The Time in Between: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

as he took his wallet from his pocket or brought the cup to his lips.
    “And why would a woman like you want to spend her life in a ministry, if that’s not too forward a question?” he asked after taking his first sip of coffee.
    I shrugged. “So we can have a better life, I guess.”
    Again he came slowly closer to me, again his hot voice was in my ear: “Do you really want to start living better, Sira?”
    I took refuge in a sip of chocolate to avoid answering.
    “You’ve got a smudge; let me wipe it,” he said.
    And then he brought his hand to my face and opened it over the contour of my jaw, adjusting it to my bones as though this were the mold from which I had once been formed. Then he put his thumb in the place where the smudge supposedly was, close to where my lips met. He caressed me smoothly, slowly. I let him do it: a mixture of terror and pleasure prevented me from moving.
    “You’ve got some here, too,” he murmured, his voice hoarse, moving his finger.
    Its destination was one end of my lower lip. He repeated the caress. More slowly, more tenderly. A shiver ran up my spine; my fingers gripped the velvet of the seat.
    “And here, too,” he said again. Then he caressed my whole mouth, millimeter by millimeter, from one end to the other, rhythmically, slowly, more slowly. I was about to sink into a well of something soft that I could not define. I didn’t care if the whole thing was a lie and there was no trace of chocolate on my lips. I didn’t care that at the next table three venerable old men suspended their chatter to contemplate the scene, burning with desire, furiously wishing they were thirty years younger.
    Then a noisy group of students trooped into the café, and their racket and laughter destroyed the magic of the moment like someone bursting a soap bubble. And right away, as though awaking from a dream, I became aware of several things at once: that the ground hadn’t melted but was still solid beneath my feet, that the finger of a man I didn’t know was about to go into my mouth, that an eager hand was crawling along my left thigh, and that I was a heartbeat away from throwing myself headfirst off a precipice. My clarity of thought now recovered, I jumped to my feet. Rushing to take up my bag, I knocked over a glass of water that the waiter had brought with my chocolate.
    “Here’s the money for the typewriter. At the end of the afternoonmy fiancé will come by to collect it,” I said, leaving the bundle of notes on the marble.
    He held me by the wrist.
    “Don’t go, Sira; don’t be angry with me.”
    I tugged myself free. I didn’t look at him or say good-bye; I just turned and with forced dignity began to make my way to the door. It was only then that I noticed I’d spilled the water on myself and that my left foot was soaked.
    He didn’t follow me; he probably sensed it wouldn’t do him any good. He just stayed sitting there, and as I moved away he launched his final dart at my back.
    “Come back another day. You know where to find me now.”
    I pretended not to hear him. I picked up my pace through the crowd of students and blended into the hubbub of the street.
    Eight times I went to bed hoping that when morning came things would be different, and the eight mornings that followed I awoke with the same obsession in my head: Ramiro Arribas. His memory assaulted me at every turn, and I couldn’t keep him from my thoughts for a single minute: making the bed, blowing my nose, as I peeled an orange or went down the stairs one by one with his face engraved on my retina.
    Meanwhile, Ignacio and my mother worked away at the plans for the wedding, but they were incapable of making me share their enthusiasm. Nothing pleased me, nothing could raise the slightest interest in me. It must be nerves, they thought. I struggled, meanwhile, to get Ramiro out of my head, not to recall his voice in my ear, his finger caressing my mouth, his hand running up my thigh, and the last words he