The Naked Woman

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As much as she’d been hoping otherwise, Rebeca Linke’s thirtieth birthday began with exactly what she had expected: nothing. What if nothing happens? she asked herself. I don’t care if it’s good or bad, so long as it’s something.

Her mistake had been to invest her hopes in a crucial event occurring at an arbitrary point in time when what needed to happen would inevitably be a flash in the dark, an unexpected ambush that catches you unawares during an otherwise ordinary situation.

But then the fateful day came. Just a dull summer yawn, as unremarkable as any other. Rebeca looked at it over her shoulder in the mirror. A beautiful day behind a beautiful face. Both lacking the qualities that make things memorable.

It all began with a subconscious withdrawal from her ordinary life, a disappearance. Perhaps the moment of revelation, when something truly unique happens in our lives, had finally come for her. If it occurs at a wake, this event consists of being full of life next to someone who will never move again. And if it marks the passing of yet another year, the kind involving a dangerously round number, it is the opportunity to finally decide what to do with the rest of your life.

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