I took out my phone and inserted my earbuds. I called a co-worker from my branch who lived nearby, and we arranged to meet at a chain café. I needed help with an insurance claim and a couple of renewals. I told her I’d be gone a few weeks, maybe a few months, and offered her a percentage of my commissions for managing the portfolio while I was away. ‘Wait, how long is this trip again? What about Roberto?’ she asked in her heavy Mexico City accent. She looked at me with her large, dark, meek eyes. Who knows how long, I said. We chatted for a couple of hours. On my way home, I called someone I knew would be interested in sub-letting my flat, where I’d just renewed the lease. It had two bedrooms and an enormous living room, and it was in a beautiful functionalist building, an architectural jewel. It had taken me ages to find something I liked: partially furnished, eclectic décor, quiet despite its central location. I’d just rent a storage unit so I could keep some furniture there, along with some clothing that would be of no use to me in the Caribbean.

I was torn when I left, although the city didn’t put up much of a fight. Of course I heard from friends, co-workers, new would-be lovers. Of course I could have hung in there. But what for? Just because I could, just to prove that I could – to break myself in obeisance to the past and its decisions, to keep a few promises to myself, rigid as a straightjacket, to stay busy and distracted, to save myself from the fear I’d felt after my parents’ accident and my diagnosis. Years ago, I would rather have died than retrace my steps and return to San Andrés, which is what you do when you don’t know what the fuck you really want.

The glass sweats thickly and the final bits of ice flounder into dissolution. Instinctively, I keep scanning the skirting board and the corners of the ceiling. But I don’t find anything this time, and there are no cockroaches on the terrace, just a couple of salamanders chirping away. I return to my stopgap table, to the speakers that haven’t played any music in at least twenty years. I don’t need it, either. In the distance, at the farthest limits of my hearing, beyond the roar of the turbines, an accordion plays.