Part 2
The Coyoacán café was small, with white walls, plain cups, and windows that opened onto a quiet street.
Elena arrived four minutes after Mateo, her dark hair tucked behind one ear, a notebook under her arm. She sat down across from him and said:
“Hello, Mateo.”
As if no days had passed — only a pause in the same conversation.
He told her the whole story of the desk: the widow named Beatriz, the silent house, the empty chair by the window, the way she touched the wood when she received it and cried without making a sound.
Elena listened without interrupting.
When Mateo finished, she said:
“You don’t make furniture to fill spaces. You make it so people can bear them.”
He didn’t know how to respond, because no one had ever said anything so precise to him.
Over the following weeks they met every Thursday.
Elena didn’t talk much, but when she did, things seemed to come into focus. She told him about her research: old properties, falsified environmental permits, neighborhoods where workshops and tenement buildings were being emptied to make room for luxury developments.
Mateo told her about his overdue rent, about the letter from his landlord warning that he might sell the building, about his constant fear of losing the workshop.
Elena didn’t say “everything will be fine,” because she wasn’t someone who offered cheap comfort. She simply asked:
“Do you have a copy of your lease?”
One Saturday she came to the workshop. She sat in a reading chair Mateo was finishing and stayed there, reviewing documents on her tablet while he sanded a table. The afternoon passed slowly, peacefully.
Mateo thought he had never shared silence so comfortably with anyone.
Then Elena looked up and said:
“This is a good place.”
“It has leaks,” he replied.
“That’s not what I mean.”
Mateo set down the sandpaper.
She turned the silver ring on her finger.
“I have to tell you something before you hear it from someone else.”
He felt a pressure build in his chest.
“What’s going on?”
Elena took a breath.
“The first time I heard your workshop’s address, I already recognized it. It’s in a file I’ve been investigating. A developer is trying to buy this entire block. They’re using falsified environmental reports to justify fast-tracked evictions.”
Mateo went still.
“Is that why you agreed to see me?”
Elena looked down for the first time.
“No. But at first, I did want to know whether you were one of the people affected.”
“You investigated me?” he asked, hurt.
“I investigated the property. Then I met you.”
The silence that had once united them turned cold.
Mateo took a step back.
“I thought you were looking at me.”
“I was looking at you,” Elena said, her voice steady but wounded. “That’s why I’m telling you. Before Marco uses it against you.”
Mateo felt the name land like a blow.
“Marco?”
Elena opened a file on her tablet. Inside was a chain of emails, a consulting firm’s logo, and a signature at the bottom: Marco Aranda.
The same person who had taken him to that dinner. The friend who laughed at his work. The man who had insisted on introducing him to Daniela because Elena was “the boring one.”
“Marco works with the company trying to buy your workshop,” Elena said. “And tomorrow he’s submitting a report declaring this area ‘without productive value.'”
Mateo read the phrase twice.
Without productive value.
He looked at his tools, the stacked boards, the chair where Elena had been sitting, the marks on the floor left by years of work. He felt anger, shame, and an old sadness all at once.
“Go,” he said.
Elena didn’t move.
“Mateo—”
“Please. Leave.”
She slowly closed the tablet. Before going, she set a folder on the workbench.
“There’s the proof. Even if you’re angry with me — read it.”
Mateo didn’t sleep that night.
At dawn he opened the folder. Inside were emails, maps, forged signatures, photographs, and statements from other tenants.
And on the last page, a note in Elena’s handwriting:
“You are not an obstacle. You are part of a story they’re trying to erase.”
At nine in the morning, someone knocked on the workshop door.
A courier with an eviction notice.
Mateo read it with shaking hands.
Fifteen days to vacate.
And listed below as the person responsible for the procedure: Marco.
