It’s early, and it promises to be a beautiful day. The screenwriter sits at his desk eager to continue working, but is distracted by his mental calculations. He figures the money his son’s sending will last him till the end of the month, but he may be able to get his screenplay finished before then, and once that’s delivered, he could ask the producer to send him more money. He needs money orders at this point; transfers into his current account will take too long to clear. In the building opposite, his neighbor’s blinds are still down. So what, it’s less distracting, he thinks, returning to his work. He goes over some of the index cards and post-its strewn about the room — on his desk, his nightstand, and the other bed, on which the newspapers have been gradually piling up. It’s been days since he heard from the girl. He hasn’t received a single envelope, not even a paltry note. He wonders if something might have happened to her, but then he also considers the possibility that she’s abandoned him, as she promised she would. Threats and promises are only wisps of breath, not realities, he says trying to allay his fears. Besides, she promised she’d keep sending him abstracts of her diary and chapters of her No World. Before, if she missed an appointment, she’d always dispatch a messenger with an envelope. Now, there’s nothing but silence: an emptiness to which he fears he may have to grow accustomed. He misses those pages that let him know she was still alive, that reminded him he was still alive. That made him feel he somehow mattered to her. The truth is he needs the girl as much as he needs money, or even food. Isn’t she the reason he came to the neighboring country’s capital in the first place? It’s a beautiful day outside. He looks at the sky, as if to prove himself right, then he looks down on street to observe the passersby. Sundays are strange. He’d like to go for a walk, to have breakfast at the café in the plaza, and buy his newspapers where the boulevards intersect. He wonders when his son’s money will arrive, and that of the other people who agreed to give him a loan. Now that he thinks of it, he doesn’t remember telling them how urgently he needs it. He goes to the phone and calls his son, but this time no one answers. So he returns to his desk, intent on getting some writing done before going down for breakfast. Once he’s finished his script and cashed his check, he’ll be able breathe a lot easier, he thinks. He counts the number of days it should take to complete, and reproves himself for not having written more consistently, and with greater resolution. Perhaps it’s not his lack of consistency but his approach that’s the problem. He might’ve written more had he been writing for himself instead of the producer. He has to rewrite some of the material he’s sending and improve the general shape of the story. He figures he has some five or six scenes left to write until the end. During his descent, the screenwriter’s impatient to leave the elevator and get something to eat. It’s been too long since he’s had two square meals together in one day. If he has breakfast now, it’ll probably be his only decent repast, which is why he’s tucking some fruit and bread into his pockets, on exiting the elevator, before sitting down to read the newspaper. He leafs randomly through the pages as if trying to decide what to read. Then the receptionist approaches: the manager would like to speak with him. He titters, reluctantly gets up, and drags his leg into an office that’s as small and uncomfortable as a coffin, and completely unsuitable for accommodating two people at once, but perhaps it’s the best a flophouse manager can expect. The man would like to speak in private. About what? the screenwriter says brusquely, thinking attack is the best form of defense. There’s been a complaint from one of the neighbors, he says sternly, before requesting that he pay his outstanding bill. He has twenty-four hours to find another room, he adds before ending the short colloquy in a manner to suggest that the meeting has ended. Although he’s been paying off some of the bill in advance, the final figure is still far too high for the screenwriter to pay. First he requests that they lower the bill for having offended him. Then he demands to check over the invoice, since he believes they’re overcharging him. For a moment, he wonders who he means by “they,” since he’s talking about an individual with a first and last name, and although the individual he’s referring to is sitting directly across from him, he can’t restrain himself from referring to another by screaming, that fucking bitch! Bitch or no bitch, the manager warns, you’ve got twenty-four hours to find somewhere else to stay.
The screenwriter calls his wife. He’d like to confess he’s tired, stressed out, but nevertheless, he must somehow muster the effort to finish his work. A titanic effort, he intones dramatically to himself, as if he were a character in one of his scripts. He’d like to confess that things have not turned out as he wanted them to, and that he feels like the world is disappearing under his feet. But he doesn’t want to think about it, let alone confess it to his estranged wife, because he doesn’t have a clue where he’s going to find the titanic effort he needs to continue. While listening to the rings, not counting this time, but waiting until she answers, knowing she probably won’t answer, he thinks about those early days when he walked with a spring in his step and champed at the bit to get back to his desk and write, when he had no trouble mustering the energy to work, the enthusiasm to press forward to the end, when he felt like a professional, someone who didn’t have to teach a gaggle of excessively gifted, excessively creative, excessively annoying brats on the side, most of whom stuck their tongues out at the things he taught them, except for the girl, with whom he dreamed of escaping, of living a passionate life in some faraway paradise. So much time has passed since he left that those days seem like another age, another world. But he knows it’s only been a few weeks, which may not seem like much, but it’s enough for the phone call to not make sense. Or perhaps it does make sense, a twisted kind of sense — warped, in just the same way as the joining in marriage of two people who aren’t right for each other. The screenwriter smiles at his musings and finally hangs up the telephone. He needs to have a rest, maybe get something to eat and take a nap, because he knows he’ll see things differently when he wakes up. Like the girl, he also thinks about going home, although he knows he can’t. If he could start all over again. . he reflects, but then concludes he’d more than likely make all the same mistakes. He’s looking out the window again, thinking about the woman in the building opposite, imagines her watching him through a gap in her blinds. He stares fixedly at her window but resists the temptation to raise his arm. Perhaps it wasn’t her, he thinks, but then figures who else could it have been? He then examines the front of the building one last time. It’s strange he always refers to it as a single building when it’s really composed of two: one with balconies, the other with just windows. Most of the doors leading onto the balconies have blinds and there aren’t any flowers outside. He scans the storefronts along the street: the real-estate agency on the corner, the lingerie store, the bakery, and the shoe and handbag store. All are closed, except for the bakery. He already knows that Sundays are strange. He looks around, considers every detail, as if he’d like to say good-bye even to the pebbles on the ground. But it doesn’t matter, what are stones, flowers, blinds — these things aren’t important. If he manages to get back on his feet, perhaps he’ll decide to settle in this city. It certainly is beautiful, he reflects while looking over the rooftops, as if trying to imagine what a bird would see, or perhaps an aerial photographer. He might even live out his retirement here, he thinks, however many days he has left in this world. But not in a hotel, he simply couldn’t afford it. He’s not like the girl’s father, who’s happy to stay in hotels because he’s rich. Either way, in a couple of weeks, he’ll have forgotten it all, as in the hours after waking from a dream. And yet, despite the futility of hoping they’ll come true, of expecting that even a residue might remain beside him when he wakes up in his bed, he still likes dreaming, and perhaps that’s the reason he writes screenplays. He tries calling the prostitute, but she doesn’t answer. He starts talking into the receiver anyway, imagining she can hear him say he’s being kicked out of the hotel, that he has until tomorrow to pack his bags and leave; imagining she asks him where he’ll go, and him answering that he doesn’t know. Today’s Sunday, and Sundays are always strange. The prostitute asks if the producer knows about his plight, and he tells the receiver, not yet. He’s almost whimpering now. He knows it’s pathetic, but it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t know him that well, and at least she’s acquainted with the ups and downs one experiences in a wayward life. Today’s a strange day, he repeats, he’s being kicked out of his hotel; he’s got twenty-four hours to find somewhere else to stay; writing requires a titanic effort — like crossing a desert, or lifting a skyscraper, or holding up the sky itself. He’s being indecisive, whereas the prostitute in his imagination speaks with assurance, confidence. Indeed, perhaps too much, for she speaks as if she’s even read his script, and plays the film producer in as accomplished a way as she does his lover. It exasperates him when someone offers advice so brazenly about something they know nothing about. She offers him the same counsel as would the producer; she even imitates his voice while doing so. Take a vacation, she tells him. He doesn’t think a vacation is going to help. A vacation. . for Christ’s sake! Yes, he’ll go sunbathing and drink cocktails with all the employees at the bank, indeed all the staff of every business that’s shut for the August vacation, he thinks, including that woman who owns the bag and shoe store: in other words, people who have no mission or purpose in life. The black prostitute, he thinks, envisioning her, doesn’t get to go on vacation either. The producer told him he always spent his vacation working. What’s the black prostitute’s mission in life? Perhaps, like him, she doesn’t have one, or is deceiving herself in thinking her profession will take her somewhere. But he doesn’t want her to know this, for she still trusts in their respective talents. He doesn’t even know whether he’s still imagining the prostitute, or if it’s now the producer, or perhaps the two of them together. He imagines them embracing, and realizes he’s ruined the fantasy. He hangs up the phone, turns out the lights, and lies back on the bed. He feels pathetic for having spent so long speaking to a dial tone. He does it occasionally as a form of penance, but then he always regrets having repented. He smiles at the thought. If he didn’t do these kinds of things, he wouldn’t be himself. He gets out of bed, turns on the light, and goes to the writing desk. There are disorganized heaps of paper everywhere. He tries to put them in order and starts gathering his things. He finds notes in the most inconspicuous corners of the room, even in the mini-kitchen that lifted his spirits on the day he arrived. He collects them all and puts them in a large plastic bag, doing so carefully, as he would his clothes when folding them into a suitcase before a long voyage. These notes have been scattered around the room for days, even weeks, and it seems almost a miracle the cleaning lady was deferential enough to leave them where they lay. He picks up an envelope from the nightstand. It contains his favorite photos of the girl, brief flashes of his happiness, which he’ll take with him when he goes away. It’s been so long since he’s seen her, she’s starting to become a memory, and while the pain of those words that struck him when she promised she would leave had left a dull ache in his chest, now that this too was fading, as everything else seems to fade in his life, as even his memory of her seems to be fading, he hopes these flashes of happiness will rekindle her memory, although without the pain. He wonders if, instead of weeks, he’s spent months holed away in this room. Perhaps he’s been dreaming and it’s only been a few hours. Like the girl, he begins wondering if there really is nothing outside the mind. But he’s starting to feel unwell again, too unwell to pursue this thought, and he considers whether he should go right to bed. He looks around for a calendar to corroborate the number of days he’s stayed at the hotel, but when he picks up his bill, it’s made plain: twenty-eight days in total. He leaves his typewriter and large plastic bag on the floor, next to the door, and lies back against the headboard, contemplating the room, which now looks totally bare. It’s all over, he says loudly, repeatedly, closing his eyes. It’s all over, it’s all over. . A minute goes by, perhaps an hour, perhaps longer than that. He finally got some rest. He’s breathing more easily, and feels as if a weight’s been lifted from his chest. It’s all over, he remembers saying before falling asleep. He wouldn’t mind listening to some music, but not that twelve-tone stuff, which he only listens to when trying to enter the mindset of his characters. For the first time since he arrived, he turns on the radio, which plays something relatively easy on the ears, a waltz. He gets up and starts dancing with his cane. There’s some interference coming through the speakers, as if the sound is traveling from another galaxy, and only a fraction of the signal is managing to cover the distance. When the waltz ends, he turns the radio off, but keeps dancing anyway because he feels buoyant. It’s all over, he chirps to the music of the waltz. He wants to celebrate the fact that a weight’s been lifted, but he can’t make his mind up who it is he’d like to be there celebrating with him. Perhaps the girl, although he doesn’t imagine she’d enjoy dancing a waltz. The girl has the kind of ego that sees itself only in grim and murky plashes, a personality buoyed by the bleak and leaden aspects of life, a face whose only mirror is duplicity and guile. The screenwriter doesn’t have anyone in the neighboring country’s capital to dance with. Now that he’s broke, even the black prostitute has left him for the producer. He sits down and riffles through the phone directory. It’s not exactly true he has no one. He recalls the names of the screenwriters, directors, and assistants who agreed to send him money. All are f