On the café terrace, the screenwriter orders a coffee. It’s raining, so he decides to sit beneath the awning and write. It’s ten in the morning, and the street’s almost empty. Perhaps it’s only for the time being. He observes the activity around him, and over at the café on the other side of the plaza. Some people are walking with their umbrellas; others don’t seem to mind getting wet. Summer rain’s different, he thinks. Tepid rain doesn’t bother them. Besides, many don’t have far to go. Perhaps they’re taking a shortcut through the plaza. How does he know this? He doesn’t. He’s guessing from their clothes, the way they’re walking, the expressions on their faces, and he further guesses they might be going to get something to eat in one of the several sandwich shops and snack bars around. . His leg’s no longer bothering him, but he decides to stay under the awning along with all the tourists and wait for the rain to subside. The air is fresh; the noise of the rain against the pavement is pleasing to him. Yes, he’ll spend the time writing. Once again, the image he focuses on before beginning is the girl’s. The story is his own invention, but he knows he borrows heavily from the girl, from the stories she tells him, from the extracts of her novel she reads to him or that get delivered to his hotel, with commentaries scribbled in the margins, which he incorporates into his own narrative. It’s dawn. The girl’s looking out from the balcony, standing almost exactly where she was the previous night while observing the front of the Grand Central Station, as if deliberating whether or not to go there and search for whomever, or whatever, her father and his associate are waiting for. She goes inside and writes in her diary until the noise of the traffic and people outside grows to the point of distraction. At some point in the night, her father left, and took the laptop with him. He never gives her an explanation for his sudden disappearances, and she never has any idea where he goes. When he eventually returns, she notices more newspapers folded under his arm. He hangs his jacket on the back of a chair and leaves the laptop case to one side. He looks tired, as if he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. He routinely asks the girl how her writing’s going, because he thinks she likes it when he asks. But without waiting for a response, he lights a cigarette, lies back on the bed, and stares listlessly up at the ceiling. The girl takes stock of their relationship: a relationship at once strange and fascinating, she thinks, worthy of being written about, or depicted on the big screen. She doesn’t know why, but she has a profound sense that she’s living in one of those defining periods in history. Writing is beginning to dominate her life more and more, and now she finds herself at the cusp of an issue she hasn’t dared to mention yet, but which she hoped would eventually be resolved. If she had to describe how her father is passing his time, she’d start by saying he waits. She doesn’t know what for. He just waits — as ash falls on the bedspread, and he brushes it away with his hand; as he reads the occasional newspaper, or takes the occasional look around the room; as he occasionally ventures to the balcony to look at the Grand Central Station opposite, before coming back inside, somber, resigned, because all he can do is wait. He passes time like the screenwriter, in other words, who locks himself away in his room, and spends all day strapped to a writing desk, typing, in order to get nowhere with his script. The girl’s father reads a newspaper, then another, and another. The kiosk in the station sells newspapers from all over the world. Occasionally, he picks up the tome of his favorite author — the one obsessed with jealousy and lost time. Appropriate for someone who has nothing else to do with his time but wait. At times, the girl is sitting near him writing in her diary, or typing away on the laptop. They hardly ever speak to one another, each engrossed by their own work. If words are exchanged at all, it’s only on general terms, school, the concerts, the weather, and generally about her, never him — although she knows that he’s only passing the time, that he and his colleague McGregor are waiting for something to happen, for someone to make an appearance, perhaps someone who will be arriving after a long journey, having come from somewhere far away, unaware two predators are lying in wait, planning an ambuscade. Who knows, perhaps it’s another scientist. The girl delights in speculating about the possibilities, in writing about them in her diary, perhaps with a view to incorporating them in her novel. Indeed, she can’t stop thinking and writing, especially when her father’s in the room, for his presence renews her fascination. She doesn’t think it trivial that the man in the classically-cut suit happens to know her mother. A seriously ill scientist, according to the newspapers, an acquaintance of her parents, and a longtime acquaintance at that, for he recognized in the girl’s features the face of her mother when she was young. Occasionally, the girl’s father receives a phone call from McGregor, and he always goes to the balcony to speak to him, looking down at the plaza, as if addressing him directly. But the girl knows this isn’t possible. In her imagination, McGregor always calls from the station platforms when he’s on his watch. Then, when her father hangs up, he just resumes waiting. The girl never asks him why. By now she has the good sense to know what not to ask. Occasionally he connects the laptop to the phone line and checks his emails; occasionally he even sends a few. Later on, the girl continues writing her story about the old professor of philosophy, the hunter of aliens who also spends his time holed up in various rooms around a desolate city, such as an abandoned control room, where he thinks about the past, looking through windows that offer him a view of the stars. And while she writes, we don’t know if she’s completely focused on her narrative, or distracted, throwing an occasional sidelong glance at her father, with the hope of exploring the laptop’s classified files, and uncovering a trove of secrets. She’s tried before of course, but every time the system demands a password, which every time she fails to guess, and so is left only to imagine what untold stories are waiting to be unlocked. She comes out of her trance, sees her father asleep on the bed, fully clothed, so she goes over to search through the newspapers for the strange announcement that caught her attention the day before.