Uri had the fleeting sensation of waking up from a dream to get into another.

He opened his eyes, and it took him a while to place himself in space and time. The shimmer of a brand-new day slipped through the slits of the window shades behind him, and the muffled sound of the city traffic reached his ears as his senses were coming around.

This brightness? Morning. That roof? My home. I’m in my bed.

That’s when his memory gave him back last night’s recollections: the music, the people, the drinks—the excesses. And a grin grew on his face from ear to ear.

His coppery skin stood out between the white sheets. And so, half-wrapped, he stayed for a few more seconds in the same position, with his green eyes lost in the lamp hanging from the ceiling. Until, finally, he was ready to give up that gentle comfort.

He turned and saw her lying face down next to him, naked, with one foot up, her long dark hair falling over her shoulders, checking her cell phone, as relaxed and natural as if she were lying on the beach.

“Hi, gorgeous,” he greeted.

Whatever she was doing with her phone—taking the first photos of the day, texting a friend about last night, or maybe sending her pictures of him she might have taken while he was asleep, or all those things at the same time—it surely had her hooked.

“Hi,” she greeted back. “Hey, do you want to know what my friend Tiffany says about you?”

Uri rolled his eyes. Here we go again.

“That I’m a horrible person you need to stay away from?” he guessed. “Tell your friend Tiffany to be more original.”

The girl chuckled.

“That you’re a magnet to one-night stands, with no promises of stability,” she said, reading what appeared to be a long text from that Tiffany girl. “That your dandy reputation and your business success are the only outstanding thing about your personality. And listen to what she writes: ‘Having distanced himself from the bad star under which he was born, has helped him get to where he is.’ Then she says that any gaps you have left from your past have been covered with the snobbish paraphernalia of your almost recent gained social status.”

Uri considered what he heard.

“Having distanced himself from the bad star under which he was born, huh? Well, that’s a new one. Your friend Tiffany—Wow! She knows how to write an essay, all right!”

“She’s a philosophy teacher,” she said.

“Oh, right! Tiffany!” A vague image of the girl appeared in his mind. “I remember her. We’ve shared a couple of hours. Yeah. Lovely girl she was. Well, glad to know I’m not the only pretentious fool who has achieved something interesting in life.”

Stretching, Uri got off the bed and touched the soft carpet with his bare feet. He pushed his hair back, a soft coppery medium-length hair that looked good despite being somewhat messy, and he walked over to the railing in front of him.

The bedroom was on a platform at the top of that gigantic loft of wood and steel that was his home, and from up there, like a king looking at his domain, he took time to appreciate each section; the living room with its comfortable couches, the kitchen decorated with all the utensils that any cuisine lover would have wished to have, but that he, who always ate outside, rarely used; the small spotlights that descended from the ceiling beams, ready to be turned on as soon as the night fell, to highlight the perfect modern decoration and the huge photographs that hung here and there on the walls; everything. There was not a day he saw that lavish place and didn’t feel at ease.

He turned to the girl who, as he could see, still had no intention of leaving the bed or interrupting the quite entertaining exchange of texts with her friend, and almost violated his own habit and offered her to order something for breakfast.

But suddenly he felt Mother Nature knocking on his abdomen’s doors, and he knew that today wouldn’t be the day he would break with normality. It was time to put an end to the date.

“All right. Time to go home,” he said.

She lifted her face and looked at him with a hint of surprise. The cell phone spell seemed to have finally broken.

“Aren’t we gonna stay here until—well, night comes? You know, we could order food and stuff.”

Uri put on his pants.

“Well, we mortals have to go to work, y’know?” he said. “Besides, my schedule for today is criminally long.”

He was overplaying it, of course; but he knew he was handsome, and that his ‘I wish it weren’t so, but what else could I do?’ face could overturn any argument against.

She turned her attention back to her cell phone.

“I thought big business owners do their job over the phone.”

“The owners maybe, but I’m not the owner. I’m just a purchasing manager.”

The girl snorted, and he stopped as if the snort had been a warning signal. What did that sound mean? Did it mean, ‘I know, but you know what I mean,’ or ‘Are you serious? Did I waste my night, spending it with the wrong guy?’

“But you are kind of rich, aren’t you?” she finally said. An ambiguous answer that fit right between the two alternatives.

Uri lifted his shirt off the floor and draped it on the coat rack.

“I live well, yes,” he nodded. “Your friend already said it, I’m good at business, and the company I work for pays me well.”

“Guess so. Tiffany told me you work for Homam Enterprises,” she said and in a falsetto tone, she added: “Entire generations leading the market, bringing you the best technology. Yes, I’ve seen the ads, y’know?”

Uri fixed his hair in front of the standing mirror.

“And do you know why we lead the market?” he asked then and shot her a look through the reflection. “—Because we have a management department that always shows up to work.”

The young woman took her dress that was tangled between the sheets and put it on.

Message received, he smiled to himself. He took her phone from the bed and put it in her purse to speed up the farewell, and then, very gentlemanly, he led her to the staircase that descended from the bedroom platform and escorted her out of the loft.

Clack, clack, clack, sounded her heels as she walked through the beautiful parquet floor.

Ziz, ziz, ziz, made his feet as he slipped barefoot over the lustrous wood.

“Hey, why are you kicking me out like this?” she asked. “You have a girlfriend, right?”

“What? No!”

The girl snapped her fingers and turned toward him.

“I know!” she said, all excited as if she’d solved a big mystery. “You’re married! Right? And you want me out before she gets home!”

Uri opened the door.

“Barbara, we’re not playing riddles.”

“Grace,” she said. “My name is Grace, not Barbara.”

“Grace, of course! Listen, Grace, you want the truth? I don’t have a girlfriend and I’m not married. I just want to hang out alone with the toilet, got it?”

“Oh!” The young girl blushed, then sighed as if accepting defeat, and shook her head in a gesture that seemed to say, ‘You can’t help it.’ “You know something?” she said and pointed to a large picture that hung on the wall next to the living room couches.

It was a black-and-white photograph of Uri where he showed himself half-naked, wearing only white underwear while walking among the huge rocks of a cliff on the seashore. It was clearly a professional job with a few years on it; not only did he look younger there, but if she compared the muscular tone and the impeccable state of the abs captured by the camera with what she now had in front of her… Well, even though what she saw in the flesh wasn’t bad, it was obvious that dedication to the body was no longer the homeowner’s priority.

“My friend Tiffany was right about you,” she said and patted him lightly on the abdomen. “You did a lot to get here, but it’s time to take a new path and let go of the past completely.”

“Bye, Grace, and say ‘Hi’ to Tiffany,” he said and kissed her goodbye.

She winked at him and left with a smile.

Uri closed the door and hurried to the bathroom to please Mother Nature.

“Take a new path and let go of the past,” he sighed, repeating what had been rattling in his head. “The bad star I was born under—Ha! Why no one warned me poetess and philosophers were on the loose today!”

He took a shower, and though he didn’t need it, shaved like every morning; still had no wrinkles to hide and liked to see his face clear. And then he decided to drop by his office. He had nothing better to do, and the day before he had taken off early to go to the disco and had no time to see the stocktaking results of the week.

How wonderful and carefree his life had been up to that point. Little did he know everything was about to go downhill in a few hours.