She dances alone under the flashing lights, her eyes fixed, unblinking, on the shelves of bottles behind the bar. It’s Friday, so there are quite a few people on the dance floor, although it isn’t the busiest hour yet. The girl is moving like a zombie, hardly aware of what she’s doing or where she is. She looks around the dance floor at the people around her, at the other girls in the club — both those who are dancing and the ones sitting down — biding her time, waiting for something to happen, wondering when this meeting is going to take place, a blind meeting she probably should’ve avoided. How will she be able to recognize him? She’ll wait a while longer before leaving. She slows her dancing down until it appears she’s only half-heartedly following the music’s rhythm. Leaning on the bar, the cousin is watching her every movement. Perhaps he followed her because he has something important to say. She considers the possibility her father sent him to look out for her, like a guardian angel or something, but then she dismisses the thought, thinking her father would never go to such trouble for her sake. She decides to offer him a smile, but her smile quickly fades when she sees him vanish in the darkness between the flashing lights. She continues dancing. Sometimes she believes the human race has a destiny it can’t even begin to imagine. A destiny she can hardly begin to imagine herself. Perhaps they’re not even humans, although that’s not important right now. After wasting enough time pottering around the dance floor, she collects her bag from the cloakroom and goes back outside to lean against the bonnet of a car. She should probably be getting back. She wants to plan her route precisely this time; she’s sick of walking the streets using only her gut as a guide. A guy sits next to her. He smiles while taking out a hanky and wiping the sweat from his brow. She remembers having seen him on the dance floor. Light from the club’s entrance is flooding the sidewalk, which is swarming with young people — some entering and exiting, some hanging around chatting and smoking. The bouncer looks at her for a moment, but he’s busy dealing with the people walking in and out of the club. To one side, a group of friends are debating whether to go somewhere else. Near them, two girls are repeatedly kissing one another on the cheeks. The girl counts five kisses before deciding to leave them to it. The largest group of people seems to be waiting for someone, who finally emerges from inside the club, and after briefly checking his fly is closed, joins the rest of his party, which then swarms as a single unit down the street. This isn’t the best place for dancing, says the guy who’s still sitting beside the girl. He looks at her carefully and points out her striking resemblance to that famous pianist. How did he recognize her with her new clothes and hair? He tells her he went to one of her concerts, and says that her features haven’t changed all that much. It seems she should start wearing her sunglasses at night, she thinks. A cap and scarf wouldn’t go amiss either. She asks if he was one of the group that accompanied the musicians when they went barhopping after their concerts. He was not. The only thing he wants to talk about is the voices. He too hears voices, and that’s the reason he replied to her message. What are they like? she asks, disappointed. The guy launches into his explanation, saying he often hears them call him by a different name, but when he wakes up, he can’t recall what it was. Then it happens in your dreams? the girl asks. She says she hears them all the time, asleep or awake. She hears them pronounce her name with a “ka” instead of a “k” sound. He says it’s probably an honest mistake. August is a horrible month. It must be even for aliens. There’s nothing special about this guy, or the voices he thinks he hears. He shouldn’t have bothered replying. Since he only hears voices in his dreams, maybe they should arrange to have a meeting there, because that’s the only place they’d ever hit it off. August is a horrible month for everyone, whatever the city. They remain seated on the car, talking about aliens and music. He doesn’t think the voices come from another galaxy, and he doesn’t understand why she expects to receive any further contact, aside from him. As regards music, he knows next to nothing, so the girl ends up having to launch into a screed about twelve-tone serialism and why it’s so important. She also tells him what it’s like to be a so-called child prodigy, and how people try to exploit her as a brand. It’s getting late, but something keeps her from going back to the hotel just yet. Maybe it’s the companionship. Perhaps that’s all she’s been looking for. At least her head no longer feels like it’s going to explode. And that’s a good sign. There’s a bitter wind blowing, so the girl buttons up her jacket. The guy offers to make her coffee back at his place. It’s not far. She never really developed a taste for coffee, but she doesn’t mind having some anyway. The pills are already keeping her wide-awake, so it’ll hardly make a difference. If she were present, the girl’s mother would have lost no time pointing out the fact that the guy’s wearing imitation-brand clothing: a polo shirt, unbleached cotton pants, and a pair of moccasins. Casual and cheap. She grins for having thought of it. She wouldn’t dare ask him what brand they’re supposed to be, but she can smell an imitation from miles away, which is about the distance separating them in terms of class. It’s something she inherited, in a sense, a mindset she grew up with, starting when she was an infant, to be aware of all the differences, both glaring and subtle, between people like her and people belonging to the lower classes. But she’s made a promise to herself to combat this mindset and resist all thoughts proceeding from it. The guy lives in a small apartment located in a tiny square at the end of a residents-only passageway off the street. He turns on the lights and walks along a narrow corridor. The floor consists of a series of wooden planks set lengthwise under their feet. It seems strange at first, but then she considers it homey. The girl tells him she wants to be a writer, and that’s the reason she gave up music, because to be a writer is all she really wants in this life. After a few minutes, or perhaps it’s an hour, he’s sitting with a coffee, and she a bottle of beer and what’s left of a slice of cake. She was going to tell him she’s at a crucial stage in her career, having discovered the source of her literary impulse in a hypnotist’s swaying pendulum, but she decided against going into it. He’d like to know what it is she writes about, so she explains to him the plot of her