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Before long time ago she could still remembered Antonio.
And before that, Laura could still tell the difference between fantasy, hallucination and daydream.
She took the theatre next to the church as a refuge. There was a hole in the roof. Sometimes leaking wind, sometimes light, and sometimes rain. There were twelve rows of seats and a stage about four feet high. Behind the curtain are boxes of forgotten props: a few fake roses, long deflated balloons, and faded costumes. The wooden floor seemed to crack at anytime, and dust tumble through the air.
And right here she begins to play her violin.
There would be an audience under the stage, her only audience. Sometimes she suspected that he hadn't been paying attention at all, otherwise - who could have endured her solo for such long?
The end of the piece did not exist, nor did the score. She pieced together random movements with no beginning or end, smearing notes into chords as if they were splashes of paint.
In the middle of the first row of seats, Antonio sits listening to her, and if he catches a long pause, he immediately takes the opportunity to applaud.
Laura's solos lasted for about two months until one day, when the Matador's March was played and things began to change.
Antonio rose from his seat and danced up and down the aisle between the stage and the audience. Each step followed the beat she played, and each lap made her clichéd piano sound more lucid. Halfway through, Laura slipped a note, which was not worth mentioning with Antonio.
How wonderful. She couldn't help but look at the audience - no, the protagonist - on stage, and she put her eyes and most of her thoughts on him. He had turned the small theatre into a bullfighter's feast, and the whole house seemed to be filled with golden sunlight, a storm of blood and more cheers.
She wanted to prolong the performance for ever, and a section was repeated three times before it inevitably came to an end. It was only then that Laura found the right words to describe it: the end of a song. For the first time, it was the end of her song.
Antonio walks up to the edge of the stage and raises his hand in greeting to her. It turned out that they had never had a formal conversation before.
His first words were: "Would you mind playing another piece, miss?
She made a gesture of "please" before regaining her bow, which meant that he should come to the stage.
The sound of the piano resumed in the theatre, this time as a bright round dance, and Antonio began to spin and dance, he being the sole protagonist of the whole act, and she merely remaining in the background as an accompanist.
The theatre had long since lost its lights, with only a ray of afternoon sun coming in through the broken window, the dust rising into the air, which at the moment seemed to call the whole show a smoky haze.
When they were both tired, he would chatted with her, not about dance, but about music. From the classical to the contemporary, which she knew backwards and forwards, and which she knew nothing about. It seemed that something had sprouted in Laura's mind that represented life and she had stopped thinking about the absurd - in fact, since Antonio had appeared in the theatre two months before, she had given up the idea of suiciding with the bow.
Time continued to pass, and it was still a combination of solo dance and accompaniment everyday. She said this to Antonio and he laughed and patted her on the back and replied, "That's not right Laura, it should be the solo and accompaniment." She listened and, doubtfully, she reattached the bowstring and played the piece that had successfully taken her to the orchestra audition.
There was no murmur as the instrument played, and she let the sweeping sea breeze keep swirling around the roof, more majestic by the minute. Hardly anyone could believe that these sounds were coming from such a limp violin in Laura's hands.
She finished her short recital with a shallow bow to the empty stage as a kind of curtain call.
As the sun set they said their usual goodbyes. Having just stepped out of the theatre, Laura woke up as if from a dream and remembered something very important. Ah, she should have left Antonio a list of phone numbers, or an address, with a message from Por favor llme, whatever the uncultured and ladylike thing was, she had to do it.
It was just that memories were polished away much faster than they could be picked up again, and every time she left the theatre, what she had forgotten and what she had remembered happened in a flash. Presumably Antonio once asked her to dance with him and when she brushed it off saying she hadn't learnt, he simply said I'll teach you then! This of course could not be refused.
So, in the orange sunset, she remembered over and over again that next time she would ask for Antonio's phone number or address and take her home recorder with her. The sound was not as good, but at least they would be able to dance to the music.
Back at home, Laura is greeted with a white envelope. Her younger brother hands her this thin, wide object and tells her to open it. Inside, the paper had words written on it, a letter of appointment.
"Sis, it's from that band, they gave the explanation that they got the wrong person six months ago and they're just now figuring it out ......" her brother spoke first when he saw her silence for a long time, "Mom and Dad have been worried about you all this time too. For six months you've been going to that theatre and spending all day alone ......"
Alone? She wasn't alone, she had Antonio - yes, Antonio, who had said he would teach her to dance! She couldn't find him without the theatre, he'd still be here tomorrow I think, when did the band want her to leave for the neighbouring city, the day after tomorrow? Good, she would at least have a chance to talk to him about it all, but she was afraid: even if he showed just a tenth of a second of reluctance, she could not help leaving everything behind, the orchestra or the future, and wanting to stay with him in the theatre forever ......
The next day Laura was early, sitting at the edge of the stage at the crack of dawn, waiting. As he waited, the only sound in the theatre was the wind whistling intermittently, from midday to dusk.
Antonio did not come.
From dusk until the theatre was so dark that there was no light at all, Laura sat in the same place and waited. Nor did she wait for the man she wanted to see. By the time it was light again, she was on her way to the neighbouring city.
And so Laura became part of the orchestra, submerging herself in the ensemble every day, her job being to be a harmonious note. Sometimes she misses her days in the theatre, abandoned, forgotten, solo, with an audience that was hers alone, Antonio.
But then there are other times when the memories of those days slip through her fingers, slowly and slowly weathered. She suddenly regained it all one day towards the end of autumn, when the street lights were bright and she was sure she saw Antonio among the oncoming pedestrians, with curly brown hair and green eyes, her protagonist.
They accidentally bumped into each other, and the other bent down to say sorry, and in turn, to offer a painless greeting. A completely rusty attitude.
It was as if they had never met before.
The crowd passed her by and didn't stop, reeling in the people from the other side with it. And Laura remains frozen in place. As she ran up furiously towards somewhere with no specific destination, it meant that she had already explained an answer for herself.
Taking advantage of the holiday, Laura returned to the theatre next to the church. It seemed to have decayed even more, with only half a door remaining and roots still clinging to the walls after the vines that had snaked around in the summer had withered.
The daylight formed a circle of light just through the broken glass, and she walked slowly onto the stage, stood in the circle of light and began to play the violin. She jumbled a myriad of movements with no beginning or end, and finally the tune turned - it was a bullfighter's march. As these melodies began to spill out, she looked up and saw Antonio, standing on the stage not far away, approaching her with sandy sunlight.
Everything was perfect just as it should be.
And so it was. She had confirmed her answer. Only Antonio, in this theatre, was her Antonio, her dancer, her protagonist, the only listener of her solos.
Antonio stopped on the outside of that circle of light and held out a hand to her in a gesture of invitation. His mouth moved in such a way that she could not hear anything, but she knew that it was saying: Won't you dance with me?
Shall we dance?
Laura didn't hesitate for a moment longer and ran towards the dancer.
Two steps later her left foot hit the eroded hole in the floor, causing her to stumble and fall to the ground. With a heavy muffled thud, the score scattered into a million drifting snowflakes, shaking and snickering in the empty theatre at the end of this farce.
When Laura looks up again, Antonio is long gone. Only dust was still churning in the goose yellow daylight.
It had been a solo performance of the young girl all along.