Marisol pays for the ferris wheel to look at her own roof

"Madam, it's a quarter past seven and at eight I have to be at the Casa de Cultura. Wave your arm, would you, they can see us from down there."

"I'm not waving."

"What do you mean, you're not waving?"

"I mean I'm not waving. If I wave, Remigio stops looking for the fault and brings us down by hand, and by hand it takes a good half-hour, because the cars have to be released two at a time."

"A good half-hour is exactly what I don't have."

"A good half-hour is exactly what I've been waiting for since March."

"Forgive me, I don't follow you."

"I know. And sit right back, because if this thing moves it pitches and you'll lose that box."

"I won't lose this box. I'm carrying it with both hands and that is how I'll carry it all the way down. Inside there's a three-tier cake for the golden wedding dinner at the Casa de Cultura. Fifty portions. I put the icing on at six this morning and it still hasn't set properly."

"So call and say you'll be there at nine."

"Dinner is at half past eight and the cake has to be on the table before people sit down. If it arrives after that, it's just pudding."

"And I've spent six months waiting for somebody to take me up high enough to see my own house from above. Six months, and the wheel comes one week a year."

"…"

"Now you're going to tell me I'm mad."

"I haven't said a word."

"You thought it with your face."

"Look, at seventy-four a man thinks a great many things with his face and nearly all of them are about his hip. Tell me about this house."

"My name is Marisol Chinchilla. I drive the school bus, the farmstead route, the quarter-to-seven one."

"Eusebio Garrués. Confectioner. I closed the shop in 2011 and kept two orders a year, and this is one of them."

"I live at eleven Calle Hornos. The street is three metres wide and the house next door is two storeys taller than mine. From the street you can't see a thing of my roof. Not a thing. Not even standing on a car."

"And from the tower?"

"The church tower has been closed since the lightning. And the belfry doesn't face my street, it faces the fronton, the wall they play pelota against."

"So, this car."

"This car. Twenty-two metres, Remigio says. It's the highest point this village has had since they shut the tower, and it's down there for seven days and then he takes it off to Tudela."

"Señora Chinchilla."

"Marisol."

"Marisol. I'm going to ask you the stupid question: why don't you go up on the roof and look at the roof?"

"Because I don't own a twelve-metre ladder, and because the house has old tiles and walking on them breaks them. And because if I go up, whatever I see I'll have seen on my own. Tomorrow they'll tell me again that I'm mistaken."

"Who tells you that?"

"The man who fitted the panels. Lisandro Paús, sales rep. Four panels, six thousand four hundred euros, contract signed on the eleventh of March. The paperwork says they were installed on the second of April."

"And they weren't?"

"That's what I don't know. That's the whole business."

"What do you mean, you don't know? When somebody fits something at my place, I look at it."

"You come and look at my roof from Calle Hornos and then we'll talk. I rang him in May and he told me to go and check the meter, that it was already producing. I went. The meter gives numbers. Every month he sends me a little slip with some kilowatts on it."

"Then they're up there."

"That's what he says. And in June I asked him for photos. He sent me two."

"And?"

"In both photos the chimney is on the left. Mine is on the right. I told him so. He answered that phones flip photographs."

"Well, that's true, mind you. Phones do flip them."

"There you are. You too."

"I haven't said you're lying. I've said what anybody would say who doesn't live under that roof."

"My brother-in-law said that in other words. And my sister. And the girl in the office, very pleasant, told me not to worry. Since June I've been the lady who isn't worrying."

"…"

"Remigio, is it long?"

"Ten minutes!"

"That's the third time he's said ten minutes."

"Which suits you beautifully."

"Which means he gets nervous and shuts the whole thing off. Keep your voice down."

"Marisol, one thing. If you look now and the four panels are up there where they should be, what have you won?"

"Sleep."

"All right."

"Does that seem little to you?"

"It seems expensive to me. Four euros and a ferris wheel."

"Four euros fifty. And I've come three days in a row: the first time it didn't stop at the top and the second time I got the car on the other side."

"And the third is me?"

"The third is you and a breakdown. Don't take it badly."

"I'm not taking it badly. I'm taking it with one eye on the clock."

"…"

"Can you see it yet?"

"I can see the fountain in the square, the chemist's and the start of my street. My house is right behind that asbestos roof, the grey fibre-cement sheets. If the car turns two metres more, I'll have it."

"Then ask Remigio to make the breakdown last."

"Don't laugh."

"I'm not laughing. I'm remembering something and I don't like it. In 2019 they replaced my boiler and the invoice charged me for twelve metres of flue across the roof. Twelve metres. I paid that invoice in full and I have never once gone up to count them."

"And why didn't you go up?"

"Because the man was from here, because the boiler heats the house, and because counting pipes on a roof is what suspicious people do. Those three reasons, in that order."

"I know them."

"I know you do. I'm the brother-in-law, Marisol. I said the same thing to you five minutes ago in other words."

"…"

"Remigio, is this thing moving or not?"

"Two minutes!"

"That's four times now."

"Leave him. Listen, Marisol: you leave at a quarter to seven and you're back at half past nine. When do you ever see your house in daylight?"

"On Sundays."

"And on Sundays you don't look?"

"On Sundays I look from the street, which is where you can't see anything. Six months I've spent on my own pavement with my neck twisted, in case an edge showed."

"That isn't being a fool, in case you were thinking it."

"That's not having a twelve-metre ladder."

"So now you'll do me the favour of looking properly, and I'll shut up."

"Put the box on the floor, I'll hold it with my foot."

"The box doesn't move from here. But before you look, tell me one thing, and say it out loud: where did you tell them to put them?"

"On the pitch that faces the fronton. The one that eats sunshine all afternoon. I said it in March, in my kitchen, with the man sitting there and his coffee in front of him, and I said it again when I signed."

"The fronton side. Done. Now look."

"…"

"It moved."

"It moved and I've got it. I've got all of it. The whole roof."

"And?"

"They're there."

"All four?"

"All four. One, two, three and four, in a row, with their rails and their bolts. Better fitted than I'd pictured them."

"Then breathe."

"No."

"What do you mean, no? They're up there. It's what you wanted to see."

"They're on the other pitch."

"The river one?"

"The river one. The one facing north, Eusebio. That side doesn't see the sun all day except for a while in the morning in summer."

"That's you saying it. Prove it to me."

"Because the sun is going down over there, behind the co-operative, and the shadow of the tower is falling across Calle Hornos. The lit side is the fronton side. The panels are on the dark one."

"Let me look."

"Look."

"…"

"Do you see them?"

"I see them. Four, on the side the sun doesn't reach."

"Six thousand four hundred euros. Forty-nine monthly payments."

"…"

"Say something."

"I'm thinking about my twelve metres of flue."

"It isn't the same."

"No, it isn't: mine is a pipe and yours is half a mortgage. But next month I'm going up to count them, and you've done that to me from a ferris wheel."

"Remigio, you can bring us down now!"

"No."

"What do you mean, no? You had eight o'clock."

"I had eight o'clock a while ago. The cake arrives when it arrives. Don't go down yet: count me how many tiles there are between the last panel and the gutter, because that's what they're going to ask you."