An alarm went off in my head. Every piece of advice I had ever heard told me to be cautious, to read the small print. But when I looked down and saw the contract, I frowned in surprise. It was handwritten, with the flowery calligraphy they don’t teach in schools anymore. A style that would have been outdated, even in my time. Yet it was easy to read: the text was short and straightforward, the conditions better than the ones on a standard contract. No fine print to ponder.
I looked up. “It seems reasonable,” I said, and then stopped, suddenly aware of the total silence around us. Everyone, I realized with a start, was frozen in place, as if they were actors in a movie I had paused by mistake.
“What happened?”
“Beatriz.” Becquer pointed at the door where a woman in a smart suit stood facing us. “My personal secretary. She found me.”
My stomach hurting as if the coffee I’d just swallowed had turned to ice, I looked from the woman back to him, and then again around us, taking in the impossible stillness of the place.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice broken with fear.
Becquer sighed and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I’m Becquer,” he said. “Gustavo Adolfo Becquer.”
He pronounced the name slowly, his eyes on mine, and I knew he wasn’t lying. Yet the truth was unacceptable.
“You may remember me from your Spanish classes,” he continued. “
“That’s impossible.”
I stood so abruptly my chair crashed to the floor. I remembered Becquer, all right. He was the Spanish writer whose poems of unrequited love I’d memorized when I was thirteen, as every other Spanish girl, before and after me, has done the first time a clueless boy breaks her heart. Yes. I remembered Becquer. But Becquer …
“Becquer is dead. He died long ago,” I said louder than I had intended, my fear, now a wave of panic that threatened to swallow me.
He nodded, nonchalant, a smile playing on his lips as though he was pleased that I remembered him. “In eighteen seventy to be exact. Only, I didn’t really die. I just stopped being human.”
“And what are you now, then? A monster?”
He winced as if my words had offended him. “I’m not a monster, Carla. I assure you I’m not evil. The change gives us powers, but doesn’t alter our true nature. I’m still who I was when I was human. Neither angel, nor demon, but a little bit of both at once.”
He had moved to my side as he spoke, and lifting my chair, set it on its legs.
I took a step back. “Don’t touch me.”
He bowed to me in a formal way that didn’t seem out of place. “Would you please sit down?”
I did as he said, mesmerized by his stare and the utter impossibility of his existence.
“You need a drink,” he said. “Just wait, I’ll bring you one.”
Skillfully skirting the tables and the people sitting, eerily still, he walked to the counter where a barista stood, a cup in her frozen hands.
I considered running away, but dismissed the idea as he would find me, I had no doubt, and bring me back. Besides, I wanted answers.
So I waited, my body shaking, until Becquer came back and, retrieving the contract, set a steaming espresso in front of me.
“I meant to bring you something stronger,” he told me, “but couldn’t. After twenty years in the States, I still forget they don’t always serve alcohol in the cafes here.”
“Twenty years? Two more than me.”
“I know.”
His answer reminded me he had checked me online and thus knew more about me than I would have liked. Not to mention the fact that I had probably given him my card at the conference and so he had my address. Not a reassuring thought.
He motioned for me to drink the coffee. But I could not.
“What do you want of me?”
“Only the honor of editing your work and representing it.”
I scowled. “If you were who you claim to be, you’d write your own stories, not waste your time editing mine.”
“I’m that Becquer,” he insisted, his eyes dark and serious. “Or I was when I was human.” There was anger in his voice and something else, frustration perhaps — or was it pain? “My mind was full of stories then, stories I could easily dress in words to show the world. But since I became an immortal, I have no stories or, if I do, words fail me when I try to capture them. Since I became immortal, I can’t write anymore, and I miss it. I miss it terribly. I miss the raw, unrestrained outburst of the artistic creation.”
“‘When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke ‘round me, I am in darkness — I am nothing,’” I said.
“Virginia Woolf,” Becquer attributed my quote. “My thoughts exactly. That is why I need you. You and others like you who have the gift, so I can bear witness to the birth of their stories and, through them, through their words, feel the flame that now eludes me.”
“And that is all you want from me?”
“That is all, I promise.”
“Why did you stop time then? Because you did it, right? You can change it back?”
He laughed, amused, it seemed, at the panic I couldn’t conceal from my voice as the thought struck me that this was to be forever, that we were to be the only ones alive in a frozen world.
“Yes, I did this, and we will join them in normal time after you give me your answer.”
“But I don’t understand. Why did you do it?”
“Because of her.” He pointed again at the woman by the door. “I was afraid of your reaction were you to learn from Beatriz that I am — immortal.”
“Why would she want to tell me?”
“To break your trust in me.” He shrugged when I frowned at him. “She’s jealous of you because she thinks I want you to take her place.”
“As your secretary? Why would I want to?”
“Precisely.”
“Didn’t you tell her?”
“Of course I did. Yet, she is here. But enough about her. Would you sign with me?”
My thoughts running wild at the idea of Becquer still being alive, I hesitated.
“If you do,” he insisted, “you will never have to worry about the business part of writing. You will be free to write full-time while I deal with the editors and publishers. I used to be terrible at convincing people to buy my stories when I was human, but I’m surprisingly good at it now.”
I suppressed a smile. Was he really that clueless or was he just playing me?
Considering his striking features and the fact that most people in the industry were women, I didn’t find his success surprising at all. And his offer was most tempting. Like his human self, I also lacked the social skills needed to sell my work. Four months had already passed since I’d started my sabbatical. Four months I had spent mostly querying. If I signed with him, I could maybe finish my sequel before returning to my teaching. Yet …
“You’re scared of me.”
“I — ”
Becquer smiled. “It’s only normal. No need to apologize. To fear the unknown is a survival skill we all possess. Would you sign if I promise you I won’t hurt anyone?”
I opened my mouth to say no, but didn’t. Instead, I nodded.
Becquer beamed. “Then it’s done, for you have my word.”
He moved aside the espresso I hadn’t touched and once more set the contract in front of me.
“Should I sign with blood?”
