Finally, with the help of a few shoelaces, I devised a mechanism for closing the closet doors from inside without risk of catching my fingers. When I’d finished all this, I sat inside again with my knees drawn up and shut the “hatch” (as I decided to call the closet door, remembering the submarine imagery that had been the focus of my obsessions a year or two before). The interior of the closet was almost completely dark, with only a sliver of light entering through the upper edge of the hatch. That sliver of light was slightly annoying because, following the thread of my infantile logic, if I could see something on the outside, it was highly likely that I, in turn, could be seen from there, so I spent a while attempting to seal the crack to achieve a totally isolated capsule, dark as night, like the sack in which the Bogeyman carried his captives.
I don’t know where I got the idea of calling my refuge the Zero Luminosity Capsule. I guess it was something I’d seen on TV, or read in one of my Choose Your Own Adventure novels, or in a comic book. Whatever the case, I found a crayon and wrote a small sign indicating the official name of my refuge, then stuck it with scotch tape to the inside of the closet. It was only afterward that I realized what an empty gesture this was, since it was impossible to read the sign in the dark. Notwithstanding, it seemed enough to know that the name of that miraculous machine was written down somewhere: it made the whole affair more formal, added a degree of protocol to the game.
The idea was to spend as much time as possible inside the capsule. If the Bogeyman came looking for me, I’d be hidden in there, protected by the darkness. I rehearsed the drill in case of an emergency—stay still and keep quiet—and it occurred to me that I could put the finishing touch on my strategy by leaving a short note on my bed: a piece of red origami paper, folded and unfolded an infinite number of times, saying, in my spidery handwriting: “Dad gone to play with Rat back soon.” This brief message seemed satisfactory, and, after placing it on my bed, I decided that I was ready to confront the fearsome enemy. When the Bogeyman inspected the house, he’d find the note and think that there were no kids around to snatch. And what was more, the implied friendship with Rat would make me a questionable victim: if the Bogeyman knew about the various local gangs (and it was highly likely that he did), he’d be forced to recognize that I belonged to the group of preadolescent hell-raisers who used temporary tattoos with hallucinogenic properties. Such a victim was a less tempting option than some scared-shitless ten-year-old who had been left alone in the house.
At midday I went down to the kitchen and made myself a quesadilla, following the detailed instructions my father had given me on how to light the stove without setting fire to the house. The result didn’t meet my expectations. Teresa had never been an exemplary cook, in fact she hated cooking, but she had a magic touch when it came to quesadillas. I wondered what her secret was. Maybe I could go to Chiapas and ask her. My father would come back from work, my sister would return from her party, and they would find the small red note saying that I was with Rat, but in reality I’d be in Chiapas asking Teresa how she made such delicious quesadillas. I amused myself with that fantasy as I ate. I had only a vague idea where Chiapas was, but did know it was a long way off and to the south. I attempted to summon up a visual memory of the map of the republic hanging on my classroom wall, but it was just a hazy blob. In any case, it would undoubtedly take longer to get to Chiapas than to the Zócalo, where my father had taken us one Christmas (in my memory, that metro journey had lasted a whole day, and from then on the Zócalo had become my yardstick for something distant). After the quesadilla I had two bowls of cereal with milk, enjoying the freedom of having no one to supervise my sugar consumption.
I’d never in my life had so many secrets, and that gave me a sort of pleasurable sense of anxiety, like the anticipation before a birthday that, if not kept in check, might end in an episode of bed-wetting. For one thing, I knew where Teresa was (in a place called Chiapas), and then I also had a machine in my bedroom that was capable of making me invisible, my Zero Luminosity Capsule. Those two secrets were dizzyingly exciting. I urgently needed to tell them to someone. If only my friend Guillermo hadn’t been out of town; it would have been
