Then she asks, “Who, then?” whom do I wish to speak to, and I ask whether I’ve had a call from a certain Señorita Emilia Candé, and she informs me that I have not, she asks her fellow operator who confirms, no. I ask whether it’s possible she may have called yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that, at some point. The operator answers that she never called.

•

I go back out into the street, and the everyday world is passing by, or a bit worse than everyday, there’s a hot wind blowing.

I’m hungry, I buy myself an ice and retreat to the refrigeration of a movie house to watch Fahrenheit 451 twice, it’s premiering.

By the time I leave it’s night, that’s what I wanted.

The wind keeps up, it goes uuuuuh, here it’s encanyoned by the buildings, in the mountains it’s encanyoned by the canyons.

I have a beer and a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich. I needed that.

I think about Mauricio. He must be desperate, he’s a person who suffers from remorse. I could phone him and tell him to forget about it, that on my side of things it’s completely forgotten, I’ll see you tomorrow, it doesn’t hurt at all anymore. (Tomorrow. . . ?)

I think about her letter, the one I set fire to in the ashtray. I have no other, she never wrote me again, I can understand that, I didn’t write her back. I might like to have a portrait of her from back then. I’d like to see her . . . as she was.

•

It’s 9:20, and nothing’s happened.

•

It hypnotizes me, the train that shakes the high iron railings and seems to throw this bridge out across space like a balcony, that takes in all the air as it passes and leaves a vacuum in its wake that pulls me down . . .

When it goes into the curve my whole being veers with it and I’m going to fall over the edge to my death, danger! Red light!

. . . Someone is waving an emergency lantern, down there on the ground between the tracks.

The train is far away, the iron rails silent.

•

Beneath this bridge the trains fly past and fly past again.

•

Some human beings fall from up there, from this bridge.

•

If you’re religious, it must be harder to go through with it than if you aren’t. You think, “It won’t end with this; afterward there’s hell.”

Marcela says, “You’re back.” I say, “It’s been a special day.”

She thinks she’s guessed, some trace must be left on my face. “You had to get into a fistfight with someone.” I think about that, and say, “No.”

“Have you eaten?”

I say no, but I’d rather have a shower first.