All the same, we would stay in the Hesperia and talk about whatever, or reverentially read the newspaper’s headlines in order to avoid mentioning what was happening to us in the final hours of our life together. But that happened in the mirror world, of which we knew nothing beyond what we could see: a reflection we avoided out of shyness or shame, taking refuge in the assumption that it was not and would never be us, that it was just the illusion of an impossible life, a life that we would never know. Sometimes we bought newspapers and divided up the pages while we made small talk, hoping to kill time and trying to ignore our reflection in the gigantic mirrors behind the bar, where a dark and twisted version of ourselves looked back at us, mocking us from an alternate world where we-that couple sunk in a silence barely contained by monosyllables-would leave the bar, desperate, and go have sex in some flea-ridden hotel on Calle Chacabuco. Nothing to say, nothing to say to each other we’d order peach juice, cappuccinos, or just water, and we’d sit in silence for hours or minutes, looking at the photos hanging on the wall-a series that showed a ship going down in open water. We would head to the Hesperia to pass the time while we waited for offices to open so we could begin whichever formality of our separation was slated for that day. What we had, our life together, was coming to an end. Even before she opened that newspaper, we were done for. With that dark sky hanging over the port, I couldn’t help but think how those ashes floating in the air were like the ashes from concentration camp ovens or the flecks of human skin an atomic bomb leaves behind. Those nervous habits were all we had left in those days, when the Laguna Verde forests were on fire and the wind from the south blew the black smoke over the hills on the horizon.

She’d be chain-smoking, and I would shred the skin of my lips with my teeth.

We’d be down in the port at the Hesperia café, 8:30 in the morning. Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Estrellas muertas by Álvaro Bisama