CHAPTER 2

Unfound:
Not found: undetected, undiscovered, unexposed. See knowledge/ignorance.
Not laid open to view; Not brought to light.

The cafeteria is small and cosy.
There are pieces of cakes in the display cabinets and old Hollywood diva’s posters on the orange walls: Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner, Veronika Lake, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo.
Shane and Carmen sit face to face at a small table, right in a corner.
Shane takes a look around, then glances at her.
“Do you know something…”.
Carmen raises an eyebrow, reading the menu.
“What”.
“I used to think that you looked a lot like these divas… Really…”.
No answer.
No curiosity to know more.
“…I mean… You are intense and curvy, an exotic beauty with those dark eyes and wavy hair…”.
“I see”.
Nothing more.
Shane winces like she’s been bitten by a tze-tze mosquito.
What? Just an “I see” and nothing else?
“This has to be the worst nightmare of my entire life”, she thinks to herself but somewhere, inside her soul, she feels relieved for the very first time in the last three years.
Carmen doesn’t seem impressed at all and, right now, Shane doesn’t care. She’s cherishing the nearness of this woman who knows her so well, who came to rescue her dead on time.
Is Carmen really saving her from herself?

”Why do I sense, benevolence
You stand tall at my great expense
Thick words of gratitude, what a price to pay
Stuck in my throat, I sell every word I say”

Shane stares at her as she seems busy reading the menu.
She’s different, really different.
First of all, she’s even more beautiful than before, if possible.
When Shane first met Carmen, she was watching the most amazing, stunning girl she had ever laid her eyes on.
It was for that perfect face and that smoking hot body, of course, but there was also something else.
Carmen seemed a solar system on her own.
Carmen was sunny, vibrant and emotionally open. Carmen had something shining inside of her, something that reverberated on the outside. Everytime she smiled at someone, that person couldn’t help but smile her back.
Carmen seemed the summer who embraces the Earth after a long, endless freezing cold.
Who’s this new girl, Shane thinks and feels something stinging her heart.
Then, she abruptly realizes something about Molly.
Molly is lovely.
Molly is funny.
Molly is cute.
Molly is smart and no-nonsense.
Shane is crazy about her.
She is perfectly, totally crazy about all those qualities that Molly shares with Carmen.
Shane feels astonished by her new discovery.
Dumbfounded amazed flabbergasted astounded and knocked for six.
And, somehow, overwhelmed.
She thinks about Page.
She didn’t love her, she perfectly knows that.
But she did like her a lot.
Why?
Because Paige was reassuring. Paige was forgiving. Paige was warm and somehow maternal.
Just like Carmen.
“Fuck me…”, Shane whispers staring at nothing.
Carmen’s eyes look at her.
“No way”, she murmurs back as she’s saying the most normal thing on Earth.
“No, I mean… I was just realizing something…”, Shane explains, ignoring the double entendre.
“I figured as much, but I just wanted to make that clear”.
Shane’s heart drops somewhere into her socks.
Carmen didn’t give her the impression they were going to sleep together, not at all, but those two simple words sound like a stab in the stomach.
“Looks like you really hate me right now”, she murmurs, sadly.
Carmen closes the menu and watches her straight in the eyes.
“Shane, I don’t hate you at all. Believe me….”.
She seems torn for a while, like she’s about to say something more, something deeper about how she feels, about her sensations.
But then she only repeats.
“…I don’t hate you at all. And…”.
She blinks her eyelids.
“…And look, I know I am tough, and harsh and stern. It’s not that I am mad at you. I am not mad. It’s just that… I don’t know, I don’t feel really comfortable speaking to people, that’s all”.
Shane’s eyes open wide.
“Carmen… “.
The look on her face sad, painful.
“…Carmen, what’s happened to you?”.
And she would like to ask.
What have I done to you.
What did you allow me to do to the person you were.
Where’s the woman I loved.
Where’s the woman I still….
Carmen just stares at her.
“It’s not your fault, Shane. I know what you’re thinking. I know that you’re asking yourself if you’re responsible for the glacial person I’ve become. The answer is: no. You are not the one responsible. You are not the only one. And not all the world spins around you”.
Shane grimaces and stares at her own hands on the table.
Carmen swallows and closes her eyes for a second.