The Core Receivership
“I didn’t know it was you last night, Ofelia… I swear to God I didn’t know,” Arturo’s voice cracked through the small hotel room, his platinum hair disheveled as he clutched the yellowish, forty-year-old photograph like a piece of evidence. The cheap red plastic key ring with the number 8 sat on the bedside table, a silent witness to a sudden, catastrophic structural collapse.
Ofelia sat up, the wine-colored blouse cast aside as she tightly wrapped the thin hotel blanket around her shoulders. Her body, which just hours before had felt a warm, long-forgotten reclamation of its own skin, now froze into absolute concrete.
“Where did you get that picture, Arturo?” she asked, her voice dropping into a deadpan, unyielding register that cut through the sound of his weeping. “That photo was taken in 1986 in the orchards of Atlixco. It was locked inside my mother’s cedar chest before Efraín had the locks changed on our entire family registry. Who are you to hold the primary image of my pregnancy?”
