She is making me a birthday cake and doesn’t yet know that she’ll probably throw it at me. In about fifty minutes’ time, perhaps an hour, our marriage will be over. She smiles fleetingly, more sensing than looking at me. For her, the cake is a creation—she’s absorbed in it, three days of work leading to these finishing touches. Sponge cake and foil, buttercream, tiny tools I don’t know the names of. I was never interested in the process, only the eventual taste.

I stand in the middle of the kitchen and don’t know what to do. I don’t want her attention, I’ll have too much of it shortly, so I withdraw to the door leading onto the terrace without taking my eyes off her precise movements, which begin sharply and round off gently, softer than the substance they’re molding. Even with her hair tied back, she has still pulled one of those white hairnets over her head, unconsciously straightening it over her left ear, leaving a few lines of buttercream on her cheek.

  
It’s the end.

I had sex with a colleague at a New Year’s Eve party and then didn’t wish to continue the relationship. Now she’s posted photos of us on social networks.

  
My soon-to-be ex-wife doesn’t want the phone disturbing her during her sweet pursuit, so she has silenced it and left it out of reach.

She’ll finish, wash her hands, pick up her cell, and . . .

see what I’ve just seen.

And that will be it.

  
I walk around the room. Her phone lies upside down on the dining table. I check that she’s immersed enough in her work before quickly taking a peek. The screen is full of news alerts and notifications of missed calls and messages. I put it back down.

Yes.

I already went through one divorce, wading through raw sewage without protection.

Now again.

  
I check how much time and peace we still have left. How much of the world.

The chocolate glaze covers the second tier and its green cream filling.

I like pistachios.

  
I find my own phone in my pocket. Its screen wants to draw me in too. I leave it upside down next to hers.

I make sure the breaths I exhale are longer than those I draw. With the back of my hand, I wipe away sweat. Summer arrived after much hesitation and wants to make up for it.

  
I step toward the opposite wall and look at the framed photographs of the two of us. I remember where each was taken, and mostly they were great shots from the first click. We have similar smiles in all of them, from first to last, all these twelve years.

  
I don’t know when my fingers found the open box with souvenirs from our travels. She always buys herself a necklace or earrings said to be characteristic of the country we’re visiting, and then never wears them at home. Some objects don’t take well to transplanting.

I lift a leather necklace with an amber tear hanging from it. I remember we couldn’t figure out how many ants were trapped in the black mass at its center—two, or more? We talked about how they must have huddled together in terror as the resin advanced, and the conversation almost ruined our dinner.

I forgot about this necklace. I hold it up to look, but my eyes sting and water, and all I can see is a dark spot on a yellowish background.

  
Dividing up assets means obsessing over every object in turn, and there will be time for that when the lawyers step in. I return to the kitchen.

She has reached the higher, more delicate tiers of the cake. As the layers taper, so does our marriage.

  
I feel the heat when I walk past the terrace door, as if some beast is lingering out there, panting into the flat. Somewhere in the distance a dog yelps, but so briefly and languidly, prosaically, that the sound disappears before I can sharpen my ears. A device hums in the neighbor’s place, probably a washing machine, alone in a world where all other sounds are stifled by the heaviness in the air.

  
I’ve become conscious of my every move. My feet shuffle, as if apologizing to the floor, and my head is constantly cricked toward my wife—or is that pressure my emotions crowding up, waiting to rush onto the stage?

There will be time, time for all of you, I say to myself, barely able to swallow my own saliva. It rolls heavily down to my stomach.

Time, time.

I can feel it slip over me, like a thin fabric with thousands of hooks.

I get goosebumps. It appears that even the hairs on my arm are trying to escape and abandon me.

She has finished covering the sides with chocolate. Next she pours a large black tear on the top, pausing for a moment as if to see her own reflection in it.

Just a little longer and: Thank you, goodbye.

  
She pulls the spatula across the surface decisively, firmly. Then she bends over, peering at the cake, smoothing its surface, fully focused—a self-contained solar system in which she is the sun, shaping and giving meaning to her only planet.

As she leans to the left, the strap of her vest gives in to gravity and slips off her shoulder. She fixes it, adding a chocolate smear to her skin. I can see the top of her nipple and some of her armpit. She’s sweating. I move to the other side of the counter.

She doesn’t sense me, immersed as she is in the most important part of the cake, its final appearance.

  
The nipple stretches the fabric and sets my memories in motion; I can feel it on my tongue.

I catch my reflection in the glass. I look like a fish gasping for oxygen.

It is hot, sweetly humid, yellowish-red. We are a space capsule on our way to the sun.

Her hair has taken on a copper hue.

  
She moves around the cake, and as I watch her, I travel across her body and all the places we used it. From the forest and the pine needles that we later cleaned off each other, to the sand that slipped through the cleft of her ass when she stood up.

  
The fish mouth in the reflection goes on throbbing. All around me, clouds change from a gelatinous orange to an overripe red, as if the sun behind the curtains is darkening.

The aromas of sugar, fruit, milk, night, and chocolate fill the room, mixed with the scent of her sweat, her groin. I can’t differentiate between memories and the present: her scents and tastes fill my nose, my mouth; her sound, my ears, her breathing and crying out as she orgasms; the looks we exchanged that bonded and secured us.

  
She doesn’t notice a thing, making the final moves, stepping back. Another look, a few small touch-ups.

I am everywhere at once.

At the forgotten party, where we looked at each other across the room, smiled, and wet our lips, knowing we’d be all over each other in the car and then slam the door to our flat with our backs or a foot.

Time for decorations. She grabs the plastic bag with a tip. I’ve always found them slightly repulsive, and the phrase piping bag comes to mind; how is it possible I’ve remembered what it’s called?

Skillfully, she pipes a pattern around the cake’s edge. Moves back two steps and looks at it for a long time.

She drops her shoulders.

Nods.

She’s done.

  
She starts turning around, will say it’s finished, thinking about my cake. In a few steps I am next to her, I hug her. Surprised at first, then keen, she opens her eyes wide, and we kiss, passionately, carnally, grab at each other, push into each other, as the hands on the clock stop, the numbers petrify, there is a ringing in my ears and our skin presses together, our hair entangles, hands seizing, in this space where the atmosphere is thickening and the only thing separating it from the liquids inside us is our skin, ripping apart and falling away, superfluous to the eternity into which we melt together, and time stops, held in the moment, we are all that we have, all that is left, are one.

We are, we aren’t.