Robinet Testard, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Translator’s Note: This piece uses the medieval-period translation technique of inserting metacommentary directly into the text when a detail is dubious or has no verifiably accurate translation. The technique is used here to highlight, play with, and contribute to Dávila’s own footnotes regarding unreliable facts within the autofictional narrative. This version adds another layer to the communally constructed story, first published in Spanish in 2019.

That was the summer I had to choose, in a matter of seconds, how I wanted to die; I recommend avoiding as best you can the sort of ill-advised predicament I found myself in thanks to a heat wave that had descended on Boston. I’d just finished my third year of college and had decided to finally take the programming course I’d put off all those semesters, but instead of staying in a dorm, where I’d have to cram into a tiny room with a complete stranger, I joined three classmates who were looking for a fourth person to split the rent for a house. The pluses: I’d have my own room, and, though I didn’t know my new housemates well, I’d chatted a handful of times with one of them, Tom,¹ who was not only friendly but also pretty cute. The minus: the house wasn’t in Cambridge, where the campus is, but in Somerville, a nearby neighborhood that had fallen into decline and was, therefore, where my roommates could afford to live. I no longer remember why I was so hell-bent on sticking to this meager budget—my parents would have helped me out if I’d wanted to find a nicer place—but I suppose I wanted to assert my independence by making my own decisions, even if they were stupid.

My room in the attic seemed romantic at first, with a gable roof and a large picture window that let in lots of light, but by sundown I understood why no one else had claimed it (I was last to join the group). As the highest point in the house—like most old buildings in the Northeast, it was built for the cold, thus offering neither the perks of air conditioning nor a ceiling fan—that was where the heat accumulated from each protracted summer day. I quickly realized it was best to go up there only to sleep (or to attempt an uneasy approximation of sleep) and so I spent most afternoons languishing on the first floor, reading with a sheet thrown over the faux-leather sofa so my skin wouldn’t stick. But sometimes even this was unbearable. Then any excuse to escape the house was a good one—return a library book, make photocopies at Kinko’s,² or, in one instance, go on an excursion that would take a very strange turn. I went out in search of a grocery store to satisfy a craving for cold, green, crisp grapes. 

“There’s a Foodmaster³ ten minutes from here,” Tom said, without offering to join. 

I wanted him to come with me. During that pre-GPS summer, in the prehistoric era before cell phones, if I made it anywhere based on the directions someone explained to me it was an act of God. My destination this time was somewhere within the uncharted territory of Somerville. I should have asked, but I didn’t dare. 

Twenty minutes later I had no idea where I was. Tom’s directions were shitty. I was nowhere near a supermarket and couldn’t even find anyone to ask for help. Houses were boarded up, the front yards overgrown; a sullen quiet occupied what had once been a neighborhood full of families dreaming of upward mobility, most of them workers for Ford Motor Company, who had left when the factories did. The houses had been split into apartments for cheap, short-term rentals, for people who didn’t have an interest in—rather, who didn’t have the means of—maintaining them. We could say they were transitory people, or people forced into transitory circumstances. I was delirious from the heat. Night was falling, but not the temperature. I was weighing whether to abort Misión Uvas (Mission Grape) and turn back when I saw a store that was open, not my Foodmaster but a small butcher shop. The sign read SAVENOR’S MEATS. 

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