The Dangers of Smoking in Bed

“Our Lady of the Quarry” is narrated in the first-person plural by a group of teenage girls. They are obsessed with sex, drugs, music, and an older boy called Diego. All the girls vie for his attention, flirting shamelessly, but there is no competition between the narrators; their collective animosity is directed toward Silvia. Although most of the girls are virgins, their overt and unabashed sexuality contradicts the image of purity often associated with young girls. They brag, for example, about how they’ve “sucked cock” and are “quite good at that” (19), showing that they are driven by desire.

Natalia is the only named girl in the group. She appears halfway through the story and is “the most obsessed” with Diego (19). She is prone to fits of dramatic behavior when she doesn’t get her way, such as overdosing when her parents wouldn’t allow her to go dancing. When Diego and Silvia trick the girls into walking all around the quarry, all the girls feel “humiliated,” but Natalia is “so filled with rage that the tears wouldn’t fall from her eyes” (22). She visits the shrine on the other side of the quarry and discovers it isn’t the Virgin, but rather the Afro-Brazilian spirit Pomba Gira, which Natalia asks “for a favor” (23). Although Natalia rages that the dogs are hers, the narrators admit that their longing for Diego’s attention makes them all go “kind of crazy” (21), and the first-person “we” indicates the group’s complicity in the final violent act.

In “Our Lady of the Quarry,” Silvia is the narrator’s “grown-up friend.” She is older than them and has her own apartment, job, and money to spend. She is a mysterious figure that the girls admire and detest in equal measure, primarily because she “always knew more” than them (13). Anything they discover, be it a new drug or artist, turns out to be something that Silvia already knows intimately. The girls often suspect Silvia of lies or exaggerations; for example, she has no photos of her many supposed travels. It seems impossible to them that she could have done and experienced so much, but it’s also possible that the girls are unable to think outside of their “little-kid limitations” to understand the adult freedom that Silvia is privy to. As they ponder her many mysteries, for example, how she manages to dye her hair such a shocking shade of black, the girls admit “[s]he probably would have told [them], but [they] would never ask” (13); jealousy is an integral part of their relationship, and the girls don’t want to break the mystique that hovers over Silvia. As the story progresses, the girls’ jealousy builds as Diego shows more interest in Silvia. They find their older friend to be very “ugly” with “tubby legs” and “a flat ass” (15) and cannot understand why Diego would prefer her over them in their youthful perfection.

“The Cart” is narrated by a young woman who lives with her family in a working-class neighborhood. Her family is well-respected, especially her mother, whom the neighbors call “doctor” even though she is just a physical therapist. When an unhoused man from a nearby temporary settlement pushes his cart through the neighborhood and defecates on the sidewalk, the narrator’s mother is the only one to stand up for the man. In exchange, the narrator and her family remain untouched by the spell of misfortune that befalls the neighborhood in the wake of the man’s appearance. The narrator’s mother doesn’t lose her job, and her father continues to withdraw his pension without issue, but they still “[live] as battened down as the rest” (34), afraid of what might happen if their neighbors discover the truth. They are “scared, but fear doesn’t look the same as desperation” (35), and as they worry that the neighbors are becoming suspicious, they decide on a plan to leave. On the final night, however, they wake to the smell of burning meat. The narrator’s father is the only one not in the room as the narrator’s mother begins to cry and curses that “[d]amn old ghetto son of a bitch” (36). This suggests that he is the source of the foul-smelling black smoke; it is likely that the neighbors finally found out that the narrator’s family is immune to the misfortune, and someone has taken the father to cook him. Thus, the mother’s kindness cannot fully protect them from the violence and desperation that surrounds them.

Josefina is the teenage protagonist of “The Well.” Until the age of six, Josefina is a confident, happy child. Though her mother, grandmother, and sister all suffer from intense fear and paranoia, Josefina is “never afraid.” However, following a family trip to Corrientes in northern Argentina, Josefina’s fears become debilitating. She has to drop out of school and leaves the house only for appointments with her many psychiatrists. Her mother is surprisingly dismissive of this, sure that the “issue” will sort itself out. 

However, as Josefina sees “the world she was missing go by” (43), she feels “angry” and “exhausted” by her condition. She even contemplates suicide but is “so afraid of dying” that she doesn’t go through with it (46). Josefina’s sister reminds her of The Woman in Corrientes, who helped her and her mother and grandmother overcome their fears, and even though Josefina is terrified of traveling, her frustration gives her new resolve. The Woman recognizes Josefina immediately. She tells her that her mother, grandmother, and sister were infected by an “old evil” that could only be gotten rid of by passing it on to another. Josefina’s family “wanted to pass it on to [her]” (52). She realizes that she, therefore, became a kind of sacrifice, a permanent receptacle for her family’s pain and fear.

Sofía is a young Argentinian woman who visits her friends Julieta and Daniel in Barcelona. She is sensitive and perceptive, picking up on the city’s haunted nature immediately upon her arrival, even though she is unable to identify its exact source. It is her first visit to Barcelona in five years, and she finds it dirtier and less charming than she remembers, infected by a stench that the other tourists don’t seem to notice. The pervasive smell and the sense of unease are all indications of the neighborhood’s ghostly past that has been covered up through gentrification. As Sofía’s visit progresses, the juxtaposition between the designer clothing stores and exclusive bars that line the streets and the neighborhood’s history of poverty and violence becomes ever more “horrible.” When Julieta tells Sofía that the stench comes from Barcelona’s many ghost children, Sofía resists at first, worried that her friend is “crazy.” However, the smell is undeniable, so strong it makes her gag, and she doesn’t resist when Julieta insists that she leave early for her own safety.

Julieta and Daniel are young Argentinians living in the El Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. Both have been in the city for years and are increasingly frustrated with the neighborhood. They complain about the influx of tourists and the neighborhood’s gentrification. They both talk of their desire to leave the city, but Julieta claims that they are stuck in the neighborhood. The ghost children who haunt the streets “want to make people suffer” (71) and force them to stay in El Raval. During Sofía’s visit, Julieta confesses that she and Daniel tried to have a child, but Julieta was overcome with a terrible paranoia, believing that helicopters were coming to kidnap her. She started seeing a psychiatrist and stopped trying to get pregnant, although she sees now that her desire for a baby “was part of [her] madness” (67).

Elina is the protagonist of “The Lookout.” She is a young woman suffering from the effects of a past trauma and a bad breakup. Elina was raped as a teenager, and the lingering trauma causes her to struggle with intimacy and feelings of worthlessness. She believes she is “ruined forever” and understands why her boyfriend Pablo got “fed up” and left her. On the other hand, however, the breakup shocked and devastated her, and she has spent the past year desperate for Pablo to return. In the wake of the breakup, Elina sinks into a depression so profound that she loses her job teaching at the university and has to be hospitalized. She becomes increasingly isolated and engages in self-harm and suicidal ideation. 

Elina decides to take a trip to the sea, hoping the sea air will clear her head. However, she spends the first days of the trip shut in her room, cutting herself and hoping for an email from Pablo. The hotel’s ghost, known as The Lady Upstairs, sees Elina as the perfect replacement that will allow her to finally leave the hotel and rest in peace. She lures Elina to the hotel’s rickety lookout tower, thinking she will lock Elina inside and drive her to suicide. However, Elina also contemplates throwing herself off the tower or down the stairs without being prodded by the ghost.

“Where Are You, Dear Heart?” is narrated by a young woman with a sexual fetish for irregular heartbeats, and the story details her unorthodox journey of sexual discovery. In childhood, one of the narrator’s friends had a father who was “very sick”—likely with a heart condition—and he “made [her] abnormal” (96). She can’t remember if the man molested her, but her memory of him isn’t accompanied by “horror” but rather “something like desire” (87). As a teenager, the narrator reads Jane Eyre and falls “hopelessly in love” (88) with Helen, who dies of tuberculosis. However, when she has the opportunity to meet a real boy who is sick, she is surprised to find him unattractive. The narrator then begins a journey of discovering the specifics of her “obsession” by reading medical books as if they were pornography. She discovers that abnormal heartbeats turn her on most, and soon, the narrator’s “longing” starts to get out of control. Eventually, she meets a man on an online fetish community who is “very sick,” just like the man she remembers from her childhood. They lock themselves away so the narrator can listen to his heart for hours, both “terrified and excited” (95). Their play becomes increasingly extreme, and the narrator begins to confuse desire and hatred. Her lover reminds her of the man who “ruined” her as a child, and she subjects him to ever more dangerous experiments. Her obsession takes over both their lives, but she is still unsatisfied. She wants to take the final step of cutting her lover’s chest open and actually holding his heart in her hands.

In “Meat,” Julieta and Mariela are Espinosas, teenage super fans of the rockstar Santiago Espina. Both are well-known in Espina’s community of fans, and after their idol dies by suicide, the girls dig up his grave and eat his flesh. They are caught and placed in a psychiatric hospital. When they are eventually returned to their homes, they are forbidden from communicating with one another. However, Espinosas across Argentina start receiving emails that could only be from Julieta and Mariela, speaking of “an unstoppable underground cult” (106) that will start when the girls turn 18 and are “free.” Julieta and Mariela are silent throughout the course of the story; they do nothing but “[whisper] into each other’s ears” (104), refusing to speak to the media, their families, or doctors. Yet their cannibalism of Espina’s body inspires horror and fascination in the general public and admiration and even jealousy among other Espinosas.

“No Birthdays or Baptisms” is narrated in the first person by a young woman who is close friends with Nico, a man who works on “weird film projects” (108). Although Nico is the more prominent character in the story, the events are filtered through the female narrator’s voice. Like many of the other female characters in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, the narrator is almost completely isolated, apart from Nico. The two feed on one another’s apathy, and the narrator spends the summer chain-smoking and drinking with Nico and enjoying that there is “no one around to point out [her] depression or try to cheer [her] up” (108). Nico shares all his film projects with the narrator, even though many are sensitive and private, and when he learns about the job filming Marcela, he tells the narrator right away. Marcela fascinates both of them; they are bored by almost everyone, but Marcela has the “mystery” that Nico and the narrator are seeking in the world, and they spend hours analyzing her story and trying to understand her hallucinations. Eventually, this almost obsessive fascination with Marcela causes their relationship to fall apart. Nico’s job filming her ends, but the girl’s haunted presence continues to hang between them.

Mechi is the protagonist of “Kids Who Come Back.” She works for the city of Buenos Aires, managing the city’s archive of missing children. She enjoys her job, despite its grim nature, and takes pride in turning the archive into an orderly and useful resource. The work is “silent” and solitary, keeping Mechi “isolated.” However, Mechi is solitary by nature and content that way. She knows she is “weird,” “too skinny and short” to be attractive to men, but she isn’t “one to agonize over it” (123). She considers herself “lucky” that she doesn’t have to interact with the missing children’s families, and she has few friends. Her primary relationship is with Pedro, a reporter with whom she shares a friendship that is “consistent even if it [isn’t] all that close” (124). Her friendship with Pedro supports and inspires her commitment to her job, making the relationship satisfying both personally and professionally. 

Mechi is the first to find one of the returned children, the beautiful and compelling Vanadis. While the media and the public attempt to celebrate these returns and ignore or explain away any oddities or inconsistencies, Mechi is frightened from the beginning and becomes increasingly frustrated with the “cowardice” of the collective refusal to confront the returned children’s strangeness. Eventually, the fear and uncertainty surrounding the children’s return become too much for Mechi. She quits her job and moves back in with her parents, but when the children begin their “migration” out of the parks, she finds the fear too overwhelming and decides to leave the city altogether.

Pedro is a reporter and Mechi’s friend and colleague. While Mechi is quiet and solitary, Pedro is outspoken and gregarious. He is “nervous” and “attractive,” and Mechi is surprised when he takes an interest in her the night they first meet at a bar. While Mechi enjoys working behind the scenes, organizing files alone, Pedro is out and about, following up leads. While the two enjoy one another’s company and maintain their connection over the course of years, their relationship highlights a number of gender disparities. Pedro, for example, does most of the talking, asks Mechi few questions, and interrupts her often. Mechi feels that things are “easy” for him in a way they aren’t for her. When his investigation breaks open an important case, for example, he briefly becomes a minor celebrity, and Mechi remarks on how men can “just [show] up in different jackets and their elegance was guaranteed,” while “she would have had to buy twelve different dresses and accessories to match” (127). Nevertheless, Pedro genuinely cares for Mechi, and he urges her to flee the city with him when the situation with the returned children starts to get out of control.

Paula is the main character of “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.” She is an aging woman who lives alone in her apartment, completely isolated and overcome by “self-pity.” Her body is “failing” in ways that make her feel disgusting and unlovable, and when she learns about her neighbor who burned to death while smoking in bed, she finds it “vaguely soothing.” Back in her apartment, she too smokes in bed, letting the cigarette burn holes in the sheet “until it seemed dangerous” (173), suggesting that she is considering imitating her neighbor and letting the fire consume her.