Maybe not someone but something.

Something supernatural like a roll of the dice, the dice that tumble along until they stop, leaving face up the side with the number no one could predict.

Dice aren’t supernatural. Is gambling supernatural? Is chance?

I wonder if the supernatural has its laws.

I propose to Marcela that we play “a supernatural game” and ask whether she believes in the supernatural.

She doesn’t think there’s any point in talking about her beliefs, she believes the same as everyone else.

I tell her I think she’s different. She replies that she isn’t.

The supernatural game consists of dreaming. If the two people who’ve agreed to the wager dream the same thing, on the same night, the game has been successful and the dream has one meaning, and if they don’t dream the same thing then its meaning is different.

Naturally, since it’s so hard to create a coincidence, you have to try and promote it, which is done by having the two spend the hours before sleep together, share the same meal, observe and handle things common to both or that one and the other can give equal attention to. It’s best, I explain to her finally, if the players are a man and a woman, and if they sleep together.

She asks whether I’ve ever played it before. I haven’t and explain that in fact I’ve just invented it and am trying to establish the rules.

To tell the truth, in our case, the coincidence-promoting prelude is managed without further deliberation, and the rest, when bedtime arrives, is normal.

When our heads are on the pillow Marcela asks what we’re betting, and I tell her each of us is betting whatever seems right, since it’s not a matter of defeating the other person but of betting against oneself. This seems to appeal to her and we agree on another newly created rule: that there’s no need for one player to tell the other what’s at stake.

My reasoning is that if I bet my dream won’t be the same as Marcela’s, it will be very easy to be right, and I’ll thereby deprive the game of courage and substance. The improbable outcome is that we’ll both have the same dream. And if everything inside me is driving me to kill myself, I can only be curious about a sign that tells me not to take my life.

Therefore I bet that if Marcela dreams something that resembles what I dream, the sign will be no. And no would mean not to do it.

Upon awakening, Marcela tells me her dream:

A group of strong, voracious men were eating a stew. She and I stayed in a corner. We were inside a stone hut up in the mountains.

Then I wasn’t there and they wanted to take advantage of her, which did not happen.