=== Long Distance ===
This passage is from the short story 'Long Distance' by Alejandro Zambra. Portillo was a good boss, a generous guy; I rarely saw him, sometimes only on the twenty-ninth, when I waited, with some stupendous circles under my eyes, to pick up my paycheck. What I remember most about him is his voice, so high-pitched, like a teenager’s—a common enough tone among Chileans but, for me, a disconcerting one to hear from a Spaniard. He would call me very early, at six or seven in the morning, so I could give him a report on what had happened the previous night, which was pretty much pointless, because nothing ever happened, or almost nothing: maybe some call or other from Rome or Paris, simple cases from people who weren’t really sick but who wanted to make the most of the medical insurance they had bought in Santiago. My job was to listen to them, take down their information, make sure the policy was valid, and connect them to my counterparts in Europe. Portillo let me read or write, or even doze off, on the condition that I always answer the phone in good time. That’s why he called at six or seven—although, when he was out partying, he might call earlier. 'The phone should never ring more than three times,' he would tell me if I took too long picking up. But he didn’t usually scold me; on the contrary, he was quite friendly. Sometimes he asked me what I was reading. I would say Paul Celan, or Emily Dickinson, or about Emmanuel Bove, or Humberto Díaz Casanueva, and he always burst out laughing, as if he had just heard a very good and very unexpected joke. One night, around four in the morning, I received a call from someone whose voice sounded mock-serious, or disguised, and I thought it was my boss pretending to be someone else. 'I’m calling from Paris,' said the voice. The man was calling direct, which increased my feeling that it was a prank of Portillo’s, because clients usually reversed the charges when they called. Portillo and I had a certain level of trust between us, so I told him not to mess with me, that I was very busy reading. 'I don’t understand, I’m calling from Paris,' the man responded. 'Is this the number of the travel insurance?' I apologized and asked him for his number so I could call him back. When we talked again I’d become the nicest phone operator on the planet, which wasn’t my usual demeanor. Back then I’d picked up a few evening hours teaching at the technical training institute. The schedule fit perfectly.
=== Masters and Traditions ===
g back the dance. But even dancers with superlative temporary, a here-and-now art. Even the oldest of ballets memories are mortal, and with each passing generation, ballet loses a piece of its past.