A Beautiful Sunny Day

I’m such a messy, absent-minded sort of guy that sometimes I can’t even find my glasses when I wake up—glasses with bottle-thick lenses. That was exactly what happened when I heard someone banging on the door. At the first knock I didn’t even blink, because I was sleeping deeply. But at the second, third, and fourth, I opened my eyes and shuddered in time with each one. These weren’t ordinary knocks, the kind that say, “I was just passing by to see if you were home.” They were more along the lines of, “Get up, you lazy bastard, or I’ll drag you out of bed myself!”

That kind of aggression is like a brutal shot of adrenaline. Who the hell dares, is all a guy can think. Especially me, since I truly love my sleep. The hot blood rushes from my feet to my head. I’m instantly wide awake. I want to grab the baseball bat leaning against a wall in my bedroom and teach that bastard a lesson, but the only problem is… I’m blind.

I rummage through all the dirty clothes scattered around the room. I crawl across the greasy carpet like a bulldozer, flinging underwear, socks, shirts, T-shirts in successive clouds behind me. More banging on the door. My irritation grows even greater. As if someone were hammering the tips of my toes while bells rang inside my head.

At that moment two things happen simultaneously and, even though it’s impossible for two things to happen at exactly the same millisecond, or the same millionth of a second, to me it amounts to the same thing: they happen simultaneously, because at the precise moment my apartment door is broken down, I see clearly—it’s a miracle, ladies and gentlemen!

No, of course not—it’s simply because I finally have my glasses on.

I hear hurried footsteps, then a woman stops in the doorway. It’s my neighbor Julie, stern-faced and disheveled.

“Jerry, you’ve disappointed me. I never thought that you would… With my own sister! You bastard, Jerry, how could you?”

The colors and outlines of the world spring back to life and, for some stupid reason that escapes me, I find myself smoothing down the twelve hairs I still have left on top of my skull. This becomes even more ridiculous when I realize that I’m naked. I find a towel on the floor and wrap it around my waist.

The truth is, I’ve never had anything to do with this woman, let alone her sister, apart from a cold greeting whenever I happen to pass one or the other of them on the stairs of the building. All I know is that both their names begin with J, like mine: Julie and Joan. That’s how memory works: for some reason, human beings remember things easily when we arrange them into combinations.

Julie is the one standing in the doorway, and she has a revolver in her hand. It’s metallic and has a short barrel, but pointed in my direction it looks like one of Bonaparte’s cannons. She gives me a wild look through hot tears and, looking closely, I notice that her trembling gaze alternates between me and my bed. Strange, I don’t remember sleeping with anyone. I look over there again and am utterly stunned. It’s as if I’ve seen an apparition. I see Joan, my neighbor’s twin sister, naked between the sheets. She stretches languidly in my bed, oblivious to the chaos around her.

“Ah, Julie. Whoever doesn’t take care of what is precious to them…” she says, stretching out her arms and clasping them behind her neck. “I take care of mine, don’t I, darling?”

I rub my eyes. Truth be told, I love the idea of having either one of them in my bed, but something is wrong here, and not knowing what is happening, not remembering anything, is bringing me to the verge of a nervous breakdown. Quite apart from the revolver, of course…

They argue. They scream and insult each other; all because of me. I ask Julie to hand me the revolver, but she doesn’t listen. It’s as if she were a robot impossible to reprogram.

“Isn’t it true that we had fun last night, darling?” Joan throws at her.

“Well, I suppose so. The important thing is that you had fun… I think… That is, Julie, please give me the revolver. I don’t remember anything. This is all just a misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding? How can you say such a thing? Of course, you got drunk. That’s the only way anyone could go to bed with someone like my sister!”

Strictly speaking, they are twins, so…

“You slut! He doesn’t want you anymore. He swore it to me last night.”

“I swore…?”

Julie stares at me, frowning, the revolver trembling in her hands.

“Is it true?”

“Of course it’s true!” Joan immediately shouts.

“Let him speak, Joan. I want to hear it from him.”

I don’t know what to say. I feel nauseous. Is this the end of the road? Or just a fit of jealousy? Maybe it’s better to keep my mouth shut.

“What do you want me to say, Julie? Come on, put down the revolver and we can talk.”

But she might do something crazy. I feel intensely nauseous. I don’t remember touching alcohol the night before. Above all, there’s one thought I can’t get out of my head, buzzing around me like a horsefly: why the hell did she break down the door if we’re together? But that thought is itself, of course, absurd, because I don’t even remember ever being together with her beyond the stairwell.

“He’s dazed. Can’t you see he’s just woken up?”

It’s Joan’s voice coming from the bed and, at that moment, looking over my shoulder, I see her getting out of the sheets. She really is sensual. Meanwhile, I feel Julie approaching me like an evil shadow.

The revolver goes off.

And the lights of the world go out.

I wake up in my bedroom. Phew, what a relief! It wasn’t all a dream. Even though they were two beautiful women arguing over me, the whole thing was making me sick. In any case—better safe than sorry—I stretch out an arm to sweep across the sheet beside me in bed and, lo and behold… someone is there. My first reaction is to pull my hand away immediately, as if I’d touched a boiling pot.

“Joan…?”

I can hear her breathing, but I can’t see her. At that moment there is the first knock on the door. I search for my glasses without getting out of bed and, since I already know where they are, I quickly find them on the carpet, among the dirty clothes scattered across the floor. I hear the second, third, and fourth knocks, and realize the door will soon be broken down.

“Wait, Julie, I’m coming to open the door.”

But she breaks it down anyway, without further ado. That’s what you get for living in a building constructed in the last century. Once she recovers from the effort, Julie gives me a feverish, crazed look and draws the revolver, her hands trembling. Then, without a word, she strides toward the bedroom.

I hear them screaming, shouting at each other. I’ve seen this movie before. I have to try to prevent the tragedy. I can’t let Julie fire that revolver.

I open the bedroom door very slowly and then suddenly throw myself at Julie, who falls helplessly. I fall on top of her, the revolver goes off.

The lights of the world go out.

I wake up in my bedroom and, this time, I don’t waste any time looking for Joan’s presence. I leap out of bed, grab my glasses from among the dirty clothes, and run for the door as if I were racing a triathlon.

I quickly reach the entrance door. Letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, I fasten the chain that runs from one door—the one secured at the top and bottom by sliding bolts—to the other, slightly warped door, which has only one old lock. There’s banging on the door. Just in time. I open it, knowing that the chain will allow it to open little more than a crack. Let her try to break it down now.

“Jerry, you’re not going to let me in?”

“Well, I… can we talk tomorrow?”

“Jerry, what are you talking about? It’s eleven in the morning!”

“It is? Well… I hadn’t even noticed.”

“Come on, open the door.”

“It’s just that, you know, I barely slept a wink last night. I really need to sleep now. I’ll call you later. I promise.”

With that, I close the door. It was a little abrupt, but I can’t think of anything better to say. However, she thrusts a decidedly uncompromising revolver into the gap before I can close it.

“Don’t you dare. I know she’s in there!”

I think about slamming the door against the barrel of the revolver. Then I think that I never should have opened it in the first place. And then, immediately afterward, I realize that, in the worst-case scenario, she’ll fire the revolver and everything will start again from scratch. This time, I definitely won’t open the door! And yet, before that happens, I can try something original.

I remove the chain.

“Come in, make yourself at home, Julie. Mi casa es tu casa…”

She gives me a suspicious sideways glance and, without a word, heads toward the bedroom.

“That’s it, go to the bedroom. Your sister is in there. You want to kill her, don’t you? Well, I’m not going to stop you… Go ahead, girl! Ruin your life and your sister’s! I’m certainly not staying here to watch.”

And, even though I’m naked, I run out of the apartment as if my life depended on it, leaving the door open.

I hear them beginning to scream and, inside my head, I can already hear the horrifying, premonitory crack of Julie’s short-barreled revolver. I see the sensual naked body of her twin sister bleeding to death, which, generally speaking, must necessarily be a mirror image of Julie’s naked body, since they are twins.

I pass several apartments in my building, on the floors below mine, on my way to the exit. In every one of them there are people arguing, furious, screaming at the tops of their lungs. I emerge onto the street. A motorist is shouting at a cyclist, a fat man at a thin man, a man at a woman, a child at a grocer, a locksmith at a banker, a lawyer at an accountant, and a tremendous cacophony of honking deafens everyone, and no one knows where it is coming from. No one knows whether it comes from outside or from inside the people themselves.

All of them are disfigured, their eyes bloodshot with fury, and they have a revolver in their hands.

“Stop! It’s the honking that’s causing this. Can’t you see you’re killing each other!” I repeat, again and again, in the face of that horror, but no one hears me. Perhaps I’m the only one who can hear the honking?

Already resigned, I hear the echo of multiple gunshots.

The flight of a flock of crows crackles in my eardrums.

I watch the bodies fall, one by one, like dominoes, blood gushing everywhere.

And the last thing I notice is that it is a beautiful sunny day.