It is five in the afternoon, the rain has stopped. Sunday, buried under a damp light, seems momentarily empty. The girl enters the café. Two elderly couples and a father with four small children observe her. She quickly and shyly crosses the room and sits down to the extreme left.

For only one moment, the sun’s brilliant silhouette can be seen against the windows. The waiter approaches, she orders a lemonade, takes out a pad of paper, and begins to write on its pages. Squeaky old music comes over the speakers, background music that will not drown out the conversations (as it happens, there are no conversations).

The waiter serves the lemonade, she thanks him, puts some sugar in the tall glass, and stirs it with the metal spoon. She tastes the sweet-sour drink, then turns her attention back to what she is writing with her red pen. A letter? a poem? homework? a diary? a story? It is impossible to know, just as it is impossible to know why she is alone and with nowhere to go on a Sunday afternoon. She might also be ageless: she could be fourteen as well as eighteen or twenty. There is something that makes her exceptionally attractive: the harmonious fragility of her body, the long, brown hair, the subtly slanted eyes. Or perhaps it is her air of innocence and helplessness or the gravity of someone who carries a secret.

A young man of the same age or slightly older sits down somewhere on the terrace that is separated from the room by a pane of glass. He summons the waiter and orders coffee. Then he looks inside the room. His eyes sweep over empty spaces, silent groups of people, until they rest for a moment on the girl.

Feeling herself observed, she lifts her eyes, drops them, busies herself again with her writing. It is almost dark outside. The room floats in the half-light of the dusk until the glaring fluorescent lights are turned on. The gray hue dissipates into a fictitious daylight clarity.

She looks up again. Their eyes meet. She stirs her drink with her spoon. The sugar that has settled on the bottom dissolves in the lemonade. He tastes the coffee that is still too hot; immediately his gaze returns to the girl. He smiles when he sees that she is looking at him and then lowers his head. This hide and seek, this game that amuses and exalts them is repeated with slight variations for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes. Finally he looks at her openly and smiles once again. She still tries to hide, conceal the fear, the desire, or the mystery that prevents a natural encounter.

The glass reflects her image, furtively mimics her movements, duplicates them without depth or perspective. Again it begins to rain; gusts of wind carry the water onto the terrace, wetting the boy’s clothes as he begins to show signs of restlessness and a desire to leave.

Then she tears a sheet of paper from her pad, anxiously writes a few lines while glancing up at him. She taps the side of her glass with the spoon. The waiter approaches the table, listens to the girl’s request, steps back, gestures, responds with indignation, and retreats haughtily.

The waiter’s outburst is heard by everyone present. The girl blushes and does not know where to hide. The boy, paralyzed, watches the scene he cannot fathom because the logical outcome was quite different. Before he can intervene, overcome the shyness that always oppresses him when he finds himself in public alone, without the support, the incentive, the critical eyes of his friends, the girl rises, places some money on the table, and walks out of the café.

He watches her leave without attempting to move, then he reacts, taps on the window to ask for the bill. The waiter who refused to transmit the message goes over to the cash register. The young man anxiously waits two, three minutes, takes the bill, pays, steps out into the evening world darkened by rain. At the corner, where the streets branch, he looks in every direction into the depth of the Sunday city that will conceal the girl forever.