The tup is turned off in the ensuite and the water stops running. A zip is closed and light steps approach. Flavia comes out of the bathroom in her shimmering silk negligee and long white nightgown and Javiera can't take her eyes off her. Her hair just brushed, her face clean from any make-up, beautiful. She puts the black case she was holding back in her luggage before closing it and placing it in a corner of the room. She reaches for the bed and takes the gown off, arranges it neatly on the duvet and Javiera never takes her eyes off her, off her fingers, her profile, off the sheer waving of the fabric, falling in soft columns from even softer hips. The inspector seems to be studying the way Flavia unfastens the loose ribbon on the front of the wrap- around gown and the way it reveals her bare shoulders and arms as it falls. She observes a copper lock as it partially covers the woman's cheek, she observes how the taper tip of elegant fingers brush it back, secure it behind an ear. Everything about this woman is nothing short but charming and Javiera feels incredibly lucky to witness the sacredness of this night ritual, to be in a position to hope she can witness this and more from this night on. Flavia’s quiet movements overwhelm the space with an intimacy so subtle that could pass unnoticed, almost. Since the first night she spent here she has marked the air, each time she left she left something behind, each time she visited she took it back and arranged it nicely on a new piece of furniture, like a souvenir, a hand-decorated porcelain chest, precious and discrete, a drop of her scent. Now every surface she has ever touched has her fingerprints on it and wears them like a medal. Day after day Flavia gained an inch of the floor, a column of the curtain, a wrinkle of the sheet. Step by step she made it such that the only real silence was the absence of her voice. Under her breath, in a feather-like kiss she made this room her home, she made this room their home and Javiera didn't notice it when it happened, doesn't know how it did, doesn't care.

When Flavia sits on the bed Javiera is right behind her, her breath hot on her shoulder, on her neck, in her ear. Flavia gives herself to the feeling, closes her eyes and the other woman is the only thing she can feel. Wet kisses give her goosebumps and something melts in her gut with a warmth that she had never known before and of which she can no longer do without. The first time she knew this she was done, the euphoria of being finally awake sent a jolt of electricity down her spine, through her brain, brought her to life. She was doomed to addiction, since that day, since the first touch with Javiera's lips. She turns, barely conscious of her own body and yet so aware of what is happening on and under her skin, and Javiera's kisses her again.

The thin straps of the negligée fall trom Flavia's shoulders, taking the top of the dress down with them. Flavia shivers and Javiera struggles not to close her eyes.

Time is frozen still in room 24. Javiera wishes this night to never end, wishes this moment to last forever. As much as she wants to surrender to Flavia's lips, to sink in her body, as much as she needs it, she doesn't want to stop looking. They break apart and the silence is thick but not heavy, it’s soft, so tender that it could melt like warm honey, strain through the ceiling and the ripples of the duvet, drip on their heads and shoulders, mark the minutes of this unbearable, inebriant, sweet ephemeral eternity. The inspector pulls back and there’s no way she could be prepared for this: before her eyes Flavia stays, kneeled on the mattress, a painted drapery resting in her lap, scarcely visible, thin body hair capturing the light that comes from behind her back, outlining her whole figure in the smoothest golden halo. Javiera doesn’t have time to let this all in, not tonight, not until her last night in this life. Even if she takes a million pictures of this she knows it won't be enough, that she will miss something, that too many inches would be left behind. So she makes her eyes wonder along Flavia's body, she lets them caress the naked skin of her left shoulder, down her arm, up to her collarbone and the translucent surface of her chest, where a maze of blue veins emerges on the meticulously chiseled surface sculpted by the soft, changing chiaroscuro of palpitating muscles and bones. Her gaze falls down the woman’s sternum, analyses how the subtle volume of the pectoral blends in the curve of her breast, how the pale skin there leaves room to her dark nipple. Javiera wets her lips with the thought of sucking it, of making Flavia moan, but she doesn’t move, she goes forward in her journey down the other woman’s body. Ribs move apart and get closer in the effort of letting the air in, belly goes with the pounding succession of distension and contraction. Javiera gets carried away by this hypnosis, synchronizes her own breath with the rhythmic inflating and deflating and keeps going. Flavia’s hands lay among the shimmering pearl white of smooth silk and soft lace and Javiera moves. Flavia’s long, delicate fingers are warm in the inspector hand, are slightly colder against her lips. Javiera runs her thumb on her knuckles, bewitched by how the thin skin responds to her touch, lets itself be moved and returns back in place. Javiera looks away again, looks up and she is done: the most precious eyes are piercing her with the delicacy of a kiss and the inspector knows that she has never been this conscious of her own heartbeat. Flavia’s lashes flutter once, twice as she holds her breath. A subtle contraction underneath her skin creates tiny wrinkles at the sides of her mouth and lifts them up. Flavia gulps and her lips part, trembling. Javiera smiles and moves again, a soothing touch would be welcome and it is soothing, and it is welcome. Flavia closes her eyes and her breath is hot and moist against the tip of the other woman’s index. Javiera is about to surrender but the sharp line of her nose guides her up the angular bridge, down the root, to the ample forehead, so pronounced and yet so gentle. Her brows frown and relax again and Javiera’s eyes keep going, lingers on the quivering lids, on a cheekbone so vertiginous that looks carved in the finest marble, so mild that seems modeled in the finest wax. Blessed, damn light: it winds through Flavia’s locks in golden waves, it gathers and sinks in thick crimson shadows, it catches Javiera's gaze and binds it, makes it wander and it gets lost, with no salvation.

In a place far from the world, in a room out of time the vision is blurred and messes around with hearts. Life is a muffled whisper but it’s clear in a picture that contains them all. In room 24 Javiera watches Flavia’s lips flush and finally gives in.