“I’ve read this book too,” I said, parading a level of wit that proved Fermín’s circulation theories beyond all doubt.

She looked at me with emerald eyes that were sharp as blades, and blinked so slowly I thought time had stopped. “Lucky you,” she replied.

She returned the book to the shelf, turned around, and made her way to the exit. I just stood there, glued to the floor for a few seconds, fuming. When I recovered my wits, I grabbed the book from the shelf, took it to the cashier, paid for it, and ran into the street, hoping my iceberg hadn’t sunk under the sea forever.

The sky was the color of steel, and pearls of rain were pelting down. I caught up with her while she waited at the traffic light to cross Calle Rosellón, ignoring the rain.

“Should I call the police?” she asked, without turning her head.

“I hope not. I’m Julián.”

Valentina huffed. She turned her head and fixed those sharp eyes on me again. I smiled like an idiot and handed her the book.

She raised an eyebrow and, after a moment’s hesitation, accepted it. “Another Julián? Do you form a brotherhood or something like that?”

“My parents named me after the author of this book. He was a friend of theirs. It’s the best book I’ve ever read.”

My luck was decided by the scenery, as usually happens on such occasions. A flash of lightning streaked the facades on Paseo de Gracia with a silver hue, and the rumble of the storm crept angrily over the city. The traffic lights turned green. Before Valentina could send me packing or call a policeman, I played my last card.

“Ten minutes. A coffee. If in ten minutes I haven’t earned it, I’ll vanish and you’ll never set eyes on me again. I promise.”

Valentina looked at me, hesitating and repressing a smile. The rain was to blame for everything.

“OK,” she said.

And there I was, believing my life had changed the day I decided to be a novelist.

* * *

Valentina lived on her own in a top-floor flat on Calle Provenza. From there one could contemplate the whole of Barcelona, something I rarely did because I preferred to contemplate her in the different stages of undress to which I inevitably tried to reduce her. Her mother was Dutch, and her father had been a well-known Barcelona lawyer whose name even I knew. When he died, her mother decided to return to her country, but Valentina, by now an adult, decided to remain in Barcelona. She spoke five languages and worked for a lawyer’s practice founded by her father, translating lawsuit reports and multimillion-dollar cases for big companies and families with a box in the opera house going back four generations. When I asked her what she wanted to do with her life, she glanced back at me with that look that always entranced me. “Travel,” she said.

Valentina was the first person I allowed to read my modest attempts at writing. She had a tendency to keep her tenderness and her demonstrations of affection for the more prosaic part of our relationship. When it came to giving me her opinion on my literary dabblings, she would say that all I had of Carax was his first name. Deep down I agreed with her, so I didn’t take it badly. Perhaps for that reason, and because I thought nobody in the world could better understand the plan I’d been nursing for years, one day when I felt particularly well prepared to receive a slap in the face, I told her what I was planning to do as soon as I reached my eighteenth birthday.