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Marita says—in her coastal Colombian Spanish, with faint “s”s—that “Sometimes when I iron the clothes in the bedroom I sense Señor Mauro’s presence.”

Today she arrived with a letter from Social Security in hand. I don’t know why she keeps her nails so badly painted, in that fuchsia colour. If she just left them bare she could neglect them as much as her nasty little heart desired, but she paints them and then, instead of removing the polish when it gets all chipped, she just leaves it on, as a sign to me of her privation. You hired her under your name, Mauro. That has to be changed. She says that “It gives me the willies to see the señor’s name on the letters” and that “It’s best to free the dead of earthly concerns”. She still calls you “señor” and you know as well as I do that she’ll never stop. I’m already sick of telling her that we don’t like it, that it makes us uncomfortable. Now I shift it into the singular, I tell her that I don’t like it, that it makes me uncomfortable, but she continues just the same, like with those fingernails, her need to make me feel bad, and mark class differences and distances. Now what do I do, Mauro? Without your shirts, your meals, your freakish neatness and order, Marita is an unnecessary expense, and you know how much she bugs me when I’m home. She never shuts up. I don’t understand that story she 159always tells me about a man she loves who’s waiting for her in Tubará, in a yucca field, while she cleans all hours of the day to feed those children that sprout up from beneath the rocks. One day you reproached me, saying I look down on her, that Marita’s life is like a novel, with a love story out of a novel. She’s the one who looks down on me, trust me. But she adored you, and she still does. Were you trying to tell me something with that remark about a love story out of a novel? Maybe that ours wasn’t? When did I stop listening to you, stop paying attention to you?

In the beginning you would leave me those notes you were so fond of. “Can you pick up some window cleaner, detergent and bleach? On Friday I’ll wash the windows if it doesn’t rain, although your father called and said there are storms coming.” But I’m almost transparent, I practically live at the hospital, I sleep here, I pass through barely touching the floor, I don’t make messes, I don’t consume. I’m well stocked with cleaning supplies, I’ve got them coming out of my ears. Everything is still, Mauro, or perhaps I’m the one who doesn’t dare to move even a single leaf. Five hundred grams of green beans don’t make a mess and that’s become the measure of how exciting my day-to-day life’s become.

“Don’t you sense him? Right there, next to the clothes in the wardrobe. Don’t worry because he is taking care of you.”

I could punch her, Mauro. I could take off an espadrille and smack her with it until she shuts up. Do I tell her that you’re no longer mine? Does anyone burden the ballerina with the weight of your absence beside her wardrobe? But 160that’s not why I’d hit her. I’d hit her until she convinced me one hundred per cent that she could feel you and sense you, so I can be sure she does and isn’t just having me on. I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel you, I don’t sense you. I wanted to fire her. I don’t need her anymore, can’t you see that? And now she comes with her fingernails a mess and her eyes damp to tell me that she senses you beside our wardrobe, and I know for sure that I will go through with the name change and, while I’m at it, I’ll give her an open-ended contract, because while she can somehow feel you I’ll try my best to feel you, too.

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