It’s late the next time he speaks to her. The girl calls him from the ladies’ room of a fashionable nightspot where the group’s ended up. She’s had a confrontation with the young conductor of the orchestra who was unhappy with her performance. The dispute then evolved into a jealous altercation, and the young conductor left with another girl. The screenwriter wants to know if she was beautiful. Very, she replies. The applause and admiration she receives from the public doesn’t tally with the young conductor’s animadversions. Moreover, the brilliant composer also takes issue with her interpretation of his No World Symphony. She says they’re only jealous, and then she starts crying. Does she know the address, or at least the name of the place she’s at? He could grab a taxi and come get her, come rescue her, he says. They could even make love right there in the ladies’ room, if she wants, or in some secluded part of the building. But first he needs to know where she is. She stammers something through her sobs. She feels like a fool. Not an uncommon feeling for her. He tells her to leave the restroom and ask someone for the address. She promises to call him back. The screenwriter waits by the phone, drinking, lighting his next cigarette with the previous one, finishes that, lights another in the same manner, empties his glass, fills it again, thinks how long it’s been, a minute, an hour perhaps, he can’t tell exactly. He doesn’t think she’ll call. He doubts he’ll be able get a taxi in his state. At last, the phone rings. Although muffled, he can hear the dance music blaring in the background. He wants to ask her where she is but struggles to articulate the question. The girl’s voice is beginning to falter. She says she’s in one of the rooms at the fashionable nightspot, a storeroom or office, she’s not sure, and someone’s there with her, a stranger. The screenwriter listens, hears her heavy breathing, her moaning, the occasional groans of the guy she’s screwing. He doesn’t dare say anything, ask anything, but only listens. He doubts she’d be able to respond to him anyway. They start screaming so loudly he can hear them when he holds the phone away from his ear. Afterward, he listens as the girl begins to argue with the guy; it only last a few seconds, but it seems to go on forever. Then someone slams a door. The screenwriter whispers her name, waits, whispers it again, then again. Then he yells her name. He doesn’t know what else to do. Suddenly, at long last, the girl responds. He hit me, she says, and hangs up the phone.
It’s a cool morning. According to the TV, the temperature has dropped to seventeen degrees Celsius. The screenwriter takes a look out the window. He didn’t sleep well, and the girl’s words are still ringing in his ears, the voice on the other end of the phone that said he hit me, and then nothing, silence. He turns the TV off. He hit me, the screenwriter says, unconsciously mouthing the words in front of the bathroom mirror as he washes up. He runs his fingers proudly through his hair, still thick after all these years. His mouth is dry. He fills a glass from the cold tap and drinks the water slowly, examining the saggy bags under his eyes. He decides to head for the café in the plaza, limping as always, repeating her words to himself, mouthing them unconsciously, even up to the point the waitress sets down his double espresso and a small cruet of milk on the table. He wishes it had been him who violated her instead of some stranger. Maybe it was one of the other teenagers, or one of the patrons of the Scholastic Institute. He notices he has an erection. Then he asks himself what sort of life he expected to lead in the neighboring country’s capitaclass="underline" to be locked away with her in a hotel room perhaps, or a garret, old and derelict, where he could embark on a new adventure with her. No, that wasn’t it. The scene of her being slapped in the storeroom or office of a fashionable bar is worth exploiting. At a table in a corner of the café, a young guy is working on his laptop. He’s surrounded by a mountain of paper. For a moment, the screenwriter thinks he’s a writer, perhaps a screenwriter like himself, but instead of notebooks and index cards, he sees what appear to be invoices and packing slips, so he looks away dismissively. The screenwriter still uses a portable typewriter — no longer state-of-the-art, as in its day — and a notebook he carries with him everywhere. He’s too old to learn how to use a computer. Some accordion music is playing softly over the café’s speakers. He uses little details like this to focus his thoughts when he finds it difficult to concentrate, a scatterbrain centering itself on something trivial. He needs to write the scene, but feels chagrined at his inability to do so. The girl’s like that, he says to himself, surprised at her capacity to navigate between extremes of sluggish inactivity when feeling uninspired, and of rebellious excitability during a fit of passion. He doesn’t know why she behaves like this, and he believes discovering the answer will tax the very limits — as he’d put it — of his comprehension. He writes half a dozen lines that help him forget about it, and having written something at last, his conscience eases, so he decides to go to the park he visited on his first day in town. On his way there, he indulges in an erotic daydream, and eventually decides to go into a lingerie store to buy a pair of sexy panties. Afterward, he continues his fantasizing en route to the park, imagining the girl wearing the panties he bought, masturbating in them, writhing, her body twisting into the kinds of positions only a contortionist could manage. He imagines himself watching her through a peephole. Once again he develops an erection, so he decides to sit down on a bench and allow some time to pass, his mind to wander, and his excitement to abate. In the park, he pays close attention to everything going on around him, since a few of his scenes are likely to take place there. Next to the wrought-iron fence separating the park from the avenue, there’s a jogging path on which some young athletes are running, or maybe they’re only amateurs decked out to look like accomplished athletes. Years before, when he was young, and regularly visited the neighboring country’s capital, nobody jogged in the park. Perhaps the jogging path didn’t even exist back then, he thinks. In fact, back in his day, nobody jogged at all, unless they were training to be athletes. On the top floor of the hotel with the English name, somewhat recovered from the previous night, the girl is running on a treadmill. She looks out through the windows at the city, at the river dividing it in two, at the approaching clouds above, and the diminutive creatures below who listen to her music and read about her in magazines. Sometimes, the young conductor or brilliant composer exercise along with her; occasionally, they all go running together in the woods nearby. The screenwriter doesn’t really care who goes jogging where; he only thinks about what actors and actresses could play these roles. The girl ought to play herself, of course. No one could do it better. No one her age could perform those piano pieces the way she does, or even simulate her performances, her body language, her poise, the way she deliberates at every note before striking, the way she accents every note on striking, the way her hands engage and then withdraw from the keyboard. No one could recreate the voice she uses when reciting those poems in the guise of the cosmic clown. All of this runs through his mind as he ambles to the pond and takes a seat on one of the benches next to it. Perhaps he’s writing a musical and doesn’t know it yet. Half a dozen sailboats scud from one side to the other through the water, their captains steering them with long sticks from the pond’s edge. A few ducks are soliciting food from some other park visitors. A guy who must be around thirty is mingling with some of the children, launching and recovering his own sailboat. The screenwriter believes this to be unacceptable behavior. People shouldn’t be allowed on the pond with a sailboat once they pass a certain age, he thinks, although what really bothers him is that the man seems completely at ease, tripping nonchalantly around the pond, barefoot, while playing with his toy. There are tourists everywhere, some stop to watch the sailboats, sitting on the grass or lying in the sun, a few eventually moving off to explore the rest of the park. The screenwriter jots down a few notes before growing weary of the heat. He looks out on the water, the children, the sailboats, and at the guy he thinks should act his age. He puts his notebook in his jacket pocket and gets up to accost him. Do you know how many infectious diseases you could catch? he says to the guy, signaling at his bare feet with a flourish of his cane, inadvertently striking one of his toes. Slightly hurt and taken aback, the guy answers the screenwriter with a disconcerted look. You should be more careful, the screenwriter says contemptuously while turning away. The guy mutters something unintelligible behind his back before returning to the pond’s edge, tripping nonchalantly around it, barefoot, and playing with his little toy.