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  The night outside was illegible, and the time in which it 94

  was vanishing was without measure. He thought that he should be grateful to the woman, because she had led him there by the hand, step by step, like a mother with a child.

  She had done it wisely, and without haste. Now what remained to be done would not be difficult.

  He held her hand, in his, and she returned his clasp. He would have liked to turn and look at her but then what he did was let go of her hand and roll onto his side, giving her his back. It seemed to him that it was what she was expecting from him. Something like a gesture that left her free to think, and in a certain way gave her some solitude in which to decide the final move. He felt that sleep was about to carry him off. It occurred to him that he didn’t like being naked because they would find him like that and everyone would look at him. But he didn’t dare tell the woman. So he turned his head toward her, not enough to see her, and said:

  “I’d like you to know that my name is Pedro Cantos.”

  The woman repeated it slowly.

  “Pedro Cantos.”

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  The man said:

  “Yes.”

  Then he laid his head on the pillow again and closed his eyes.

  Nina continued to repeat the name in her mind. Without corners, it slid away, like a glass marble. On an inclined tray.

  She turned to look at her purse, sitting on a chair, near the door. She thought of going to get it, but she didn’t, and remained lying on the bed. She thought of the ticket kiosk, of the waiter in the café, of the taxi with the plastic-covered seats. She saw again Pedro Cantos weeping, his hands sunk in the pockets of his overcoat. She saw him as he caressed her, without the courage to breathe. I will never forget this day, she said to herself.

  Then she turned, moved closer to Pedro Cantos, and did what she had lived for. She curled up behind him: she pulled her knees up to her chest; aligned her feet until she felt her legs perfectly paired, the two thighs softly joined, the knees like two cups balanced one on the other, the calves separated by nothing; she shrugged her shoulders 96

  slightly and slid her hands, joined, between her legs. She looked at herself. She saw an old doll. She smiled. Animal and shell.

  Then she thought that however incomprehensible life is, probably we move through it with the single desire to return to the hell that created us, to live beside whoever, once, saved us from the inferno. She tried to ask herself where that absurd faithfulness to horror came from but found that she had no answers. She understood only that nothing is stronger than the instinct to return, to where they broke us, and to replicate that moment forever. Only thinking that the one who saved us once can do it forever.

  In a long hell identical to the one from which we came.

  But suddenly merciful. And without blood.

  The sign outside said its rosary of red lights. They were like the flames of a house on fire.

  Nina rested her forehead against Pedro Cantos’s back.

  She closed her eyes and slept.

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  Book design by Johanna Roebas