Agnessa And: Juan

"No," Juan said, tracing the flame's shadow on her palm. "North is a direction. The line is just how you choose to walk."

The road, after all, has a long memory. End of "Agnessa and Juan" agnessa and juan

The first time Agnessa saw Juan, she was fixing a fuel pump in a dust storm in the Atacama. He was not fixing anything. He was sitting on the roof of a rusted Chevrolet, eating a mango with a knife, letting the juice run down his arm like he had nowhere to be and no one to impress. "No," Juan said, tracing the flame's shadow on her palm

She left him there. Walked two kilometers across the salt, then stopped. The silence was absolute. No wind. No birds. Just the crunch of salt under her boots and the enormous, terrible freedom of being wrong. She turned around. Juan was sitting on the salt, drawing a spiral in the dirt with a stick. End of "Agnessa and Juan" The first time

Juan thought for a long time. Then he smiled—the same crooked, mango-juice smile from the Atacama.

"Don't look at me like I'm already gone."