Cherubs

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1. For Something Better

In Seville, they rented a car.

Michel had asked Anna to go see Zurbarán’s portraits of women before they left for Ronda.

“He didn’t just paint monks, you know. His young saints look as fresh as his fruits and flowers.”

The morning was already hot. They traveled through a cheerful countryside. Everywhere, they saw blinding lines, merging, dissolving. Sometimes donkeys would emerge from a cloud of dust. The hills, little by little, became cliffs. Soon there was nothing but corniches and ravines.

They stopped in a posada and ordered two ham omelets and Spanish rice (with vegetables and peppers). Two hours later, they were driving through the open mountains.

The outskirts of Ronda appeared. The car scaled the cliffs. Michel and Anna did not speak. The city’s narrow, bumpy streets struggled to accommodate the car.

The sun was already high.

In the hotel room, Michel was lying down, shirtless. He was smoking a cigarette. The blinds were half-open. What the hell was he doing there smoking American cigarettes in a Spanish room?

Anna was looking forward to spending these few days with Michel in the angelic heat.

Yet she already felt that her fervor could not overcome her budding indifference. She was no longer a young girl who dared leap each morning into a sparkling day. She felt that these moments, still very pure and very beautiful, were already slipping away.

At the end of the day, once the heat had fallen a bit, Michel and Anna took a walk. It was the time of day when everything seems perfect — which is