Segunda parte

What do we inherit from those who are absent? How much - or for how long - are we allowed to miss them? Do things speak when their owners have gone? Is love or its memory sweeter?

Treacherously astute as ever, or more innocent than ever, Rule chooses the high point of a wedding in the country to tell Miguel that he is leaving for Rio de Janeiro. In Madrid, an elderly movie director is preparing a remake of her first film. And also from Brasil comes the young actor who will take the place of Farley Granger, the minor Hollywood star who secretly took the lead in the film.

It's early summer, Miguel has just finished his exams and is alone in the empty city. Everybody comes and goes before his unmoving gaze. The characters get tangled up in triangles with ambiguous vertices, with doubles who vanish or multiply in the arid days and endless nights.