As ephemeral as the photo of him and Francisco Augustin Villa Garcia. He, the great-nephew of Sofia Russova, and Francisco the great-grandson of Pancho. Sophia and Pancho alive at approxi-mately the same time. And now they, though forty years between them, alive as contemporaries at least on the same continent. Sophia was over in Eastern Europe. Ukraine.
Thinking does not help in situations like this. What can you think about something you don't know? Actually, you shouldn't even feel anything about things unknown, simply because. The realm of premonitions? Yet fingers restlessly play with a rubber ring on the table before him, in search. He wants to understand, but doesn't know what. I mean, what's to not understand about a common, everyday sort of event as a phone call?
What actually bugs him is this gnawing suspicion that he's too old. That he's lost it. That the rudimentary social skills... No. what do social skills have to do with.... "What's going on?", he wonders.
What he doesn't want to admit to himself is that he doesn't understand how he could've ended their conversation so abruptly. Like a dumb ox, he sits and stares at the blinking on the screen.