The thought of having to ask the students’ permission to use the hairdryer while they are enjoying the show isn’t appealing, but I’m determined not to return to the bedroom; this way Gerardo will think Shorty has cut my body up and put the pieces in the freezer by the swimming pool bar. It’s a good moment for us to finish once and for all: I’ll go back upstairs for my luggage at six in the morning, while he’s still asleep, and then call a cab. For any other couple, that breaking-up plan might be unimaginable without the police searching the village for the absent partner; but Gerardo and I are used to behaving weirdly. If I felt like spending the day hanging from the branch of a tree, he wouldn’t give it a second thought. That’s another of the things that, almost a year ago, made it unthinkable to leave him: I detest conventionality. With him, by taking everything to extremes—rage to extremes, thinking to extremes, disgust to extremes—I achieve some form of exasperated life, and believe that the force of that exasperation will hurl me somewhere.

Fortunately, there’s an electrical socket in the bathroom. As I’ve forgotten to bring my comb, I attempt to untangle my hair with my fingers, making the top layer and my bangs more or less presentable: the climate in Talavera isn’t dry enough to stop my hair from frizzing, although it’s likely that this has less to do with Talavera than the microclimate of the bathroom, the damp mist evaporating from the floor tiles, redolent of plumbing and swamps. My nascent dreadlocks fall in ringlets, like the coiffure of someone in a crinoline skirt, but what really annoys me is not having brought my eyelash curler or my green eyeliner so I might get at least one part of my face in shape, achieve some sort of beauty that will nudge me toward a kinder appraisal of myself. I leave the bathroom carrying the hairdryer and pass our door on tiptoe, heading for the stairs. Gerardo must have been listening for my footsteps because, when I get to the landing, he turns the lock and opens the door. I run and don’t stop until I’m in the lobby. I’m euphoric.

“Natalia?” he calls from two floors above.

I don’t answer.

“Natalia? Is that you?” he repeats, and my euphoria dissolves into pity.

I start walking, not worrying about making noise, or that he might come down and see me going outside again.