The Heart and Other Viscera by Félix J. Palma

Author:Félix J. Palma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2019-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

Meows

For Juan Bonilla, who endured the first part of this story.

I can’t see it from the terrace, so I don’t know how big it is, or what color. The only thing I know is that every night, perched up on the roof, it wails my name at the moon. I’m no cat expert, but I think it must be in heat. It sounds like a heartbroken child. I could even describe it as terrifying. It reminds me of the screams of those pale creatures locked in basements in horror films. And I’m increasingly convinced it’s mewling my name.

Of course, I’d love a second opinion. Someone I could ask: Hey, listen, don’t you think that cat is mewling my name? But Virginia left me two months ago, before it began, as stealthily as she had come into my life. On a day like any other, she set off to buy lettuce to restock my bare fridge and never returned, even though that very same morning, her body entwined with mine, she had assured me that now that she had found me, she would never leave.

After her flight, I regretted that the two months of passion we had spent shut up in my apartment, far from the outside world, had left me with nothing more useful than happiness: no phone number, address, or surname to complement the first name that, once she had disappeared, I found myself compulsively muttering at all hours of the day like a spell that no longer conjured her up. But that was how she had wanted it: two naked souls, stripped of their everyday identities and impurities, each yearning for the other. She wanted her body, her green-flecked eyes, her damp hair, to be enough for me; for me to know nothing whatsoever about her when we weren’t together. She wanted a love apart from the world, outside even of time, free from the bonds of circumstance—a love composed solely of flesh and blood and electric skin. There would be plenty of opportunities later for all the rest, all the stuff that would make us worldly and wise and other. The stuff that would probably destroy us. And I accepted her conditions, which revealed her to me as she wished to be seen: a wood sprite, an elfin being, the last throwback to a mythical lineage garlanded with fairies, fauns, and elves, and about whom the only thing I needed to know was that she loved me like no one else ever had or ever would. Although, had I suspected that one fine day she would simply vanish into thin air, I would have asked for every last detail, down to her dentist’s address. That way I could have sought her in more accessible and obvious places than in an enchanted wood.

Virginia, the woman who vowed she would never leave me, disappeared one afternoon about two months ago. Ever since, I’ve been unable to sleep at night. Darkness descends on the city, and from my bed I

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