Free A Crack in the Wall by Claudia Piñeiro

thinking, how odd it is – no?”
    â€œHow odd what is?”
    â€œThat an architect doesn’t know by heart the five buildings in the city he likes best. I mean, straight off, without having to give it so much thought. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
    He says nothing: he doesn’t know what it seems to him; he doesn’t know what is strange and what is normal. He remembers that only a few days ago – on the very day he met Leonor – he was asking himself the same thing in relation to his daughter and questioning what the word “normal” meant to Laura when applied to Francisca. He’s distracted by these thoughts, until the girl’s voice brings him back to the present, saying:
    â€œIt’s unusual – don’t tell me it isn’t. I thought that I would call you and that you would reel off the five, or ten, or even fifteen buildings that are on that mental list that we all have of our favourite things.”
    â€œWe all have lists of our favourite things?”
    â€œYes! You mean you don’t?”
    â€œSo what is on your list?”
    â€œYou want me to tell you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œOK. First place: chocolate. Second place: walking without an umbrella in a gentle but persistent drizzle, the kind that stings when it hits your face. You know the kind of drizzle I mean, right?”
    â€œYes, I think so,” Pablo replies, but clearly she plans to explain the drizzle to him anyway:
    â€œIt’s the kind where, instead of drops of water, it feels as though wet thorns are being thrown at you on a slant. Anyway, that kind of drizzle,” she says, and pauses before returning to her theme. “The third place I’m keeping to myself and the fourth —”
    â€œWhy are you keeping the third to yourself?” Pablo interrupts.
    â€œBecause we’ve only just met,” the girl replies. “When we know each other better, I’ll tell you.”
    Once more Pablo feels enjoyably unsettled, as though Leonor’s spiky drizzle were pricking his face. Then she laughs, and that gives him an outlet to let the thorns rush out in pent-up laughter and then to feel calmer. And by the time he’s stopped laughing, Pablo Simó has forgotten to ask Leonor about number four on her list of favourite things, because he is still wondering about number three.
    â€œOK, I’ll call you the day after tomorrow, then. Bye for now,” she says.
    â€œBye,” he says. And he’s just about to hang up when he hears Leonor add something else.
    â€œIt is odd though – and you’re odd. But what should I have expected from a guy who doesn’t use a mobile, right?”
    Once more, they both laugh.
    Once more, Pablo neglects to ask about Nelson Jara.

7
    Pablo spends the rest of the day wondering which buildings he is going to choose for Leonor to photograph. It’s been a long time since he looked at the city or thought of it in that light, seeking the value that Leonor calls “what you like best”. But neither does he look for the values that are closer to meeting his own definition of “architectonic merit”. For years Pablo Simó has looked at Buenos Aires purely as a source of what Borla calls business opportunities: reasonably priced plots on which to build; public auctions; municipal land that comes up for sale and which it is feasible to buy thanks to some friend or contact; complicated estates, where the heirs want a quick sale and end up settling for a pittance; divorces that require selling off property ridiculously cheaply so as to separate what can no longer be joined. That’s what he looks at these days, because that’s what he’s been told to look for. He tries to remember a time when he saw things differently, harking back to student days when he could stand in front of a newly discovered building and feel a current pass through his body, an almost sexual