That morning, after Hurricane Andrew had passed and seemed to have retreated to some remote corner of the Atlantic, a Brickell Avenue cafe remained suspended between night and dawn.

​

Beneath the deafening and terrifying roar of its passage, Luigi found himself conversing with his best friends. Those with whom he had walked the path of interdependence. Now we are here, as if the roar of the wind allowed him to sense the existence of a "we." It is we who have journeyed under the ineffable presence of time.

​

Luigi looked at the empty chair where Time had been sitting.

​

Then he asked the question he had avoided all night.

"And love?"

​

For the first time, neither Joyce nor García Márquez responded immediately, as if that word were more difficult than all the others. How could a first definition possibly emerge precisely now, when the wind was blowing uncontrollably?

​

García Márquez looked towards the bay.

"Love is a superstition that sometimes works."

Luigi smiled.

"That doesn't sound like a definition."

"The best definitions are never the best."

Joyce let out a short laugh.

"I would say it's a conversation that never ends."

"Even if the person is no longer here?"

"Especially then."

​

Silence settled with them again. The ghosts of the heart appeared.

The wind calmed briefly without driving them away completely and returned gently.

He didn't bring philosophers. He didn't bring soldiers. He didn't bring emperors. He brought faces.

Richard and Annette, Maria Nela and her art, Renata and Esteban, The girl and the man of the fireplace.

 

People who had crossed the author's life like ships through an endless fog. Some remained. Others disappeared. But none had truly left, because they remained within the boundaries of the Geography of the Invisible.

 

"Why are they coming back?" Luigi asked.

García Márquez responded:

"Because love has a bad memory for goodbyes."

 

In fact, he had always been there; he doesn't arrive late, because he is camouflaged among everyone's thoughts and words, but he reveals himself as an apparition among the tables.

 

He wore an impossible robe in the middle of the hurricane and the Miami heat. It was Plato.

He took a seat without asking permission.

​

"You are confused."

Joyce raised an eyebrow.

"Naturally."

"Love should not be confused with people themselves."

"So what's the difference?" asked Luigi.

"People are temporary."

"And love?" he replied.

"The search is not."

​

The night, without warning, transported them to Los Angeles, California, as if the invisible Master who plays with us humans were forcing us to choose between freedom and destiny, or perhaps simply wishing to demonstrate the relativity of our autonomy and our thoughts. The city appeared suddenly.

Neon lights. Shadows. Endless freeways. The Los Angeles night returned like a burned photograph.

 

Luigi watched as the memories wandered among the tables. Some brought joy.

 

Others, sadness. Others, regret.

 

"Why are love and pain so close?" he asked.

No one responded immediately.

​

It was Joyce who finally spoke: "Because we love in time."

"And what does that mean?"

​

"That everything we love can disappear."

​

Then the missing piece of the puzzle appeared. Socrates showed up holding a cup of coffee. He seemed delighted with the discovery. "I have a question," he said in ancient Greek. Everyone laughed. It was exactly what they expected of him. "Can there be love without knowledge?"

​

Luigi thought, "Yes." Socrates shook his head.

"That's desire."

"And the difference?"

"Desire wants to possess."

He took a sip. "Love wants to understand."

​

Joyce's intervention was not long in coming; she observed the lights reflected on the water and said calmly, "Human beings believe they love people."

​

"And isn't that so?" --"Partly."

"What do they love then?"

​

Joyce pointed to her head: "Memories." Then to her chest: "Hopes." Finally, she pointed to the horizon: "And that which they can never fully express."

​

Suddenly Gabo and the yellow butterflies appeared.

No one seemed surprised. They fluttered around the lamps in the room. García Márquez observed them affectionately and said, "Some loves last an afternoon." A butterfly landed on the table. "And others last a lifetime." The butterfly flew away.

​

"But the most powerful are those who survive both."

The phantom of the self hovered in the air, seeking to dispel the ways of approaching the relationship between love and time. Then the old man reappeared. Time. He sat down beside the group.

​

Luigi looked at him and said without blinking, "You said earlier that you transform all things."

​

"That's right." "—Even love?" The old man smiled. "Especially love."

​

"Do you destroy it?" "No." He gazed toward the sunrise. "I turn it into a memory."

Suddenly the last coffee was approaching in this encounter in infinite time in the center of a hurricane and they reappeared where the light began to invade Brickell Avenue.

​

One by one the visitors faded away. Plato. Socrates. Joyce. García Márquez.

​

Butterflies. Cities. Memories.

Before disappearing, Gabo leaned towards Luigi.

"Never forget this."

"What thing?"

"Love isn't about finding someone perfect."

Joyce added:

"Nor understand everything."

​

"So, what is it?" They both smiled. As if they'd been expecting that question since the beginning of the evening.

​

"It is accepting that one life can never fully fit inside another, and yet choosing to walk together as long as there is a path."

​

When Luigi was alone, he discovered that there were three empty cups and a napkin on the table.

Someone had written a sentence on it.

​

I didn't know if it had been Joyce, García Márquez, or Time itself. It said: "All true love is an attempt to overcome loneliness through imagination."

 

And as he watched the sun rise over Miami Bay, he understood that perhaps literature had been that from the beginning: a long love letter written by humanity against oblivion.