Lucinda had always been a quiet, thoughtful girl, even back in the days when she was a soft little baby resting in the old family cot in the shade of the banana leaves. She observed the world like a sponge, consuming every fact, every detail, every colour and every nuance. She had big round dark eyes, like orbs of the moon in negative. Eyes that would stare out into the world. Most information was gathered without her even being conscious of the process, for she was that deep, immeasurable like the oceans. Everything was stored somewhere in the complex filing system within her mind. She was greater than the mightiest encyclopaedia and the most learned libraries on the globe, yet she was something of an undiscovered secret, even to herself.

Perhaps it was that constant overworking of the brain that made her the oddity she grew up into. Even as a child she seemed out of place. The other children would play, laugh, scream and chase each other up and down the dirt track alleyways to the soundtrack of their beefy mothers' cries of irritation. Lucinda just sat there and watched, even when the neighbouring boys threw water balloons at her. She was so caught up in the moment that she was unable to react, unable to take part in the run of life. The truth was, that in being so concerned with considering all the possibilities, all the courses of action she could take at that very moment and fantasising the outcome of each to its very end, she forgot about partaking in the moment and became something of an inert figure.

The only time they seemed to get any response out of her was when the rolling melodies of tropical sunshine and shaking beads wafted through the sun-stifled air. Salsa and rumba and mambo and Latino records played on her grandfather's old battered radio would bring a dreamy smile to the child's lips. Her mother eventually gave up and left her daughter at the feet of her potato-like paternal grandfather, a man so old he was prehistoric. A potato that had been freeze dried it seemed: a thin, suction-formed thing with masses of skin shrouding his frame as if he had once been a fat obesity. Regardless of the heat, he was always well dressed in a suit and panama hat, perched upon the cane stool underneath the palms, his hands resting on the top of a walking stick he never used. He smiled lightly to himself and listened to the songs of his dancing days and remembered.

Beside his dutifully polished leather shoes sat his granddaughter, day dreaming of the days that had never happened, of the lives she might have lived and the people she might have been, all inspired by the music. For who would ever know, that as she stared piercingly at the old woman across the street, in her mind she was really dancing the Argentinean tango with a Caribbean pirate with gold teeth and beads in his salty hair.

It was during Lucinda's eleventh human year that the status quo underwent a tremor of terrible magnitude and everything changed. Her grandfather died, quite suddenly, with a smile on his lips and a touch of shock in his eyes as a crescendo of drums whipped across the radio. Still holding onto his walking stick, one hand on top of the other, he ceased to be quite simply, and fell forward, not longer having any need for the cane stool.

Lucinda was snapped rudely from her idle daydreams as her grandfather dropped down to her level on the dusty dry earth, a thud rumbling out as he reached the ground. Grains of hazy red soil rebounded back up into the wavering air. The little girl's eyes widened with shock as the empty glassy eyes of her ancestor stared back. Lucinda finally woke up.

The readmission back into regular life was not easy and in many respects, she was never accepted. Lucinda had been lost in a dream for all her life, and a child that barely remembered what her father looked like was never going to find it easy. The other children around her had grown up and moved on. She had no friends, no contacts and certainly no social skills. She had made great allies, married wonderful men and experienced the world as she imagined it as she had listened to the radio; but in real life she had no real idea where to begin.

She worked as well as she could, and followed the rules as she understood them. Life was for experience, for learning as much as possible, for finding that interest or passion and following it through to its ultimate and final conclusion, even if that meant loosing your mind and forgetting yourself, your soul and everything else.

She was a good student and worked well, but it was never really something that captivated her. It was not until she was wandering down a side street to avoid a trip to the library that she came upon the studio. The music was the thing that brought her there, like the sweet smell of freshly baked bread. The building was one storey high, a crumbling old brick form once glorious in its caramel yellow paint that was now peeling off like the after effects of a bad case of sunburn. The windows, empty of glass, were protected by the black metal bars fixed into the cement around the window frames. Lucinda clambered up onto an orange crate to peer in through the opening and it was like looking into a beautiful bird's cage. Oh, the dancers.

That first thought could be a summary for the following years up until her twenty-seventh birthday. She danced. She studied diligently at her art, learning all the steps, entering all the competitions, thirsting for the music in the middle of the dark hot nights. It became her obsession and her life. She listened to the music at every waking hour, she danced at the weekends and she taught the dances on the weekdays. In her dreams she choreographed the new routines. Lucinda was a girl who could not take anything in small doses.

The morning when something new came into her life was the morning she turned twenty-seven. She had moved away from her home town several years ago and was now renting a third floor flat in a crumbling block in a reclusive part of Imani. Stood out on her balcony beside the potted apricot tree, she was dressed for work, her hair pulled back into a pristine knot, the black choker around her neck, the thin-strapped red sun dress and the delicate black dancing shoes. Leaning out beside the window box, she idly read through a birthday card that had been sent by her mother, the old woman's handwriting resembling the footprints of a dying spider. A record player - for vinyl was the only true way to listen to music - was playing back in the shadows of her flat. She raised her dark eyes from the card and it was at that moment that she noticed someone. She actually noticed another person without anything drastic having to occur to attract her attention.

He, the nameless one, was stood on his balcony across the square from Lucinda's flat. An athletic looking being, almost god-like with his dark eyes and the flowing hair that seemed to catch the radiance from the very sunbeams and toss it into his eyes. Utterly amazing.

Lucinda let a deep long sigh escape from her lips, and tilting her head, she gazed across the third storey way to this man. The birthday card dropped to her feet, now forgotten and insignificant. Suddenly her mind had one new pure focus. There were no holes of concentration available for anything else. She had no idea who he was, but she knew in that moment that she had to glean every fact and detail that it was humanly possible to glean.

Holding a cup of coffee in one hand, the man turned and wandered back into his flat.

Feeling a sudden desperate urgency come upon her, Lucinda followed suit and ran back indoors. Grabbing her keys, she fled from her home, neglecting to even think of locking the door. Worldly possessions were of little consequence now. All she could think was that she had to know his name; she would die if she were forced to enjoy the eternal lengths of this day without knowing.

She knew that he lived on the third floor of the building, and as his was the balcony to the right, that would put him in flat number 3b. Lucinda was soon tapping across the paved gardenette of a square separating the blocks, her dancing shoes forcing her to run in a delicately bounding way. Sunlight bounced off her smoothed black hair and the jewel around her neck, before she vanished into the shade of the open entrance. A blink and the sighting would have been missed. As if she had never been there at all.

The main entrances to all the blocks of flats were similar, with tiled floors of cream and a strange shade of green. Voices seemed to be carried away and lost down there, and people would always hurry up to their destination, saying nothing and avoiding eye contact as if one false move in this no man's land would result in an eerie abduction.

Lucinda was stood by the post-boxes, a large wooden contraption set on the wall, with a box pushed in a pigeon hole for each flat. Her painted fingernails were tapping on the box marked 3B. This was her first physical contact with him, albeit second hand, yet it was not enough. There was no name on the box, and she needed to know.

Always an ingenious girl, for Lucinda had spent many hours working her ways out of imagined disasters, she took a hair pin from her careful style, and pushed it into the keyhole. The little door snapped open surprisingly easily, and from the musty corners appeared three letters. She almost shook as she took them in her hands, like a woman with a newborn child. These were letters sent to him. They were his property. She was holding them.

Her eyes dropped down to read the name. Rodrigo Alvarez Buendas. 'Rodrigo,'� she whispered, daring to try the name out. Rodrigo would be a brave man, a clever man, a fascinating man, a funny man, her man. She looked back to the post box, for a moment considering returning the letters to their rightful place. The hold was too strong. Her need for him was hungry and needed to be fed. Gently pushing the post box door to, she slipped back out into the sunlight. She walked back to her flat with a schoolgirl's smile on her face, his letters clutched to her chest.

By the end of the week Lucinda's hard work had lead to a frighteningly detailed notebook on Rodrigo. She had his address, his telephone number, his work number, his date of birth, his shoe size and the preferred number of scoops of ice cream during a walk in the park. He worked in the administration department at the main city theatre; he had worn blue socks five times this week. He had a cousin who was travelling the world, currently in Singapore, sending random and quite dull postcards; he had an electricity bill due (which she really ought to return considering the trouble it may cause for him, but she did so like to see his name in official print); and he was a member of a poetry society. A poetry society! They had sent him a quarterly newsletter, with some poems printed, unfortunately none penned by him, but Lucinda had sent off for the entire back catalogue in fear of missing something truly beautiful. Self-involvement was gone; Lucinda lost herself to him.

Since that first moment, they had done so much. They had danced the tango in Buenos Aires; they had travelled on camels across the Sahara. They had taken walks in summer showers, chased each other playfully through fields of golden sunflowers. He had rescued her from a sinking ship; she had brought him back to life from a ravenous jungle fever. They had lived together, they had ridden away into the sunset, they had married, they had children, they had grown old together. So much had happened and they had not yet even been properly introduced.

Lucinda was lost in a haze, lying in her bed in the sweltering nights, thinking and dreaming of him. She had been everywhere with him, they had done everything together. And yet she was still alone with an empty space beside her. Her eyes broke open and she stared in awe at the ceiling. Perhaps it was time to make this real.

The next day she was stood expectedly outside the door to Rodrigo's abode, her heart hammering in her mouth. She had taken great care in planning her attack, and had dressed in a well-fitting terracotta-red dancing gown with matching shoes. Her hair was loose and freshly washed, a natural wave caught within the strands as they flowed around her shoulders. With a hopeful smile on her lips, she stretched out her arm and pressed the doorbell.

There was a painfully drawn out moment as if time had frozen, for there was neither sound nor movement. Then the footsteps came, unseen but definitely there, padding up to the front door. The latch clicked and the door swung open.

A young woman with blonde hair and narrow eyes stood in the new space. Lucinda was dazed, as if she had been hit by a high-speed train, and for the first few seconds continued to grin inanely at the stranger. She could not understand what had happened, why this woman had answered the door. There had to be an answer.

'Well?'� The woman snapped, growing quite irritated as Lucinda simply stared at her.

'I'm sorry.'� Lucinda suddenly broke out, giving herself a little shake to wake up. 'Wrong apartment, I was looking for Rodrigo Alvarez Buendas, but he must be your neighbour.'�

'Oh no,'� the girl reacted quickly as Lucinda turned to leave. At the mention of the man's name, she seemed to soften, as if his very existence had made her a better person. 'This is his flat, you were correct the first time. But he's not home at the moment. Can I help you?'�

Her hopes were beginning to be crushed to death between the girl's words. Who was she? Rodrigo could not possibly be together with this creature, she was scrawny and spiteful and really not what he needed in his life at all. There had to be some other explanation. Perhaps she was the baby sister, or maybe she was the cleaner, that would make more sense. Lucinda felt her muscles relax again.

'Well, really I needed to see him,'� she told the maid. 'I need to talk to him about some matters.'�

The girl's eyes narrowed again. 'What matters?'� she demanded.

Lucinda laughed lightly. 'I hardly think I'm going to discuss such things with the maid.'�

The girl's face flushed red at this comment; her lips would have become thin white lines had it not been for the lipstick she was wearing. 'I am no maid!'� she exclaimed furiously. 'I am his fiancee.'�

Lucinda was in denial. 'I hardly think so.'� She trilled, becoming deaf to what was really being said, blind to the signs that should have been so obvious. 'Even if he wasn't engaged to me, he would hardly go for a thing like you.'�

'How dare you! Who do you think'�'�

'Look,'� Lucinda interrupted, quite bored with the maid's behaviour. Her mind was so wrapped up in worry. It was pure distraught grief for which her only comfort was to tell herself that this fantasy was real. That Rodrigo really was in love with her and that this little thing was here just to mop the floors. 'He left this at my flat, and he really needs it, the electricity bill, you know.'� She reached out, almost as if offering an olive branch.

The girl stared aghast at the evidence. Lines from a stranger were one thing, but this was hard evidence, a letter with her lover's name printed on. The envelope had been opened as well, a quick consideration of the bill and then it was forgotten. It was just that she could not decide whether this strange woman was telling the truth or whether she was some cheap tart here to make trouble. Perhaps she had just been looking through the trash cans outside the building, or worse still, breaking into the post boxes and stealing other people's letters.

'You thieving whore!'� she squealed as she snatched at the electricity bill. 'I don't know what your problem is, but I don't believe you, you understand? Everything you say is a lie.'�

'But I love him.'�

'You stay the hell away!'� screamed the girl, slamming the door in Lucinda's face.

That night Lucinda sat out on her balcony with a bottle of red wine and a fine crystal cut wineglass. Stretched out on the recliner, she watched dusk sink down on the city of Imani, listening to the distant sounds of angry drivers hitting the car horns, flocks of starlings squawking and flapping across the skyline like clouds of charcoal blown about in the wind. She kicked off her sandals, stretched her legs out along the recliner, and with a chink as the glass base touched the stone paving, she set her wineglass down on the floor.

In other cases and scenarios, some kind of bugging device would have been ideal now, one in each room. And maybe a close circuit television camera so that she could have watched the drama first hand; and one in the shower to appreciate his body. Lucinda was no spy however, and she did not have a great technical mind, so it was not a realistic option open to her. Yet, here it was not necessary, for it was a hot night and all the windows and doors were standing open in some feeble attempt to encourage air circulation. Besides which, a fair amount of the shouting was performed out on the balcony.

The maid was the one who shouted the most. She had sat out on the balcony all afternoon, steam virtually rising from her furious body. The moment Rodrigo came home, she lunged for him, which was disgraceful behaviour for domestic service, Lucinda thought. The shouting thus began. Occasionally the pair went inside and it was not so easy to hear what they were saying, so there were holes in the argument from Lucinda's point, but she followed the basic gist.

The maid seemed to be deluded, convinced that she and Rodrigo were in some kind of relationship, and had been so for the past three years. That they had even moved in together. She was furious at the way he had treated her, accusing him of seeing other women, and Lucinda was surprised at this point to hear other names mentioned. Of course Lucinda came up, but not by name, as she was anonymous to the girl. She was just referred to as some lunatic who had turned up on the doorstep with the opened electricity bill. Rodrigo had looked bewildered at this relevation, and taking the crumpled sheet that had been clutched in the girl's fist all afternoon, the ink now smudged and smeared, he had wandered out onto the balcony.

'I've never seen this before.'� He had spoken calmly. Lucinda gazed across the evening air at him, still unnoticed.

'Never seen it?'� the girl howled. 'That woman said you two are engaged.'�

Rodrigo closed his eyes in exasperation and ran a hand through his hair. 'I have no idea who she is. And anyway, you know, I am only engaged to you.'�

'So nice to know there aren't others!'�

So it continued late into the night, with neighbours shouting now and then to be quiet. The couple took no notice of the pleas. Eventually the noise level wavered, the girl too tired to keep up the pace. She wrenched something off her hand and threw it at Rodrigo before storming out of the flat. Lucinda watched her hurry down the street until she went out of sight. They did not see the girl around the block again.

The next morning, revelling in her victory, Lucinda lay back in the bathtub and smiled to herself, almost drunk. Gallons of lavender-scented bubbles poured out over the rim of the tub. She had won, he was hers now. Closing her eyes, she lent her head back onto the bath cushion and contemplated the future.

A month later Rodrigo was finally single. His little fiancee had left him that fury-filled night, but he had remained relatively calm, in full knowledge that he still had the charms of his mistress, Chantel, to rely on. Yet she too soon grew weary of him. He did not know what was happening, whether it was the heat of the city or something in the water, but the women of Imani were growing quite mad. Chantel threw him out one full-mooned evening, spewing words about commitment and faithfulness that took no impact on him. She slammed her door in a dramatic way to signify that she expected him to return when he was ready to amend his evil ways. Rodrigo never saw her again.

August the fifteenth saw Rodrigo leaning against the orange painted side of the central newsagents, folding up a paper he had just been reading. He raised his head and saw her walking towards him, completely unaware of his presence. He had seen her a few times before; she lived in one of the other buildings in his part of town. Not much more was known to him, although she looked like a dancer, a dramatic woman of tango. A pretty girl, very mysterious. What was more, he had never seen her together with a man.

Lucinda's eyes widened ever so slightly as she suddenly caught sight of Rodrigo stepping forward. This was it, the moment she had imagined in a thousand ways. The day they first met, the hour they conversed, the second his eyes met hers for the first time and he realised that she existed. Lucinda had tried it out with all the backdrops, the reasons and the lines, but never before had she experienced it in real life. She could feel her heart jumping eagerly in her mouth. This was it, what all her work had been leading up to.

'Excuse me, miss.'�

The sharp click of her stiletto heels against broken pavement slabs ceased as Rodrigo stepped out from the shade. His newspaper hung awkwardly by his side, his eyes tried to delve into hers.

'I believe we are neighbours. I think you live in the block across from me.'�

Lucinda managed a shy little smile. 'Yes, I think we are neighbours.'�

Rodrigo's confidence heightened visibly in his face: the way his eyes lighted up, the opening of the mouth and the genuine smile. 'My name is Rodrigo Alvarez Buendas,'� he introduced himself, taking her hand. 'I think it is a shame that neighbours do not know each other so well these days. Perhaps you will allow me to take you to dinner this evening?'�

And Lucinda gazed up into his expectant eyes. Here it was, the moment she had dreamed and fantasised about for weeks. It was real this time, visually as detailed as her imagination yet now with added sensations: the heat of the sun on the back of her head, the touch of his hand against hers. She might have fainted.

Yet she did not. There was something different about their meeting this time, and to be quite honest, it was disappointing. Besides which, she had already had dinner with him in fifty of the best restaurants of the city, enjoying everything from first dates, romantic valentine evenings, birthdays, proposals and anniversary meals. There did not seem to be anything more to do. Throughout her realms of dreams and fantasies there was one thing that Lucinda was always very careful to avoid: repetition.

'I'm sorry,'� she spoke, smiling politely, 'I can't manage that. I must be going now.'�

Leaving Rodrigo with a confused stare and a winded ego, Lucinda sauntered away towards the bus stop. She never looked back.

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