What’s more, they’re already picking up the stretchers. Marcela whispers, “Let’s go with them.” “For what?” I say, and she says, “You have to cover me.” The suicide’s father proves to have good ears and to be a quicker study than I am. He tells her calmly, “Come along with me, they’ll be less suspicious.”

I let them go on ahead. I’d rather distract the police officer and the court clerk, who are walking together.

“Where’s the other boy’s family?”

“We sent a message. We don’t know if it got to them and we can’t wait any longer. This heat, the flies . . .”

Yes, the flies. They’re also settling on me.

There’s a pause, and in the sudden silence the words of one stretcher-bearer to another can distinctly be heard: “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

He says it with conviction. As he walks, bearing the weight of his cargo, he gazes around the best he can at the firmament, so blue and diaphanous. Perhaps he smells the grass and thinks about the foxes and partridges he could be hunting, and about the meat he’ll grill and the matés he’ll sip at day’s end.

Beautiful day, yes. Not for the boys. They deprived themselves of it.

“Why’d they do it? Things weren’t working out between them?”

The police officer: “What things?”

“Come on, you know.”

The court clerk: “I think it was a pact. That’s my intuition.”

“A pact?”

“A pact: when two people agree to kill themselves.”

In case one of them loses their nerve, or because they’ve realized they share the same motive. Who knows.

•

On the trip back we form a caravan along the narrow dirt road. We’re the last car, and the dust cloud makes for a challenging drive.

Marcela isn’t saying anything so I ask if she managed to get some good shots.

“I won’t know until I develop the film. I couldn’t focus.”

She shows me a miniature camera, and I take it from her for a closer look. Anyone would think it was a toy.

“The old man went along with it,” I say.

“He’s not an old man.”

“I think he was happiest talking to you.”

“Perfectly natural. I was the only woman there and he needed emotional support.”

“He told you that?”

“No. I sensed it.”

“I think he’d like to see you again, just the two of you next time.”

“He wants to see the photos. He’ll call me.”

She knows why he’ll call—certainly not for the photos—and she didn’t refuse to give him her number. Is Marcela available? That would be unusual, there’s no woman without a man. They all have someone lined up, always. Marcela may be taking a break right now or looking for someone new. If that’s the case, why the old man and not me?

I feel a twinge of excitement, but the Citroën is full of dust and I’m caked with it in this heat.

Tomorrow.

•