The thing that hadn’t happened five years before, now, only recently, because she thought it would repay a debt to him, suddenly, still perplexingly, and so different from what he’d always imagined, and so unexpected, had happened. If he’d pushed up his trip to Paraná in order to see her sooner it was merely out of curiosity, rooted in what had happened the night before at Gutiérrez’s, and he hadn’t even been sure, if he found her, that Lucía would speak to him. The coincidence of seeing her there had unexpected consequences, as it did five years before, when despite his best efforts, after the first time he met her, to see her again, he only saw her by accident one afternoon, at the corner of his block, not the one with the ice cream shop but the next one, where his street met the street with the house she’d gone into (her own house, in fact), locking the door from the inside while Nula, from the sidewalk, listened to the metallic sound of the key turning. Because he was still dazzled by the red dress vibrating intensely in the midday sun, he couldn’t imagine her dressed any other way, and so he always searched the neighborhood, or in the crowd downtown, for the bright red blur, the vigorous cluster of organs, skin, and muscles, enclosed like an organic capsule by its meaty and velvety skin, splitting the balmy September air. Since they first met, he’d passed her house more than twenty times and had taken an unreasonable number of walks around the block, posting himself for hours on the four corners in order to see if the girl dressed in red who he still didn’t know was named Lucía would reappear, not only at the one that he rightly assumed must’ve been her house, but also at the three other symmetrical points that he’d seen her examine, including La India’s apartment, along the four streets that formed the block. Any red dress, seen from a distance, startled him and triggered his approach with the hope of seeing her again, but it was never her. And so when one afternoon, on his way back to his house after having watched the kiosk at the law school all day, he bumped into her again, he was so absorbed in thinking about her that at first he didn’t recognize her because she was dressed in white. She had on an immaculate linen suit, stiff and recently pressed, and her hair was pulled up, stretched tight at her temples and the base of her neck and spilling out at the crown of her head above the dark ribbon that held it together. She looked calm, freshly bathed. From the opposite sidewalk, he watched her cross the street at a diagonal, enter the pastry shop, and sit down at one of the tables facing the window, at the corner farthest from the door. Just like the first time when he started following her without knowing why, not thinking about it even for a fraction of a second he crossed the street at a diagonal, veering off from the straight line that was taking him to his house, and went into the shop. There were several empty tables, but without hesitating even to discuss it with himself he took the few steps that brought him to a stop in front of her. She looked at him a moment, without surprise or curiosity, like an actress during the first reading of a play, waiting for the actor next to her to finish reading his lines before giving hers.
— Is this seat taken? Nula asked, using for the first time in his life an expression that he’d read many times in certain novels and had often heard when he went to take an exam at school or he was asked to wait at some public office.
She didn’t respond right away, and only looked at him, but Nula realized that she was thinking because the look she gave him was abstracted for a few seconds, cut off from the external world, while her thoughts, hidden, unstable, inaccessible to him, possibly sought, behind the forehead on which passing wrinkles implied some effort, the response that she was about to give and her reasons for giving it. Before speaking, and after her gaze had reconnected with the external world, she took a moment to glance at her tiny, silver wrist watch, then looked up again, the movement perhaps a bit abrupt because the bubble of dark curly hair spilling from the crown of her head vibrated slightly.
— No, of course. Sit down, please, she said, her lightness seemingly calculated and her intonation contrasting with her serious, vaguely preoccupied demeanor. As he was sitting down, Nula saw La India turn the corner toward the house, and though he lifted his hand and shook it several times to get her attention, she didn’t seem to recognize him, but that same night, when she saw him come in, she greeted him by saying, You already have a mother, but you’re spoiled and now you always want two for the price of one, and he, worked up, was about to say, I’m not the one with a cult of personality in this house, but he felt miserable thinking it and kept his mouth shut.
— That was my mother, he explained to Lucía.
— Such a beautiful woman, and so young, Lucía said, as though she was thinking of something else.
— Allow me to introduce myself, Nula said. Nicolás Anoch, but my friends call me Nula; it means Nicolás in Arabic. I’m studying philosophy in Rosario.
— My husband studied in Rosario, too, but medicine. My name is Lucía, Lucía said.
— I dropped medicine for philosophy, Nula said. I got tired of opening and closing cadavers. They’re all the same inside.
— My husband is Doctor Riera. His office is just around the corner.
— Yes, that’s right, Nula said. I think I’ve seen the sign. Across from the municipal building.
— Directly across, yes, Lucía said thoughtfully. And then, studying him openly, she said, Your face looks familiar. Are you from the neighborhood?
— Yes, Nula said. I’ve lived half a block from here my whole life. In the luxury tenements. Are you a city planner?
— City planner? Lucía said with a dry laugh. How could I be a city planner? I’m nothing.
Disconcerted momentarily by her sarcastic interjection, Nula hesitated a few seconds, until it occurred to him to say, Would it be alright if we used tú with each other?