I’m still sleeping? I sit near the window? The air tastes like mercury? You’ve got the wrong lady? Chronic inhalation causes lung irritation? A nervous disease resembling Parkinson’s? Yellow sweater. The house is silent. Blue pants. I wear a sweater I don’t need. Brown shoes battered with paint. Everything happens twice. Blah-blah-blah? Excuse me? White city? What’s missing here? Is that my house? There is a woman. You’ve got the wrong lady. I’m still sleeping. I sit near the window. I stand outside the house, waving my hand.

The calendar says May 24th 2015. On a day like this you have to go to the movies. The thermometer says 23 degrees. A man is following a woman. Everything is very still. I’ve seen this one before. The house is silent. Sometimes I’m the man. I stare out the window. Sometimes I’m the woman. I wear a sweater I don’t need. I really love this one. I know it by heart. A cup of coffee in my hand. On a day like this you can’t work you have to go to the movies. Steaming. The woman falls into the water. No. The screen door slams. She jumps. My veins jump. No. She falls. Coffee jumps. The man dives into the water. Coffee jumps on my hand. This is how they meet. I say fuck. I put four of my fingers into my mouth. I wipe my hand on my pants. Sometimes when I get excited I put fingers in my mouth. Through the window I see the postman disappear. There’s paint on my fingers. Ugh! I go to the door. Tastes bad. I open the door. Tastes bad but also I like it? Smell of moist grass, of warm… I fall asleep. Salvador falls asleep. dirt. My hand is in the box. I’m holding the mail. Two items. I take them out. One telephone bill and one postcard. I close the door. I am at the table. I hold the postcard. I keep sleeping. On one side is a photo. Black and white. A vast garden. Intricate geometrical designs. Sky flat white. Like canvas. I’m still sleeping. I turn over the postcard. The addressee is Julián Barcarrota. Sleeping There is a long message in small, pretty cursive. and dreaming. Julián Barcarrota is my father and he is dead. Sometimes I fall asleep at the movies. I read what is written on the postcard addressed to my dead father. Dear Monki, A strange man stopped me on the street today. He held me by my arm. Barbara? He asked me. No, I said. You’ve got the wrong lady. The man looked so sad. He stared at me a long moment, then told me he was sorry, then walked away. Like a lonely ghost. I wake up. This cursive. I drooled maybe. Small, pretty. The movie is over. Also peculiar. People shuffle out. Maybe sinister. My arms and legs have turned to old-growth forest. The lines do not connect. My blood turgid like sap. The canopy of the “T.” My tongue wears a sweater. It floats over the trunk of the “T.” I merge into the exiting crowd. I don’t trust this “T.” People like to go to the movies. I re-examine the photo. People also like to leave the movies. A vast garden. The crowd becomes a little brook. Intricate geometrical designs. I am carried by the motion of the crowd out into the lobby. Sky flat white. I am carried by the crowd out into the street. Like virgin canvas. The air tastes like mercury. The postcard is from Lisbon. I don’t have a cigarette. The postcard is four-by-six. Across the street. Mara draws a long inhalation through her nostrils. There is a woman in the window The postcard smells of mildew. on the second floor. I gaze up toward the window. I raise my hand to wave. Dear Monki, A man stopped me on the street today. He blah-blah-blah. Blah-blah-blah? Blah-blah-blah. No, I said. Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Blah-blah-blah. He stared at me a blah-blah, blah-blah-blah-blah, blah-blah. The woman disappears inside. I keep waving. My darling. Into the shadow. All day long, this feeling comes to me: The curtain sighs. I stop waving. what am I forgetting? I start to walk. what’s missing here? I ask a stranger the time. And, of course, I have to laugh. He does not hear me. It’s only you. I wear a yellow sweater. You, love. I wear blue pants. You that I’m missing. Brown shoes battered with paint. Here, in this white city. Yellow paint. In this white room. White paint. Your rascally rabbit, Red paint. N. Blue paint. x-o-x-o-x Green. 22 June 1979/Dia 22 Junho 1979 I really need a sandwich! Excuse me, miss? June Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, can I? 1979. I sit at the counter. The waitress does not come. I know this cursive. The sandwich, however, is right there. I mean inches away. In fact, Just sitting on a tray on the counter. I know this postcard. Under the finest film of plastic. I know the author of this postcard. Cheese, pickle, chilli. I eat it. I place the postcard in the drawer. Something is wrong. I hold the telephone bill. I forgot to unwrap the sandwich! I do not open it. No. That’s not it. Something else is wrong. I do not open the drawer. Something is very wrong. Do not. I feel the cheese-pickle-chilli pass right through me. The clock says 12.29. Like a low-burning fire. Ugh! I remember my coffee. I remember my wife. I go to the living room. She says easy on the chilli. I go to the toilet to pee. Excuse me? I don’t pee. The waitress does not come. I sit on the toilet not peeing. I dig my hands into my pockets. I look at the place where the yellow tile is broken. I find a crumpled lottery ticket. My father was a believer in the banana theory. Loose change. Maybe fifty cents. A banana a day, he would say, to avoid scurvy, migraines, constipation and psychosis. Fuck. I look at the broken yellow tile. I leave the change on the counter. I move through the house, look at the walls, the bannister, Next to the not insubstantial amount of uneaten sandwich. the kitchen faucet says drip-drip, drip-drip. I make a bee-line for the door. Nothing will ever be finished. It’s getting dark. I forgot my glasses. I find my cup of coffee. Can’t see shit! Still half-full. I race through the streets. Still warm. Race through the streets like a gorilla on the loose and I breathe like this: I sit. Where did I leave them? look out the window. My glasses, Catch my reflection. my wallet, My sweater slips off my shoulder. my wallet, goddamnit. I make lunch. I open the telephone bill. I say fuck. I race through the streets, I collect the recycling from the closet. I am a yellow-blue-brown gorilla-blur. I put the recycling on the porch. I race through the streets until I see my house. I go back inside, look at the table, open the drawer, Is it my house? remove the postcard from the drawer. I run around the block once, just to make a circle around the house. Here in this white city… I stand outside the house. I take the postcard to the porch, shove it in the recycling, go back inside. I stand outside the house. I go back out on the porch, take the postcard out from the recycling, go back inside the house, place the postcard back inside the drawer. I feel the nothing inside my pockets. I close the drawer very tightly. I stand outside the house. I raise a hand to wave. I make coffee. I look for shadows in the windows. I sit near the window.

After twenty-seven years of hard and kind of boring work I won the national lottery. It was a modest sum, by national lottery standards, but it was enough. I changed my life. I resigned from my job. I became a painter. I worked all my life and I keep on working, but now I work as a painter. I work in the mornings and quit in the afternoons. I always went to the movies, but now I go in the afternoons. Sometimes I watch a movie, forget all about it, and then, as I eat soup, or as I shower, or as I check the mail, some little thing from the movie comes back and I get a painting. An idea for a painting. My wife has moved back to her home country. She works in an office. My son Pablo looks exactly like his grandfather. Sometimes we sit on the sofa or the front porch and I hear him tell me things. He’ll talk, for example, about the number of Russians who died during the siege of Leningrad, and for a moment I am certain that it is my father talking, talking through Pablo. Put a moustache on Pablo and he becomes my father. Put ninety pounds on Pablo and he becomes my father. Maybe it was early contact, I don’t know. My father was there when Pablo was born and Pablo was there when my father died, on the kitchen floor, one morning in 2013. My husband works abroad. An NGO. That morning in 2013 it was just me, my father and Pablo. My father, dying very calmly on the kitchen floor, me on one side of him, Pablo on the other. My father said to Pablo, Make sure you eat bananas, and Pablo said, Yes, Abuelito, always always always. I won the lottery, but I keep things simple. What’s better than a good sandwich, a glass of regular beer, a soccer game? I don’t follow soccer but I like it when it’s on TV. The commentators, the crowds, the colours and energy. I bought really nice brushes. And a hat that helps me think and create. I use really good paints. Some of these paints were used by giants. I am not a giant, but I like to think of giants when I paint. I’m Lilliputian, but I like to summon the spirit of giants. What is most important, Paul Klee said, is to adapt yourself to the contents of the paint box. When you paint nothing matters but paint. Two days a week I teach linguistics. One day a week I do speech therapy with a child who stutters and lisps. The other days I stay home. I write a book on speech therapy. I take satisfaction in speech therapy. I make lunch for Pablito. I go running in the park. I think about repairs to the house. I listen on the phone to my sister talk about her problems. I try to do tai chi. One day, some weeks after my father died, I came home and found a little girl in my house. She did not speak. We watched TV. I made her a sandwich. Then I went to the other room to call the police and when I came back she had disappeared. I’m certain she just went back home. When I was a little girl I thought about running away but I didn’t do it. I was angry with my father. When I was a little boy I saw a UFO. I was with my father. Just the two of us in a car on a long road driving driving driving into the dusk. We never talked about it. Sometimes I paint the UFO. My memory is perfect. I use my favourite paints. It was really beautiful. Mysterious object looming in the twinkling rose-blue-ebony vault. Coloured lights in the dimming desert. There was a cow. It was no big deal. I always liked to check the mail, ever since I was little. When I was little I would sometimes use steam to open my parents’ letters and then seal them again later. I saw this on TV. I was sneaky. No one suspected me. I would ask my father for the envelopes that came with mail from other countries and I would examine the stamps, peeling them away from the paper very carefully. I still run to the mailbox every day, even though it’s often empty and mostly boring. Sometimes I stand near the door waiting for the postman. Since winning the lottery I like to eat a lot of Japanese food. That’s my idea of fancy! I like to order things without really knowing what they are. Sea urchin. Fish eggs. Octopus. Eel. Things with no name that is not Japanese. When the food arrives I close my eyes and put it in my mouth and see what it makes me dream of. Sometimes I imagine living in Japan. In a place called Hokkaido. Mountains. Falling snow. It’s just something I like to imagine. When I was a little girl I saw a UFO. I was with my father. Driving in the desert. We stopped as it hovered over our car. My father turned off the engine. We held hands. I crossed myself, thinking that is what I’m supposed to do. Was the UFO God or the Devil? After the UFO vanished my father kissed my fingertips and started the engine and we continued driving in silence. We never talked about it. It was probably the most beautiful thing I have seen. Coloured lights in the endless desert sky. No sound. It was like an eclipse, something hidden, something revealed, turning the world from positive to negative for three minutes, silently transforming everything in its reach. And then it was gone.