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The woman intertwined her gaze with mine. She raised her right palm from the rock to greet me. I froze as if the slightest tremor might dislodge the camouflage my skin had conjured. She might have been addressing someone else whose line of sight I’d trespassed into, but her gaze held mine and waited. My words had jammed in the rusted gears of some ancient machine. I said hello in a voice like sawdust. When sensation returned to my legs, I turned and retraced my steps.

“You’ve only just arrived,” said the woman in a fluting voice.

I stopped and offered her my profile.

“I came to be alone. This park seems designed for that.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“You must’ve come for the same reason. And you were here first—I’m the intruder.”

“Am I bothering you?”

I’d assumed so and readied a lie, but the tension in my muscles, the knots in my gut that usually urged me to flee, were absent. I stepped toward the pebbles fringing the lagoon. In the silence, they crunched like snapping bones. The water lay hidden beneath a pelt of algae, a mesh of lichen where insects glinted.

I’d trespassed into this secluded park, ventured to its core, and now, rooted at the lagoon’s edge, I blocked the woman’s view. I tainted the air passing through my lungs. Before my arrival, this clearing had endured as a sanctuary, a natural oasis she’d have cherished, its secret guarded. I’d ruined it.

“I stole your peace.”

“It’s good to speak sometimes.”

I scratched my nape.

“I suppose.”

Her gaze drifted to the grass at her bare feet as she finger-combed a damp strand crossing her collarbone. On her other arm, a droplet slid down to the blue veins of her wrist. An urge gripped me—like craving chocolate after a sugar crash—to unravel details about her, though most days I floated adrift, indifferent to whether life’s incomprehensible currents might stagnate.

She’d posed a silent question, granting me time to order my thoughts. I cleared my throat.

“You’re lucky the city preserved this park. They’re scarce where I live.”

“What replaces them?”

“Apartment blocks, shops. Fascinating varieties of concrete.”

She nodded, and isolated another wet strand.

“Do you come here often?” I asked.

“I never wander far.”

“I’d do the same.” I hurried to raise a palm. “But you found it first.”

“It belongs to whoever finds it.”

I chuckled, and the desperation to please her shamed me as if I had turned into a child stranded in a tree, needing an adult’s help to descend. The folder under my arm grew heavy. I set it on the pebbles. My eyes scanned the clearing for the woman’s belongings, maybe a purse, but she’d brought nothing beyond her meditative stillness. My gaze swung back to her, magnetized, as if she were a ruby glinting in dust. I needed to modulate my attention, or I’d scare her off.

“You can stare,” she said, “if you’re curious.”

My heart jolted. I felt like apologizing. How many people saw straight through me? I held her gaze in a silent vow of harmlessness.

Though a stranger had stumbled upon her in the park’s depths, the woman’s face stayed serene as if I were just another chirping bird. Honey-blond strands arched rebelliously over her forehead. Narrow brows melted into translucent pink skin above eyes whose irises, perhaps born green, had been conquered by pale blue, compressing the original hue against her pupils. The bluish shadows beneath her eyes resembled smudged makeup. Chapped lips, cracked by cold, had split into notches. Across her face, neck, and arms, plaster-white patches lay like peeled paint.

I observed the blotch spanning her brow to the right cheekbone. She’d hate others noticing. Hate herself. She’d anticipate questions she’d rather not hear. She had come on a weekday, and probably spent hours here. Unemployed. Alone, no book for distraction. Marooned with her thoughts amid trees and silence.

She smoothed a damp strand. Her gaze slid from my face to my shoes.

“Do you live nearby?” I asked. “Unless you mind me asking.”

“Close enough.”

“The locals must treasure this place like they’d planted it. Tourists would ruin it.”

She shook her head.

“No one comes.”

“I’m not surprised. They pass by, right? I came here to kill time, but most people would have headed to a bar. I needed some time alone.”

“I’m always alone.”

She’d said it flatly, like stating the time. Her patches exiled her; I at least warranted pretense before being sidelined. Every mirror stabbed her with flaws. Friends’ calls would have dwindled to monthly guilt offerings. Only the trees’ stillness remained, herself as sole company unable to abandon her.

I sat on the pebbles, my back protesting, and gripped my shins.

“What’s your name?”

“Depends who asks.”

“You must prefer one.”

“Call me what you need.”

I pressed my palms together, bowing slightly.

“I guard my privacy too. No offense meant.”

A branch rattled in the foliage. She tilted her head. The thicket seethed with shadows and cloud-filtered light. Her neck had stiffened, and for a moment I thought her ears, peeking through strands, would have pivoted toward the noise.

She lowered her gaze to the grass, and parted her lips.

“Over the years, I’ve had many names pinned on me. Names that flirted with meaning but never quite captured my whole. Language alone is too limited to understand one another; no word can encapsulate what I am—or what you are.”

I fell silent. She was accustomed to speaking only in soliloquies—her inner voice the sole interpreter of her untranslatable thoughts—yet now, she had opened a door for me.

“How do you refer to yourself?”

“The images in my head suffice.”

“What should I call you?”

“Who’d you speak of me to?”

I turned pale and grew cold, as if someone with a knife had accosted me in an alley. Eyes fixed on me, waiting for my response—just like when my office colleagues, discussing their weekend ski getaway, either trying to include me or to make fun of me, grilled me with questions: “Have you made plans with your friends?” In the few seconds they granted me to answer, I weighed the myriad lies I’d told for years to a blur of faces, and I was eager to concoct any story that might divert them from the truth: human beings—their customs, their impulses, their tastes—terrified me, and I longed to free myself from their presence like a rabbit crouched among the grass in a field where rabid dogs prowled.

But this woman sought solitude. I wanted to keep the forest, the clearing, and the woman a secret—a refuge that had survived among walls of concrete and metal closing in on every patch of green. I had been entrusted with that responsibility, and I would protect them.

“I won’t speak of you to anyone.”

“You see my face,” she said. “You hear my voice. No name holds the myriad details they contain.”

I waited, lips parted, eager to listen to any words that would flow out of her mouth. Today I’d steered our talk, but any other day, I may have heard her in the distance, woven into wind and birdsong.

“You mentioned killing time,” she said. “For what?”

I checked my watch.

“I took the wrong route—” A shiver struck. “Crap, I’ve missed my train, and I’ll have to run to catch the next one. Thank you for reminding me.”

She nodded. I grabbed my folder, stood up, and brushed the grit off my pants. My heart raced. I’d sprint sweat-soaked, praying to reach the platform in time. Otherwise, I’d be forced to wait another forty-five minutes.

“I’ve enjoyed this. Meeting you. Keep the silence.”

---

Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los reinos de brea.

In case the dialogue seemed shoddy to you… yeah, I’d say the dialogue is the worst part of this story. The protagonist is an awkward loner and the woman is, well, something else. I don’t remember much of the story in that regard other than the fact that back then I wished I knew how to make the dialogue less awkward.