Fernandito rose to his feet, ready to resume his duties. “And meanwhile, what are you going to do?”

Alicia made a gesture that seemed to imply she was going to do a pile of things, or none at all.

“You won’t go and do something silly, will you?” said Fernandito.

“What makes you say that?”

The boy looked at her rather anxiously from the door. “I don’t know.”

This time Fernandito went down the stairs slowly, every step feeling like a reproach. Alone again, Alicia returned Isabella’s notebook to the box under the sofa. She stepped into the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water, then took off the clothes she was wearing and opened the wardrobe.

She chose a tight black dress that, in Fernandito’s estimation, would have made Myrna Loy green with envy. On her twenty-second birthday—Isabella’s age at the time of her death—Leandro had told Alicia he would give her whatever she wanted. She had asked for that dress, which she’d been admiring for two months in a boutique on Calle Rosellón, and a matching pair of black suede French shoes. Leandro had spent a fortune without complaining. The saleswoman, who didn’t dare inquire whether Alicia was his daughter or his lover, told him that few women could carry off a dress like that one. After leaving the boutique, Leandro took Alicia to dinner at La Puñalada. Almost all the tables were taken by what one could charitably call businessmen, who drooled like hounds when they saw her walk by and then gazed enviously at Leandro. “They’re looking at you like that because they think you’re an expensive hooker,” said Leandro before toasting to her health.

She hadn’t worn that dress again until that afternoon. As she made up her character in front of the mirror, outlining her eyes and letting her lipstick accentuate her lips, Alicia smiled maliciously. “After all, that’s what you are,” she told herself. “A very expensive hooker.”

When she stepped out into the street, she told herself she was just going to stroll around aimlessly. But deep down she knew that Fernandito was right. Perhaps she was going to do something really silly.

7

That afternoon, ignoring common sense, Alicia walked down the stairs with an inkling of where her feet would take her. The shops on Calle Fernando were already lit up, shedding strokes of color on the pavement. A scarlet halo faded in the sky, outlining cornices and rooftops high above the street. People came and went on their way to the metro station, their daily shopping, or their ticket to oblivion. Alicia joined the flow of pedestrians toward the City Hall square, where she passed a squadron of nuns flocking in perfect formation. She smiled at them, and one nun crossed herself at the sight of her. She continued navigating the river of walkers along a street bordering the walls of the cathedral.

There she walked under the papier-mâché Gothic bridge, letting herself be enveloped, as the tourists were, by the charm of that medieval-looking citadel, a set design most of which was barely ten years older than her. Past the bridge, a photographer on the hunt for liquid shadows had mounted a fabulous Hasselblad on a tripod and was framing the perfect composition and exposure for the fairy-tale image. He was a severe-looking individual with shrewd eyes hiding behind enormous square glasses, which conferred on him the air of a wise, patient turtle.