I
There were only two or three lights on in that long hallway, lined with rooms on either side, like an ark filled with beings before the great flood. The only reason one could say she wasn't floating was because of the clatter of her heels stirring up the echo. She stood still in front of door E-257, extended her hand, and began to navigate the texture of the wood with her soft fingers.

She closed her eyes and remembered the dialogue of the story that until that moment began to become clear.
Thus she heard from the past her own voice in the form of dialogue.

"Do you remember me? Do you know who I am?"

It was the first thing she asked the guy sitting on the pistachio green sofa, after not having seen him for years.
However, in that moment, in front of door 257, she understood that the question had been absurd. Six years had passed without seeing him—the being she had in front of her that day and whom she could never define as a man or as a friend. That time, in that first reunion, she looked him straight in the eyes, as if inside the person she was looking at there existed another one completely different from the one she knew. He, in turn, granted her the dignity that a different person who was once someone else deserves.

"From every detail, from every flicker of your eyes, from your scent which is now different, but it was never clear to me who you wanted to be, who you truly were," he replied with his grave and sweet voice.

He looked at her, analyzing her delicately and with tenderness. Before giving way to an awkward silence, he asked: "Why have you come?"

At that moment she could not answer him. No matter how much she searched the gaze of that man, there were no glimmers of madness; it was still the same sad and mischievous look, but now that man was in a mental clinic where they called him a patient. She was once again conscious of that deep and analytical gaze.
She had no way of evading the question: the one asking, "Why have you come?"

That day, however, in front of door number 257, where her fingers drifted, the answer to that question approached her as infallible as the punctual person hurrying to make an appointment.

II
That Friday afternoon she was drinking coffee while reading a fashion magazine next to her cat. She knew she would look wonderful in one of those elegant dresses. While she was telling her cat which one she liked, the phone rang. She jumped with a start and the cat, as always, remained indifferent.

The person on the other end of the phone introduced themselves and stated which mental health institution they worked for. They mentioned a name and asked if she knew that person; from that moment on she only heard mumblings. Hearing that name stunned her completely. Who knows what else the poor guy on the other end said. Amidst rapid blinks and a lost gaze, she slowly returned to reality.

"Excuse me, hello, hello...", said the voice on the phone to make sure she hadn't hung up.

"Yes, I know him...", she replied with a faint and sad voice.

The guy on the other end of the phone continued: "He has mentioned you in some conversations; at first we thought it was an invention, but one of his books is dedicated to you, the last one he published, six years ago I think, or seven, I don't know. It was a matter of taking curiosity to the directory. As I told you, he's a solitary guy, it seems he has no family. Look, you don't have to, but maybe you'd like to come see him... you know... good afternoon."

"You know?" What the hell did she know! It had been so long since she had heard that first and last name.
They spoke to her about a person she hadn't known anything about for six years. They spoke to her of him, essentially, as a madman with whom one could have good chats, as a being capable of traveling between reality and fiction, a walker. Even so, something very strange continued to link her to that crazy guy, because to her he had always been crazy.

She stayed sitting on the sofa with the phone in one hand and her cup of coffee, almost empty, in the other.
Her cat had fallen asleep. In her lost gaze, memories stirred; they emerged like a terrified flock from the caverns of the past, fluttering around her all afternoon, until sleep overcame her.
Several days passed since she fell asleep on the sofa that Friday.

III
It was hard to look at him in that visiting room, with white walls and very few furniture pieces, sitting in the pistachio green armchair. With his leg crossed and, as always, somewhat extravagant, the window light caressed the gaze of that fellow of whom one could never know in which of his worlds he wandered.
She stood watching him from behind the door, not knowing where that almost surreal scene of that character sitting in the pistachio green armchair belonged, as if straight out of a magical realism tale. A social worker had led her to that small room. She left her alone with her fate, and for a moment she felt she was in a strange world, like behind the frontier of another time.

 

There, before she could open the door, some images, evocations of a not-so-distant past, began to appear translucent on the glass of the door separating them. She watched the frames of those memories in complete motion. Why did she turn into mist at that instant? Who was he in reality? The turmoil that occurred in her stomach—her stomach—arrived six years late.

When she refocused her gaze, there was no longer any room for regrets, there was no turning back.
He had discovered her hesitating, as always. Sitting in that room, without a couple of cups of coffee between them as an excuse, only the gazes remained. He simply stared at her fixedly, like someone with a hand near the revolver, in no rush to draw his dialogue. She realized it and, nervously, pulled the trigger first; she fired the questions that would later prove to be absurd: "Do you remember me? Do you know who I am?"

His question, on the other hand, was more precise: the one asking, "Why have you come?"

She wanted to evade the question, she wanted to hide in silence, but she couldn't, so she went off on a tangent. The chat emerged like a green sprout among dense and lifeless leaf litter.

"Have they told you I'm crazy yet?", he asked.

"They don't need to tell me," she replied, and a smile escaped both of them.

IV

The second and subsequent visits were less complicated and began to happen little by little. He kept playing the game of being a man-child. She still didn't quite understand what that game was about, but it seemed fun to her; it was as if being with him turned her into his protector and accomplice. Only when she was with him did she realize how very adult she was.

"See how I came again, and don't ask me anything, let's not complicate things... I'm already here, I came to chat with you, for you to tell me a story, a tale, or something, you know how, go ahead...", she told him with an honest look.

She didn't realize that he could no longer tell her the same stories the way he used to, the ones he wrote and wrote all his life, the ones he predicted as his next book, because now he lived inside those stories and jumped back and forth between his worlds and reality.

Without asking any more questions, without bringing out the detective she was, the one who wanted to understand everything, she simply looked at him and smiled.

He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket. He smoothed it out a bit and said: "Yesterday I wrote something about the walkers, it's my last novel, I already know who my main character will be... shall I read you a little piece?"

"Go ahead, I'm listening," she replied sweetly and excitedly.

It was what she always used to tell him when he called her on the phone or cited her in some café to tell her the sketches of his next story. She was always his first reader, his first critic. Several years had passed since then. Repeating that phrase after all that time made her think inevitably of the what-ifs. She had chosen a soberer, more normal life, with "someone" in whom she found the stability and trust that she didn't find with the madman, the genius.

She had chosen; in reality she wasn't regretful of her choice, because it had been very much her own, despite the fact that that choice had led her like an inescapable current, downstream, to reality—the one that in its time taught her that dreams break in everyday life. At that moment, when he was reading her his writing about the walkers, she wondered why she hadn't wanted to believe those nonsense things before, why she decided to abandon the boy who took her far away, if deep down she would have wanted to believe those crazinesses, those scrambled topics. What fortune that his reproaches were hidden in the trunk of the sane people's foolishness, and he wasn't going to reproach her for her abandonment!

When he finished his reading, she opened her eyes; the flight had been brief.

"Did you like it?", he asked, anxiously awaiting the response of his best critic.

"I loved it...!; as always, you've made me draw every detail of everything you narrate," she said, returning from her closed eyes.

"You're not going to publish it, right?"

"Well, I haven't decided yet..."

"I can't wait to read it completely..."

"Do you want to see something extraordinary?"

"Yes!", she replied while turning to look at him.

"Look how the leaf goes with the walkers on its wings..."

He said while throwing the leaf into the wind, watching how it transformed into a pair of wings; he saw them gain height and they left. She, however, saw a leaf fall to the ground, a crumpled and completely empty leaf.

V
It was four-forty-five in the afternoon, middle of the week, and work seemed never-ending. She paused to relax her fingers for a moment before returning to the keyboard. She looked out the window and stayed watching the grass of the garden below. Suddenly she thought of him, of the madman, and began to miss him. Where did those urges to see him again come from?

 

It wasn't that they were her escape from loneliness, or that she no longer liked chatting with her cat. Simply, that day, looking out the window, she realized that with him it seemed her world—her world—became another one, one that she could see from afar and to which she was in no rush to return.
For a moment she realized that being with him was like walking in an impossible reality, one that never happened. The beings, the worlds, the luminous colors of which he spoke to her, the scents he described, the distant lands: everything was a mixture, a heterogeneous substance, that carried her like an inescapable current, downstream, to the edge of unreality.

"The advantage of being crazy—that is, of being a walker—is that one loses the fear of doing things that terrify sane people. It's not just that one inhibits oneself less, it's that one becomes conscious of the absurdity of life's formalities, and that makes one feel, let's say, free." He had his hand on his chin while lying on the grass, moving his bare feet in the air like a mischievous and pensive child.

"Name one of the things you no longer fear," replied she, who lying face up and barely close to him, let herself be intrigued by the comment.

He turned reflective, as if beginning to hone one of his philosophical and tangled reasonings…

"I no longer care about making mistakes, looking stupid or childish. Writing stories has never been so liberating, so fun, so creative, because now I don't give a damn about logic. I can eat ice cream—all I feel like, to my heart's content—without caring about the world and its rushes, or I can walk in the garden in briefs, with a plaid shirt and suit jacket and tie, of course, with well-polished shoes and tailored socks, because wearing baggy socks seems immoral to me…"

He burst out laughing and continued…

"Walking around in a suit jacket and briefs is something I've never done, it hadn't occurred to me... Relax, I'm not doing it today…"

He rolled onto his back on the grass, directed his gaze toward her, and there were those honey-colored eyes and thick eyelashes, emerging barely from a laugh. His eyes, crystal clear and honest, sparkled with an innocent and happy look. That afternoon, at four-fifty-eight, she had no choice but to laugh alone.
It had been a while since such a spontaneous and light laugh had escaped her.

VI
Saturdays at two in the afternoon was when she normally visited him. Suddenly she would sneak away on the odd weekday afternoon when she managed to leave work before five. They had gone back to being the friends they had been before he fell in love with her; when his favorite pastime was disconnecting her from her serious and responsible world. He knew exactly where the laughter switch of that serene and elegant woman was located. On Saturdays, starting at one in the afternoon, he would get a bit more restless than usual. Something was happening. Could it be that the cocoon of that story that never existed was put into motion?
When she came, he would dress better than usual, although he continued to be the same hipster, slightly extravagant but with class, wearing plaid pants and huge round glasses.

He walked around the garden a bit restless, a bit nervous deep down. It was as if the wait, the prelude, made him float a few inches higher than usual. What was it that stirred his expectations? What does a madman dream of when he's awake?

 

He was always drawing or writing something. He carried loose sheets in all his jackets. He didn't want to forget any of his brilliant ideas, any of his new characters or any of his extremely tangled dialogues. He wrote, sketched, made doodles of everything he considered extremely interesting. That madman was a nostalgic and optimistic being. For a long time he had made a truce with his solitude; he no longer fought with it.
He had already managed to hide in the closet that monster that had such a hunger to love, to take care of someone, to belong to someone. However, having her close, conversing with her, looking at her and looking at himself through her, made him rethink everything he already believed resolved. Being with her made him feel a bit closer to the ground.

As if she were the bridge between his worlds and the reality he had lost and had long since stopped searching for. When he was with her, his solitude was the pet monster he didn't mind leaving in his room and without food.

VII
The conversation between them arose spontaneous and natural. They walked together through the garden, along the same paths, without their surroundings worrying them. They laughed at everything and talked about everything: dark matter, the Big Bang, whether God sometimes does play dice. They chatted about politics as if it were a bad comedy, they made fun of people and their way of dressing. But they never talked about themselves, really; about their lives, the last years, the whys or the what-ifs. They arrived in their worlds with a passport and everything. Always at a prudent distance, shoulder to shoulder, it didn't matter if it was cold or how prone they were to an embrace; they didn't even brush against each other.

They simply conversed, arriving in their worlds without problems, between tunnels and bridges, from one side of their universe to the other, and the chats occurred pleasantly, while ochre leaves rained down without wetting them.

"How many times have you dreamed that you fly?", he asked, as he always did, giving a completely new course to the chat.

She stayed thinking.

"I have found the way to float—he said, with a somewhat reflective tone—, but I still haven't discovered the way to fly; that is, I haven't been able to bring out the sensation from my dreams. Floating, on the other hand, doesn't require so much technique. I begin to detach every millimeter of myself gradually from the ground, it can take me hours to achieve it, and when I finally manage to detach from the ground the most infinitesimal fragment of my skin... I float. I slowly bend my knees, move my feet a little bit and breathe slowly; it happens that at that point you realize life is a translucent dense fluid."

"And is it possible to learn to do that? I mean, to fly," asked she, who had stayed in the memory of some dream in which she flew.

"Perhaps it will work out if, instead of looking for the way to fly, I discover the way to become wind."

"Becoming..." The plural in that last phrase stunned her a little. But the bewilderment had in reality a sweet, tender flavor.

He stayed a while with his arms crossed, totally concentrated and in silence.

He was making calculations in his mind, equations and formulas with which he was deciphering how to turn into wind.

"When you find the way to become wind... please let me know," she said, returning from her closed eyes, without reflecting on the meaning of those words.

He got trapped in "becoming". "When you find the way to BECOME..."—the plural in the last phrase stunned him completely; the bewilderment was also sweet, and precisely that "becoming" swirled around him hurricane-like amidst an impossible "us".

He turned to look at her while she now fixed her gaze on the silence. He lost himself for a few moments until he noticed his wide-open eyes. He had never felt that she was simply playing along with him. But that time, reality touched him for a briefest instant. She was there, in his world, and it was until that moment that he realized it.
What was a stranger whom he was still in love with doing in the middle of his planet? She wasn't going to stay.
What had she gone for then? The idea of knowing that she was only traveling, or worse yet, on vacation, made reality burst in his mind.

"¡¿Becoming?!", he replied, dismayed and annoyed. "You think everything I'm saying isn't true, right?"

Reality crossed her throat right in the middle; returning from the flight where she had stayed almost made her crash. She didn't know what to say. Besides, what does one respond to big, open eyes of a disillusioned child in the middle of a tantrum?

"And if I find a way to become wind? You're not going to follow me... And you know why? You're confused, I'm crazy, a damn crazy person, but not an idiot... I am crazy! Crazy, do you hear it?! And you're not! Don't you ever touch my world again! Why have you come?! What did you come for?!"

She looked at him completely surprised. She watched how he desperately brought his hands to his hair while continuing to yell; his look was that of a desperate and sad guy. He knew he had lost something unrecoverable, and that something wasn't his sanity.

VIII
Ever since that afternoon when he had that horrible crisis, she decided not to look for him anymore.
And what a pity, but their last chat had concluded with a little drama of screams and curses.
At what moment did so much rage arise in him? It was tremendous to see how they pierced him with the needle to calm him down.

 

But still drowsy, almost amidst mumblings, he could still claim: "I had already learned to live without you... in my world... why have you come? What did you come for?"

A pout formed on his face, and he shed a tear. That tear burned her heart; then she violated the agreement and held his hand tightly. He closed his eyes and squeezed her fragile fingers.

IX
Back on her sofa, without a magazine, without coffee, and with an indifferent cat by her side. With a lost gaze, she thought and thought about him. She wanted to call the clinic, ask about him, know how he was... No, that wouldn't be enough; she wanted to go look for him, but no, the best thing would be to let him go, let him live in his world, in his natural habitat, distant and calm.

 

She had already done it once, years ago, when she left him a farewell note in the first book he had put on sale and which, by the way, turned out to be a huge success. This time there was no book to leave a note in; this time she was living the novel in full color and almost in a reality that seemed alternate. The idea of leaving him just like that, once again, without explanations, seemed unbearable to her.

She didn't show up for work for several days and her life was a tangle of remorse. She still felt in her fingers the warmth of his hand's last complaint. She remembered that hand and wished for an instant she had held onto it longer.

 

"I know he loved me, he truly loved me... stupid!"

It was one of those times when one realizes that fear drove one to a calculated, logical decision. As if life always made sense. She had chosen a different life, a stable life. But the perfect husband she had, the solid and well-made man she married, couldn't—even with all his precautions and plans—escape that rainy afternoon on the highway, where he lost his life.

He was a good husband, but he never truly became her friend. And yet, the life she didn't choose, that of the madman, that jerk who made her die of laughter, was far from what she needed. But after having been with her friend the madman again, she began to realize that something had changed inside her. She began to realize that she didn't need a shelter to hide from fear; she needed the cure, and that cure wasn't in the world of the sane.

Then she had crazy urges to have been wrong, to have fallen in love with the madman, to throw herself into the unpredictable. Crazy, the urges she had were crazy. By this point she already knew the end of that story—the one she decided not to live—and the end was tragic (meaning, it was predictable after all); and how strange, she still would have wanted to live that story. The last look she had of him in her mind reclaimed with infinite rage her cowardice. After all, he had loved her, he truly had loved her.

"Why have you come?"

The question went round and round. What did she expect by impacting his world? Could it be that deep down she excused herself—or rather, hid in his madness—just to look at him from afar? Look at whom? The madman, the friend, or the man? Well, she looked at all three closely, and until that moment she realized that he had also been observing her. Their worlds had found each other again, a cataclysm was occurring, and she was the epicenter.

X
She didn't feel like returning to work. The afternoons repeated themselves over and over like projections of an old black-and-white movie. The cat had lost its indifference, acting cute and purring to remind her that its food bowl was empty. The truth is she wanted to close her eyes and disappear, discovering herself upon opening them in the middle of the wind, being wind... The phone rang.

First she lowered her arms and then opened her eyes to realize she was back in the substantial world.
She barely reached the last ring of the phone. "I already found the way, you have to come... reach me," was his voice speaking softly to her.

"¡¿You?! ¡¿How?!", she yelled at the receiver. "Becoming wind...", he replied in a whisper. "¡¿How did you manage to talk to me?! ¡¿Hello?! ¡¡Hello!!"

No one answered and she grew desperate. She knew that wacky and resolute voice. Her concern was valid.
She tried to extract, through harsh words, answers from the phone. How had he managed to talk to her?
And what's more, had he found "the way"?

She grabbed her purse and got into the car. She didn't care about the rain nor the prudence; this time there wasn't even a glimmer of indecision in her gaze.

XI
The clinic was strangely funeral-like and quiet. So much silence wasn't enough to distract her.
She walked, and her steps provoked an echo that stirred the silence in the labyrinth of hallways.
She knew exactly where she was going as she looked for numbers among the walkers' rooms. "Ma'am... Ma'am! He's no longer here..."

The receptionist shouted without trying to stop her when she passed in front of her. Who could have. She simply heard noises, distant voices. She kept walking and there it was: door number E-257. She stayed a second with a broken expression. Everything was clear then. She put her extended hand on the white sea of the door.

 

With her forehead on the navigating hand that at that instant stayed stranded, she closed her eyes and began to hear his voice—his—and also her voice, hers. All their dialogues approached her like rough tide to the sandbank of her memories. She had gotten used—or rather, she had gotten used again, without realizing it—to the beings and worlds, the luminous colors, the birds and the wind that painted her room with madness, her rest breaks at work, her afternoons alone.

Without those colors, now everything seemed unbearably empty, without paintings hanging on her walls.
She slowly opened the door; it had stopped raining and the sky cleared after the storm. The intense light of five in the afternoon put her in front of a gray-golden sunset with the smell of wet earth and ink.

There were papers flying everywhere, book leaves surging joyfully in the wind seas that the open window had let in; the curtains danced a soft and elegant dance. She let herself be enveloped by that wind of gray-blue colors among dazzling caramel yellows. The questions had vanished, especially the logical ones. Now she knew for sure what she had gone to look for in that someone she thought was another, who continued to be the same one who carried her like an inescapable current, downstream, to the edge of unreality.

At that moment she discovered herself being another, happily another, and with her eyes closed and her arms open, she simply followed him...

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