AFTER HOURS
Translated from Spanish by Megan Berkobien
Nestled somewhere in La Mancha was a gas station, adrift in the vastness like a Moor in the desert. He wouldn’t have noticed it (he liked driving through the highways of Castilla like a man lost in sleep, with the pleasing sensation of being still in the womb) if it hadn’t been for the car starting to skid, much as if it were on an ice rink. “Damn it,” he thought, “we’re both old and tired. It had to happen sometime. It’s dying along the way, and so am I.” The crude, sparing, sallow gas station attendant told him that the car wouldn’t be fixed until the next day. What did he want to do? Either he could leave it or call a car service to come pick it up. He hadn’t paid his car insurance for several months. Problems with liquidity, as the economic journalists or people in bankruptcy say. Curious word. A rupture, from the Latin meaning “to break”—the bank was broken. Sometimes, while playing baccarat with friends, he would win the pot. He had always declared bankruptcy in the end. The dream of winning the pot ends with the penniless dreamer, ruined and exhausted, ground to dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Thinking about it, how long had it been since he had a good dusting between the sheets? Months. A year, maybe.