Sadly, you have somewhere to be

The metallic lift doors opened.
António crossed the lobby floor — red, grey, black granite set in checks — and pushed through the front door.
Heat struck his arms and legs.
He sat on the patch of grass opposite the block and waited for Matilde.
Above the first-floor balustrade, his mother’s aloe vera lifted its spotted arms against the pink tiles.
At the bedroom window: Yuna.
First the eyes. Then the black nose. Then the folded ears.
Each time he left, she ran there to watch him, upright on her back legs, paws against the ledge.
When she was a puppy, she cried through the night. He put her beside him in bed. He named her.
That winter and spring, they were rarely apart.
By the summer he left to study abroad, she had become a blue whippet.
Years later, whenever he returned, she slipped beneath his sheets and followed him from room to room.

Matilde appeared from behind the yellow building.
“I caught you,” she said.
She embraced him.
Tuberose.
Butterflies on her arms. Stars at her throat.
A fresh swallowtail beneath a clear bandage on her forearm.
“No one would believe me,” António said. “Look.”
Yuna stretched higher behind the glass.

They walked beneath the tulip trees.
“She sits on the couch alone now,” he said. “Watching television.”
Matilde listened.
“She turns away from mirrors.”
“Maybe she’s wiser than we are.”

They sat beside the fountain where cherubs rode swans, water spilling from their horns.
“When she saw the suitcase open on the bed, she knew.”
“Yes,” Matilde said.
“She came over slowly. Put her head on my shoulder.”
His hand rose to the place.
“I cried.”
Matilde waited.
“And then she sang.”
“What kind of voice?”
“Low.”

He took a folded page from his pocket.
He unfolded it.
Matilde held out her hand.
He gave her the page.
She read it. Folded it. Returned it.
“Take it with you,” she said.

He looked at the grass.
From the block behind them, Yuna barked once.
Then again, softer.
As if already elsewhere.