As if someone had switched on a television, Antonio’s sister says, and now I know no one will be switching it off if you enter a subway train, Antonio’s sister says, the doctor says there’s a high probability you will encounter other people who are also sick due to their minds now I know I am not a strange insect, Antonio’s sister says, I am one of those people in the train I am worried my Mom won’t accept that I am permanently sick, Antonio’s sister says, but I am permanently sick, the volume of the television just increases or decreases, how is the volume today, Antonio says, a murmur because I am resting and sleeping a lot, Antonio’s sister says, but when I was isolated in prison I hallucinated, Antonio’s sister says, I would see Ida in a bodysuit like a skater in a circus with a zipper for easy access down there I couldn’t differentiate between what was real and not real, Antonio’s sister says, I could see you and me on the patio of our house in Mirandela chasing our dog Pelusa and calling after her little piggy, little piggy, and here both Antonio and his sister laugh, because in Spanish the word for little piggy, chanchito, is a funny word for adults to say, have they been giving you medicine, Antonio says, an injection once a week they’re calling us for snacks I have to go, Antonio’s sister says, and so the first call with his sister after more than a year of not hearing from her ends and Antonio sits inside his car outside the apartment where his daughters live, unable to type notes about her call on his phone even though he knows the erasers in his mind are already at work — when I was eight or nine I was babysitting our cousin Jorge and I rubbed myself against him I think inappropriately I told the doctor already I just needed to confess that, Antonio’s sister said — don’t worry too much about that you were a child, Antonio said — please don’t pull an involuntary confinement on me again, Antonio’s sister said — no Estelita never again you sound so well it’s so good to hear from you, Antonio said, adopting the soft voice he reserves for his daughters — see? not so hard to be Nicola — yes it is — and a few days later his sister calls again but he misses her call because he’s set his phone to silent as a precaution against calls or text messages from potential arrangements from Your Sugar Arrangements, but fortunately she calls again and says please never pull an involuntary confinement on me again, you can’t imagine what it was like to be paranoid to begin with and then have the police come to my house, look inside my windows, and arrest me yet again without knowing why, we were worried about you, Antonio says, I interpreted it as an abuse, Antonio’s sister says, so I started hallucinating that you had abused me too, you were incoherent and we were worried that something worse could happen to you, Antonio says, don’t ever use that word again, Antonio’s sister says, don’t ever tell me I was incoherent because it’s not like I’ve forgotten, it’s not like I was sick and now that I am less sick I don’t remember the times when I was sick, I know I was sick but I was happy, Antonio’s sister says, I was content, please promise me you won’t do it again, I won’t do it again, Antonio says, promising and repromising, on their weekly calls, that he will never again set in motion an involuntary inpatient treatment against her, weekly calls, incidentally, that he receives during the weekend, so as to not interfere with his database analyst job at Prudential Investments, although he never tells her please don’t call me during the workweek, no, he’s not that heartless (or he is but he has learned to modulate the outward evidence of his heartlessness like everyone else), he just hasn’t been able to pick up the phone whenever she calls due to conference calls, deadlines, meetings with marketing — you did cue your sister to avoid calling you during your workweek by saying let’s talk next Saturday or Sunday, Estelita — I don’t recall I’m sorry — and so he receives her calls once a week during weekends — what a nice brother you have, Estela — and yet as Antonio remembers his recordings of his mother — but Mama my brother’s so little — as he imagines injecting himself with a potion that will drive him to be like his former wife, who talks to her sister every day for as long as he has known her, as his mother’s voice inside his oversized circumaural Sennheiser headphones courses through his body, intermixing with the memory of his mother’s voice when he was a child, a memory that was erased long ago but that he likes to believe could be retrieved if one day he chances upon the right circumstances, as he stretches his banged-up body on the carpet after catapulting himself against everyone during soccer, as he discovers his former wife has been talking to his mother almost every day since his sister escaped her trial proceedings — your mother needs to talk to someone, Antonio, his former wife said — he crosses the subspace corridor that leads to that alternative world where he hasn’t spent thirty-plus years trying to abrade his linkage to his sister and there he concludes that, although a call during the workweek would definitely interfere with his ability to perform his database analyst job at Prudential Investments — who cares about your stupid database job you imbecile — his sister needs him, and yes, his sister has needed him many times before, but if years from now he were to examine a chart of his life (with time on the X axis and crucial moments on the Y axis), he would see a significant spike in the chart now — how easy it is to miss these crucial moments, Antonio writes — what would be the consequences of limiting your contact with your sister to once a week? — she might feel that she has no support, that no one cares about her, that she’s better off dead — your sister told me she used to punch herself in the face when she was in jail, Antonio’s mother said — and so he tells his sister let’s talk every day, Estelita, I will block my calendar at work every day for half an hour, okay, she says, and so in between meetings about hidden Markov models and k-means clustering, he receives calls from his sister, calls that connect a Prudential Investments building in downtown Los Angeles with the mental health wing of the Spring Grove State Hospital in Catonsville, Maryland, where Antonio can hear screams in the background every time his sister calls, screams Antonio’s mind tries to erase instantly, just as his mind has tried to erase the Spring Grove State Hospital in Catonsville, Maryland, where, per order of the court, Antonio’s sister has to stay for a minimum of ninety days or until she regains sufficient aspects of her reason, I’m a vegetal, Antonio’s sister says, I walk and sleep, walk and sleep and rehearse what I will say on my trial, don’t worry we’re not going to trial, Antonio says, although every time he tries to assuage her worries about a trial or about being deported (his sister neglected to apply for citizenship and her status as a permanent legal resident alien could be compromised if her charges were categorized as crimes of moral turpitude) he has to caveat his statements by saying I know it’s easy for me to say, from over here, that you shouldn’t worry, and I want you to know I am not trying to dismiss your concerns, which are legitimate, but based on my conversations with your lawyer, who has done a terrific job and believes we can obtain a dismissal, I don’t think you have to worry about a trial, nevertheless his sister imagines and reimagines the night she was arrested in preparation for her interrogation at her trial, maybe I did have a knife, Antonio’s sister says, but how did those people know I had a knife in my pocket — I can see my sister in that hospital bed, Antonio writes, facing a blank wall and talking to herself like Giorgia does when Nicola Carati’s brother visits her at her mental institute — and in those rare moments on the phone when his sister asks him how he’s doing he hesitates, doesn’t know what to say, so instead of saying, for instance, recently I traded my old car out of despair at what’s happening to you — who knows what miseries await us let’s at least drive a nice car for a few years — after my sister called me I sat inside my new red German so-called luxury SUV outside the apartment where my daughters live, Antonio writes, thinking of Hershleder in The Revisionist, who sits on the doorstep of his house that is no longer his house — and instead of saying to her, for instance, that at last he’d completed his first novel and it was coming out in September — why bring up reminders of our different fates? — I can hear it in your voice, bobito — twelve years writing about Bogotá — do you remember me in those years? — of course I do — liar — he tells her about Perrito, the new family dog, about how he’d told his former wife he didn’t want a dog because what difference would a dog make in their lives, about how one Saturday his former wife said let’s just visit this pet supply store in Santa Monica since one of the animal shelters is having an open house there, and his former wife tricked him by saying why don’t you pick our dog, you know the girls really want a dog, no, I won’t, he said, but he approached the handful of dogs behind a makeshift fence on the sidewalk anyway, ven perrito, he said to one of them, adopting his dead grandmother’s voice — Martina didn’t talk about her upbringing but she did talk to street dogs — water for dogs / here the water for dogs — and Dora’s dog walked over to him and licked his hand, and because Dora’s dog looked so forlorn, and because Dora’s dog wasn’t Dora’s dog but looked so much like Dora’s dog, he said fine, this is our dog, and so Dora’s dog became their dog, and after a week of arguments and counterarguments about potential names (Pongo, Fifi, Gmail, Perrito), they agreed on Perrito, which was a fantastic name because every time anyone asks his former wife what’s her dog’s name she has to say, in her Czech accent, Perito — Burrito? — Perito — and when he would return home from his database analyst job at Prudential Investments, Perrito would run to greet him and pee out of excitement, and so for a while I had to pretend Perrito wasn’t there so he wouldn’t pee, Antonio says, and we couldn’t take him on walks because he was afraid of shadows, plants, men, but he’s better now, Antonio says, now he sleeps under the covers with us and prances everywhere, and so Perrito became a safe topic for them on their daily calls, how is Perrito today, Antonio’s sister says, oh Perrito is sunbathing by the window, Antonio says, oh Perrito is hiding in Eva’s bed, and one day he receives a card in the mail from his sister, a card printed on thin white copy paper with two rabbits on it thanking him for everything, a card he displays in the living room as a reminder that alternative worlds are possible, why weren’t you like this with me before, Antonio’s sister says, you used to behave as if I didn’t exist, Antonio’s sister says, I used to dream of going to Los Angeles to live with you, and of course Antonio doesn’t have an answer for her, all he can do is say, in the softest voice he can muster, ay Estelita, and afterward hide in a conference room and cry and cry.