, and I’d have already had enough, and Ismael was pressing heart-shaped ice cubes wrapped in a T-shirt to his cheek. The ice cube tray had been a present from someone at a wedding shower, which was only nominally so since Ismael and I still hadn’t gotten married, but not long ago had decided to simulate a wedding so that, among other things, we could stop talking about weddings. He didn’t want to get married and I did; I needed to explore the meanings of that act, cloak myself in a gesture; plus, I liked the idea of setting myself up in opposition to those proud parents of three who had never tied the knot or gone through the courts: I’d show them the photos of my sham wedding. So what do you think, Ismael? An album of joke photos? We’ve never celebrated anything. And at first it was a joke, like the Christmas cards we made with he and I as Joseph and Mary, wearing a couple of sheets and aluminum foil halos. López, our dog, was baby Jesus, his snout peeping out from the shawl I’d bought for my cousin Maite’s graduation. The shawl was straw-colored; if I cut myself and López out from the rest of the photo, we’d be like that painting by Goya with a dog’s head peeking over a slope. I felt bad about López, sorry to have made an animal look ridiculous. Did you and I look ridiculous dressed up as Mary and Joseph? Had our friends’ smiles been embarrassed? I don’t think so, but how can I be sure? I’d hoped to open a door with the sham wedding, enter an unknown room. I was itching for something that would turn everything on its head, longing to give birth to ravens instead of children. And I convinced myself that it would be a way of warding off bad luck. I didn’t know how to explain it; and I didn’t stop to analyze it either. I couldn’t wait for February and our vacation to come around. We were able to get away that year because the exams would be done at Ismael’s university and I was on a list of high school substitute teachers but hadn’t had any work because of the cutbacks (cutbacks made me think of mulberry leaves being eaten by silkworms). The unemployment didn’t bother me; my thing was cinema and I’d just won a prize in the ONCE lottery. I’d be living in the lap of luxury for the rest of the year and Ismael wouldn’t have to find the rent alone.