Exactly one month after our phone call, D was waiting for me on the platform.
Instead of embracing, we gave each other slaps on the back, as old school friends do.
The same suit.
The same sample case.
But, of course, no more Renault.
So, we took a bus, which deposited us at D’s new house—a tidy, tiny attic. To me it seemed so perfect that I thought of a clock. A clock that made irregular revolutions. In that place, preparing a welcome coffee for me, D seemed like a human being whom time had left inside some kind of parenthesis.
And it was so nice, cheating time, that by midday I had already set up some of my things on the desk and was measuring the couch to see if my fourteen-year-old body would fit on it.
“Just for a week,” said D.
“I have money for a whole month, and I’m thinking that if I stay here on the couch, that will save me what I’d spend on a hotel.”
“Two weeks, not a day more.”
“In that case, I’ll take the bed and you can take the couch.”
For the next few days we tried to resume our old routine.
Since we didn’t have the Renault, we made the trips by bus or train. It was at one of the stations that, on being up close to other people, I noticed that there was something strange about us.
From one moment to the next, well-shined shoes, which had been symbolic of a belief—the possibility of walking on the moon—had become a tactic to draw attention away from D’s worn-out shirt. The same went for my T-shirt, which I myself had chosen for the occasion, and the kerchief that I had tied around my neck.
There were two possibilities:
A. Precariousness had always been with us, and I’d never noticed.
B. Something had changed.
Whichever it was, my childhood memories fractured: crack. And I hated the Great Carpenter, not for the reality but for the insight, which enveloped me in an unpleasant—and until now unknown—shame whenever I felt the gaze of others upon us. Did they know? Did they see our precariousness?
For the first time I saw them clearly, and it seemed to me that they were giants.
And it was thinking on this scale, and seeing our disadvantage, that, after years of boring reality, gave me a new vision: D and I were vanishing.
The people on the platform waited, said goodbye, or went to look for their cars.
D and I, in contrast, kept still, and at first started to lose our colors, then our shapes. We became smoke rings. And we disintegrated as we crossed the sky above the city.
There, abandoned on the platform, only his sample case and my backpack remained.
Years went by. Hundreds of years. It was the same spot, but the landscape had changed: where before there was the station and the city, now there was a desert crowded with containers.
Our things were still there, and the inhabitants lay wreaths of paper before them.
We had existed a long time earlier and, contrary to what I had imagined, disappearance itself wasn’t painful at all.
You turn into smoke. People of the future do what they can with your remains.
I had understood one of the workings of existence. And I would have gone even further if D hadn’t told me our train was waiting.
In a few hours, we arrived at our destination.
We made our first stop at a coffeehouse. No traveling salesman showed up to keep us company, so we quickly set off for the leading hardware store.
This newfound solitude was repeated over the next few days. It made the image of the desert materialize again and settle on the coffees I ordered. I stirred the image with my teaspoon, dispersing it.