Ana Doesn't Sleep

Heat, a lot of heat and darkness. It's summer and I've arrived exhausted from a dive called Aranjuez, leaving behind a sand dune. I try to drop my clothes shakily in the garage. Shirt over the shoulder, belt, and jeans. It's so hard to get the jeans off... but there it is. I muster mental strength to leave one on. I go back to the jeans and feel the pocket. I take out the crumpled pack and blow it off while I sit on the kayak's keel to smoke. When I finish, I drink a good amount of water straight from the bottle and take a migraine pill I found in a fruit bowl along with some dice and candies of varying ages. I don't want to make noise or wake anyone, so the front room is a good option.

The vacation house is a hodgepodge with several rooms, thanks to the foresight of my grandfather's father, who bought this large plot for a pittance in the '40s, despite everyone calling him crazy. There are rooms for the uncle's children, for mom's side of the family, and one for occasional guests. That's where I'm going to settle in. How many are left? How many of that battalion that was here yesterday when I said goodbye came to spend the day?

I move forward. It's still dark. Just speckles filtering through the holes in the plastic blinds like timid lasers that will soon become rays, projecting an incomplete puzzle of the house's map. I keep moving and slide around, feeling for Hitchcockian creaky doorknobs. Nearby, I hear people snoring and Aspen-like music from an alarm clock radio playing in the background.

Once I find the doorway of my room, I start feeling with my toes for the edge of a miraculous double mattress I use for naps. I find it with relief and, squatting in slow motion, I let myself fall.

It doesn't take long until I feel a warm body and a half-laugh offering me shelter.

"Did you get the wrong bed or are you very drunk?" said Ana's unmistakable voice.

"Let's say a bit of both..." I said, almost laughing.

"I left the bed empty for you, but stay for a while if you want..."

Ana pulled up the sheet and covered us both. My aunt's friend turned her back to me as she undressed. "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins was playing, or at least I want to remember it that way. She took my hand, which, confused and lethargic, tried to caress her hip, and guided it to the point where her pubis met her thrilling legs. I clearly remember slowly making my way with my middle finger while lightly biting the lean flesh of Ana's shoulder. Her neck was warm, and I wanted to breathe in to preserve the night's memory, surrounded by her scent. She let herself go with mastery, yet looking innocent. Sometimes I think I owe everything I know about life to her.

As it grew, desire was first a silent grimace that hurt us and, in the end, redemption. I can still feel and see in the darkness of that summer the gesture of Ana letting her hair and our little history fall back as I caress the lips of her mouth before the end.

The next day, my aunt and Ana went to have breakfast at the beachside café. I woke up very late and started looking for the tide chart in the newspaper while my uncle made black coffee and dismantled some reels that had sand in the gears. When they returned, Ana looked at me as if nothing from the night before had happened, but still giving me a look invisible to others.

Systematically, we kept seeing each other and became accomplices over the years until illness ended us. Lung cancer began to push us apart completely. In reality, it was she who didn't want to see me anymore.

My aunt accompanied her like a sister until her last moments, and before she passed away, she sent me a WhatsApp audio saying, "Life is a summer night where you don't really know who you're getting involved with."

I scattered her ashes in the main channel of the estuary as she wished.