When he was almost back at his building he had to stop suddenly: he’d seen Doctor Riera climb out of a double-parked gray car, step between two cars parked against the curb, cross the sidewalk, and easily mounting the three steps that led to the apartments, disappear inside. Nula started walking again. When he reached the entrance he saw that Riera was standing with his back to the street, a few steps away, looking carefully at the two rows of apartments and the narrow, tidy garden between them, and not wanting to run into him, decided to keep walking to the corner, and because he didn’t quite know what to do he stepped into the ice cream shop, which was empty just then, not even the owner was there, just a girl who worked the counter every so often when the owner was out, and who greeted him inquisitively.
— I forgot my key and have to wait for my mother to come home, Nula explained, but at that very moment he saw Riera’s gray car turn the corner slowly and he gave the girl a look that could mean several things at once, or rather none, and in two steps, two leaps practically, he was on the sidewalk, just in time to see Riera double-park the car again halfway down the block, climb out, quickly cross the sidewalk, and enter his office. Nula started walking under the trees, uncertain if he should walk fast or slow, or whether or not he wanted to run into Riera, if he should or shouldn’t ask him for an explanation — though he wasn’t actually sure that his visiting the apartment building had anything to do with him — but when he reached the office and saw that the door was open and the gray car was still running, he sped up, and when he reached the next corner, weaving through the traffic, which was heavy at that hour, he crossed the street and stopped at the next corner, in front of the hardware store window. Every so often he glanced furtively toward the office, until finally, though he hadn’t seen Riera come out, he saw the gray car pull away slowly, practically rubbing against the ones parked against the curb, intending to turn, surely, which in fact it did, stopping again, this time in front of the mysterious house that apparently provoked in Lucía, every time she passed its door, a kind of theatrical disapproval. Riera got out of the car and rang the bell. He didn’t have to wait, because the door half-opened immediately, and though he couldn’t see who’d opened it, because the person wasn’t visible from where he was standing, Nula presumed it must not have been the kid from the night before because Riera’s gaze, though it was directed slightly downward, was nevertheless inclined at the height of an adult, or in any case someone much older than five or six. For about a minute, Riera talked energetically with the person who’d answered, and eventually, smiling, he passed his hand through the doorway and made a quick gesture, and turning around, crossed the sidewalk and got in the car, at the exact moment that the door behind him closed. Riera pulled out again, slowly, and turned left at the next corner. Nula crossed to the other sidewalk and walked to the end of the block, intending to turn as well, and saw that the gray car was now parked in front of the house — now all that was missing, when he passed by, was to hear the small metallic sound of the lock that Riera turned from inside, but no, this time his prediction was wrong, too much time had already passed since the car turned the corner and stopped halfway down the block, and no matter how much he focused, slowing down considerably but not daring to stop as he passed the door, unsure why he’d been struck by an intense desire to hear it, that small, familiar sound didn’t reach his ears.
Crossing his utensils over the few fries scattered across his plate, over the traces of egg yolk and toasted, oil-soaked bread crumbs, Nula leans back against his chair and, taking a drink of mineral water, decides that his lunch is finished. He smiles at his memories: the explanation for their behavior was much more simple than he’d imagined, and, at the same time, Lucía and Riera never really floated in that inaccessible, mythological space. His relationship with them started, lasted a while, and now, for the last hour, give or take, is once again unfinished, has entered that murky zone where, their cynicism exceeding their optimism, contradictory and awkwardly, the incomplete, mortal shadows that live there struggle over each other. His smile disappears and he sits thoughtfully for a minute, at the end of which, in order to move on, he takes his cell phone from his pocket and dials the manager of the supermarket.
— Anoch, he says. How are you? I’m at the cafeteria. I’m on my way to your office. You’re coming for a coffee? Even better.
He decides to move to a clean table, and he’s just finished settling down when he sees the manager, accompanied by a woman who entices him immediately, a decisive and professional demeanor yet conscious of the effect she produces in men, and who exchanges a probing glance with Nula, a momentary search for recognition which he’s unsure if the manager has noticed or even if it’s actually happened at all. Suddenly it’s like his sexual encounter with Lucía a little while earlier had never happened. It’s been discarded in the trash heap of the past, the incomprehensible limbo where, rather than vanishing suddenly, disappearing forever from the strange world in which things take place, we believe the events recently shuffled from the present go to rest, their tenuous threads unraveling in our memory, like the ghostly, colored silhouettes that linger on our retinas when we close our eyes and which disintegrate slowly behind our closed eyelids until they dissolve completely into the darkness. With an infantile yet detached curiosity, Nula wonders (as he does somewhat too often) if the manager and the woman have just come from doing the same thing that he and Lucía did a little while ago, together or on their own, indulging a different hunger than the one usually satisfied at lunch. And Nula imagines the possibility that just as he called them they were in the middle of an embrace, though they seem too clean, well-combed, spotlessly dressed, and too calm and sure of themselves to have emerged, less than a minute ago, from the paroxysm comprised of spasms, moans, sweats, discharge, and even tears, which shortly afterward, after a brief pause, anticipating the promise of the unattainable, desires its infinite and, if possible, even more intense and emphatic repetition.
— How are you? the manager asks, giving him a brief, vigorous handshake, and adds, Mr. Anoch, from Amigos del Vino. Virginia is in charge of the whole beverage department, alcoholic and otherwise. You’re required to get along with each other.
Nula and Virginia exchange a long handshake until her soft, warm hand slides effortlessly from Nula’s.
— Should we have a coffee? Nula asks.
— I can’t, the manager says. But Virginia has carte blanche to make decisions for the shop.
— Don’t take this the wrong way, Nula says, but I think a conversation alone with Mrs. Virginia — or is it Miss Virginia, I hope? — would have its own advantages.