He’s inclined to believe the girl’s lost her mind, if only temporarily, or that she’s tired and this has impaired her reasoning, her thinking — he can’t think of the right word. He’s tired himself out. After all, she’s only just left his room after staying up most of the night. For some reason she’s obsessed with one of the least interesting elements of the plot, has warped it into something more important than it is. After arriving back at the hotel in front of the Grand Central Station, she found her father was out, which she thought suspicious, so she wrote something down that she says perfectly sums up her thinking on the matter. The screenwriter listens in the dark, his lights out, the girl’s voice, on the other end of the line, seeming to emerge from the darkness. She’s forgotten about the creations of her mind, including the shadow that stalks her in the night. He hears her voice plain and clear, although his dilated pupils are straining at the soft fletches of light filtering in through the curtains, as if to say we want more than this smattering of traffic light, lamplight, and moonlight — we hunger for a greater repast. But eyes can’t speak, so all he can hear is the voice on the other end of the line, and only that occupies his thoughts. McGregor speaking, he thinks. Suddenly, as if she were reading his thoughts, she starts talking about that same associate of her father’s, who, she says, as she only just discovered, is taking turns with him staying in the station. I think they’re both hunters, she declares. They’re pursuing a special kind of prey, but she hasn’t yet discovered what it is.
Some time later, the screenwriter dreams the girl’s father and this so-called McGregor emerge from the body of the old guy in the classically-cut suit. Then the two merge together and reincorporate him. The screenwriter awakens and writes a description of the dream while it’s still fresh — as if trying to photograph a shadow that only moves in the night, returning to its sanctuary in the river at dawn. He’s trying to remember where the dream was set, and thinks it took place in a city, but somewhere far from the neighboring country’s capital. He turns off the light and goes back to sleep. He dreams of some things about which he’s already written, and others about which he’d like to write, things he always fails to recall on awakening when they’ve returned to their sanctuary in his unconscious. Nevertheless, while still in bed, he goes over the note he wrote during the night. His handwriting is almost illegible, but it doesn’t matter: he still remembers the dream — although a little less clearly — and what he manages to decipher from his notes supplements what he’s forgotten. He gets out of bed and freshens up, has a look at himself in the bathroom mirror, takes a deep breath, and then heads down to the canteen for breakfast. The elevator takes its time arriving. He gets the feeling he may be better off taking the stairs. He’d do it, if it wasn’t for his damned limp. He grips his cane impatiently and knocks it against the floor a couple of times, the strokes, muted by the carpet, rendering the act meaningless. He doesn’t like those muffled thuds, he says to himself, because they probably unleashed a cloud of dust mites that are now colonizing his socks and the hem of his pants. Standing at the hotel’s entrance, he looks outside and wonders if the world he sees is real or an invention of the mind. It’s either one or the other, but it’s still the same world that greets him every morning: the looming buildings, the rushing vehicles, the passing faces, that woman who lifts the shutters of the lingerie store. He decides to go out for breakfast instead of having it in the canteen. He heads to a kiosk, located at the point where the boulevards intersect, and buys a broadsheet from his native country and one from the neighboring one as well, before heading to a café on the small island in the river. It will take him about twenty minutes to get there, but he thinks the walk will do him good, the fresh air will do him good before he shuts himself away again. On arriving, he asks for a sandwich and coffee, and reads the news from his native country. The star of the soccer team the girl supports is still on vacation and hasn’t made clear when he’ll be rejoining his team. The coach is now threatening him with a fine and suspension, so the star player has announced to the press that he doesn’t like being threatened. The same newspaper has a long article on the man who’s considered the worst terrorist in history. After his sandwich, the screenwriter drinks his coffee and checks what movies are being advertised. He’s especially interested in knowing which ones are showing in both cities. Only the big blockbusters, it seems. The movie business isn’t what it used to be. They don’t make quality films anymore. He’s annoyed at himself for having such a trite opinion, but it comes from hearing similar comments expressed by many other people in the business. He’d liked to have worked with the truly great screenwriters — especially the ones from the golden age — to be numbered among them, to be considered great, or at least be remembered for having collaborated with them. When he was young, he’d hoped that one day he might be considered great, but nowadays, he has no such illusions. He hasn’t the time or the energy he’d need to achieve greatness. But then he thinks of an exception to his rule — a movie whose screenwriter isn’t from the golden age, a quite recent movie in fact, but one that he admires a lot, the one in which angels listen to other people’s voices, perhaps those of everyone on Earth. He folds the newspapers and decides to stop thinking about it. Besides putting him in a bad mood, it’s becoming a repetitive thought pattern, and this makes him feel uninspired. He takes out his notebook. There’s something about the old guy in the classically-cut suit that’s bothering him. But when he thinks about him in the context of the whole story, he finds himself wondering more about what it is the girl’s father and the so-called McGregor are up to — why they take turns waiting in the Grand Central station, who or what it is they’re waiting for. He notes down a few plausible hypotheses, nothing too outlandish, although he wants to keep an open mind. On the outdoor terrace of a bar, the girl’s sitting down reading a newspaper while talking to her mother on her cell phone. She’s expressing reluctance at the prospect of being interviewed by one of the neighboring country’s leading newspapers, but her mother says she’s coming to collect her to make sure she attends. The girl tells her the name of the bar she’s at then looks around for a street plaque to tell her the name of the street it’s on. She puts the cell phone away and goes through the headlines. News of the capture of the world’s worst terrorist occupies the first few pages. There’s no news about the star player of the soccer team she supports. It seems the neighboring country doesn’t care about his refusal to come back from vacation. She turns one page, then another, and then, suddenly, she sees a picture of a familiar face. The screenwriter imagines the girl’s puzzled expression, and then a shot of the page she’s looking at, the photograph of the old guy in the classically-cut suit, and the caption that reads, “Well-Known Scientist Seriously Ill.” The screenwriter wants to get the gist of the news across without worrying too much about the wording. So he summarizes the contents of the article telegraphically: World-renowned astrophysicist. Health declines sharply. Last twenty-four hours. Next to the article, a shaded box gives some information about his life. Apparently, the man she met in her father’s hotel room is an expert researcher into the possibility of life in other galaxies, and a stalwart advocate of radio telescopes as a means of detecting intelligent life in space. The girl can’t believe what she’s reading and wonders whether she should pinch herself. This news couldn’t be more exciting. She tears out the article and puts it between the pages of her diary as evidence, in case she ever doubts what she’s just read. But then she checks her enthusiasm. This isn’t exactly the windfall it seems to be, for although she’s finally discovered the identity of the old guy in the classically-cut suit, she’s done so at a point when his health’s in serious decline. She’s finally found someone to explain to her the reason there are so many churches and cathedrals scattered all over the planet, but that someone may in fact be on his deathbed. So the truth, like so many other things in her life so far, may be just out of reach. The next scene takes place in a taxi. Mother and daughter are sitting next to each other looking out their respective windows — not speaking to each other, the tension between them at breaking point. Finally, the mother asks what’s going through the girl’s mind. Nothing, she says. But, in reality, the girl’s disgusted at being dragged away from her writing to sit through an interview with the young conductor and brilliant composer.