It took me a very long time to even begin to find the words to talk about you, about the loss of you. This is what I read at your memorial service on October 18.

I have always thought that you were the most aptly-named person in the world. “Aura” evokes, in an instant, the luminous, the literary, and the mysterious. You were mysterious in the very best way. Now, especially, I am struck by how insufficiently I knew you, how much I wish I had made the long trek to Brooklyn much more often. Monica and I met to share our memories of you a couple of months ago. Previous to our meeting, I had assumed that Monica knew you infinitely better than I, but we both discovered as we talked that we each held different parts of you, that you had so much to share with us, that your spirit was so generous, that everyone who knew you held a unique piece.

I first met you five years ago, when we were both starting grad school at Columbia. We were both terrified at the prospect of performing intellectually, of sharing our ideas about literature in front of so many people, and it was such a relief to confess our mutual terror to each other. I realized immediately that you were among the more glamorous of our fellow students, but you were not intimidating in the slightest, partly because you were never condescending and partly because you often made me doubt whether or not you were even remotely aware of how beautiful and intelligent you were. You were always surrounded by gorgeous objects: your clothes, your scarves, your ubiquitous lip tint, were objects that you made your own. They buttressed your incredible beauty and innate style. Your taste in all things—in books, ideas, people—was unique and inspiring.

Early in our first year of school, when you were still living near 120th Street, you invited us over for Mexican food, music, and conversation. This was the first time I met some of your other friends. You always had the most marvelous friends, from all over the world, rich with experience. I got the sense that you were always surrounded by talented, interesting writers, artists, and thinkers. And I felt that these connections were crucial to your immense energy. You were so energetic, always moving, always coming and going.

I think this was the first time you apologized unnecessarily for having gotten drunk. I say unnecessarily because, of course, we’d all been drunk, and we’d all had a fantastic time.

I think that on that evening you also told me about a man you thought you might be seeing again soon, someone exciting whom you’d first met months earlier. If memory serves me, you were debating something about your next meeting, you weren’t sure how things would turn out. But the next time you mentioned Frank, some months later, it was clear to me that you were hooked. And after you were properly together, something seemed to have clicked inside of you, and you were happy in a way I don’t think you’d ever been before.

I don’t know how to not inject causality into the past, how not to see the last night we spent together as a goodbye. You met Jannette and me for drinks in June, after we’d taught our summer classes. We talked and drank, and, because we hadn’t met up in so long, our happy hour turned into a very late night. This was the night you confessed that you’d been enrolled in the Hunter MFA program—we were duly shocked but finally understood why you’d been so incredibly busy last year. We talked about literature and neoliberalism, and, as usual, I was impressed by your keen sensibility and insight. Frank called at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning wondering where you were. You wanted to take the subway, but we convinced you to get into a cab. I was a little worried about you, even had a sense of foreboding, but then, like clockwork, the next day came, via e-mail, your unnecessary apology for having been so drunk. I smiled.

When I received that other e-mail, the one that said that you’d passed away, I thought, “No, it’s not possible. It's simply not possible because there’s so much left to write. I haven’t answered her last e-mail. She has to finish the dissertation we discussed just a few weeks ago, she has stories and novels inside of her. Stories that need to be written. Her work is not done.”

I did a lot of magical thinking afterwards. I found myself, a devout atheist, believing, without a shadow of a doubt, that I could still talk to you, that you could still hear us. And I persist in this belief. That’s why I can’t help but use the second person when I remember you now.

And now, I want you to hear that we mourn your absence, and we mourn all that you did not write, but I think that you gave us so much in your too-short life, so very much, that it will have to be enough.

mexico, it was her light on frank's face, too bright on him, so it made him giddy, laughing like he was drugged, like he was inhaling a vapor cazadores.

austin, moon and streetlight silhouetting her, her strides too strong and impatient, going somewhere, probably telling the one I came with where, and Frank, whispering to me, see them see her, it will be all about her, watch. he was too happy we were having to keep up with them, the light blocked out for us, her fearlessly leaving shadow, into to that future, her leading and charging at brightest lights.

mexico, tacos at 3 or maybe 4 am, and her hands feeding him spoonfuls of giggling, it drooling down his chin, taking care of her baby.

brooklyn, her teeth shining on me with so much approval, and the gasping white in her eyes (she liked my friend), still searing my memory, eyes so open they made me embarrassed, eyes sizzling like the chinese food, hungry, and I felt like, because she approved, I had done something right.

mexico, at UNAM, her voice's proud trill, joy, on a walking tour, her schoolgirl and professorial notes in hand. who could really listen? do you know the words to a bird's song?

Todavía no he sabido llorarte, Aura.

Algo me lo impide desde que leí el mensaje que me informaba que nunca volvería a verte. Sarah lloró de inmediato, pero yo sólo atinaba a leer y releer el e-mail en la pantalla. Desconfiaba tanto de mi capacidad de lectura porque no tenía sentido lo que esas líneas articulaban. Sarah lloraba y yo le pedía que releyera el mensaje, que tal vez lo habíamos comprendido mal, que era posible que se refiriera a otra persona. Pronunciaba tu nombre despacio, Aura, para intentar recobrar algo de todo lo que ha significado desde que nos conocimos aquella tarde de Brown, tú sentada en la segunda fila y yo en la primera, los dos indistinguibles en un público anónimo que escuchaba a escritores latinoamericanos pronunciar cosas importantes. Tú menos indistinguible que yo, porque en aquel entonces usabas un tinte morado en el cabello, que además llevabas corto, y con unos lentes de armazón grueso, que nos hacía evidente que éramos tan jóvenes, yo 26 y tú 25, y que sólo gente como nosotros se encuentra por azar en el mundo de esa manera, perdidos en un público anónimo, mientras los escritores se esfuerzan en pronunciar cosas importantes.

Sigo sin llorar porque todo esto acabo de escribir reapareció en mi mente y descongestionó mi pecho para forzarme al recuerdo que emerge como acuarela deslavada. Poco a poco va perdiendo la fuerza de ciertas tonalidades, pero me devuelve nuestra sonrisa desdibujada y extrañada en la cena en que hablábamos sobre qué carajos hacíamos los dos jugando a ser inteligentes entre tanta gente que se dedica profesionalmente a lo mismo y que nos lleva tantos años de ventaja en el medio. Por eso cuando nos tomaron esa primera foto juntos, con Carlos Fuentes, sonreíamos con timidez, porque nadie mejor que nosotros sabía que contribuíamos al cliché de ser dos miembros del público anónimo que se retrata con la gente que (su trabajo le costado) ha aprendido a pronunciar cosas importantes. Aquí la acuarela recobra su definición absoluta y la solidez de sus colores, porque aún conservo la foto y ahora que la vuelvo a ver me indica otras líneas de mi memoria que habían permanecido guardadas desde esa semana de abril de 2002.

Y por eso debo posponer el llanto una vez más, tomar aire y retomar el hilo de ese episodio, cuando hablábamos de libros y de nuestras pequeñas ideas sobre novelas y cuentos que esa misma gente que pronuncia importantes cosas había publicado y que nosotros queríamos contrapuntear con páginas propias. Y fue por allí que, caminando por una callecita de Providence, me contaste que habías escrito algún cuento y yo te conté que andaba por las mismas, y por eso compramos la misma antología en rebaja que vendían en la librería de la universidad, porque andábamos por el mismo camino. Esa noche nos tomaron otra foto en un bar, y tus mechones morados brillaban con el flash que también rebotaba en los cristales de nuestros lentes. Cuando imprimí esa foto le cambié el filtro y la hice en sepia, y como nunca supe revertir el efecto ahora mi último recuerdo de ese viaje aparece en sepia en mi memoria: tú te alejas sola por la calle, me dices adiós y me sonríes, y tu figura se desvanece en esta nueva acuarela que me hace comprender que también las fotos se deslavan en la memoria de una computadora.

En este punto debería poder llorar, pero tu foto en la pantalla reapareció con el e-mail que me mandaste en París, dos años después, cuando coincidimos en la Cité Universitaire y nos fuimos a tomar un café en el restaurante de la Maison Internationale. Nos reencontramos como si fuera la mañana siguiente de nuestra despedida alcoholizada de Brown. Te habías ido de Providence y ahora estabas en Nueva York. Estudiabas literatura y habías publicado ya algún cuento. Yo había publicado otro y vimos con agrado que nuestras timideces literarias habían retrocedido un poco y que quizá comenzábamos a tener cosas importantes que pronunciar. Esa noche cenamos juntos con Frank y con Martín, con Jorge y con Miguel, y reímos mucho y nos despedimos cerca del amanecer.

Saber que nunca repetiremos una escena parecida podría hacerme llorar en este momento, pero no puedo porque sé que apenas íbamos a mitad de camino en nuestra pequeña historia. Nos volvimos a ver en tu boda con Frank. Sarah no pudo ir, y ustedes decidieron sentarme en la mesa de honor. Me sentía culpable por robarte tiempo y espacio que probablemente merecía más cualquier miembro de tu familia, pero acepté el privilegio de atestiguar la plenitud de tu felicidad. Bailamos y brindamos, y aunque el recuerdo amenaza ahora a su insalvable metamorfosis en acuarela, el deslave gradual se detuvo cuando admiré las fotos de la boda que Frank puso en internet. La secuencia de imágenes es muy elocuente y eso me tranquiliza, porque nunca podría escribir un ensayo digno de esa tarde tan perfecta en Atotonilco.

Y las lágrimas se niegan a salir de nuevo, Aura, porque nuestras vidas se cruzaron una vez más, ahora en Nueva York, cuando fui a una entrevista de trabajo a principios de 2006. Frank nos escuchaba con generosidad y simpatía cuando nos burlábamos de nuestra condición de inéditos y proponíamos una antología de escritores nacidos en los 70 cuyo principal mérito era ser desconocidos. Tú querías que se llamara Los oscuros, y a mí el título me confirmaba que aunque todavía no teníamos grandes cosas en mente, ya nos habíamos decidido a decir algo, tan discreto como una antología, que tanto se parece a un público que comenta cosas mientras los grandes libros las pronuncian con voz fuerte y decidida.

Ahora viene a mi mente el Déefe, y más que en llorar, pienso en las dos noches en que nos encontramos en el Covadonga, en la Roma, mientras la derecha nos arrebataba el país a quienes creíamos en la posibilidad de reformar el estado pero que nunca articulamos las cosas importantes que hay que pronunciar para que nos hagan caso. Perdimos la elección presidencial y brindamos derrotados, pero Frank nos consoló recordándonos que aún teníamos muchas otras cosas que decir y hacer, como la antología de Los oscuros que todavía no despegaba del escritorio de nuestros sueños.

Sarah y yo nos mudamos meses después a Nueva York. Tenerte tan cerca me ayudaba a creer que podía vencer el anonimato de esa enorme ciudad. Los dos comenzábamos a publicar más y poco a poco nos íbamos acostumbrando a la posibilidad de tener algo que decir que valiera la atención de los demás. Como la última vez que nos vimos. Cómo habíamos cambiando. Ahora llevabas el cabello largo y lentes de contacto. Yo tenía 31 y tú casi 30. Frank nos invitó a una lectura pública de la nueva traducción al inglés de Los detectives salvajes de Bolaño. Me acabo de dar cuenta de que fue la única vez en que tú y yo cruzamos juntos la sala para dejar el espacio del público y alcanzar el podio donde por fin, aunque fuese esa única noche, pronunciamos cosas importantes. Como en todo en esta historia, tú fuiste primero. Tu impecable inglés discurrió con suavidad elegante los fragmentos que elegiste. Luego me tocó a mí, y a pesar de mis tropiezos me dijiste que salió bien, que tampoco desentoné en esa noche en que quisimos dejar de ser oscuros aunque fuera por unos momentos. Nos despedimos en la calle, y nos abrazamos, y nos prometimos que cenaríamos juntos, los cuatro, una semanas después.

Aquí debería comenzar mi llanto, Aura, pero quiso el azar que nos encontráramos una última vez. Fue por messenger, y si no me engaño, nuestra conversación tenía el tono de dos hermanos que tenían ganas de reencontrarse pronto. Quedamos en que cenaríamos, justo por estas fechas, y no te lo dije, pero yo planeaba proponerte la resurrección del proyecto de Los oscuros. Nos despedimos en el messenger y este recuerdo ni siquiera detenta tu sonrisa, y la acuarela se deslava en las palabras iluminadas en la pantalla de la computadora donde me decías que habías escrito otro buen cuento y donde yo te contaba lo mismo. Tengo para mí que tú estabas destinada a pronunciar cosas importantes. Ignoro si yo podré, pero una de las últimas veces que nos vimos en un bar de Manhattan llegué a imaginar que seríamos escuchados por un público que jamás creería que alguna vez fuimos dos oscuros e inéditos aprendices de escritores.

Y ahora que ya no estás, Aura, me aferro a los recuerdos que construimos juntos y por los que vale la pena intentar pronunciar cosas importantes. Por ahora regresaré en silencio a mi sitio en el público anónimo anticipando que tu hermosa vida, y los momentos que compartiste conmigo, me impedirán llorar una vez más.

Aura and I were good friends at Columbia, though I moved away two years ago and I hadn't talked to her as frequently since. Now I see how busy she was in addition to her work at Columbia, taking on a second degree program, publishing essays, and somehow managing a full social life. With all these demands on her time, she still always found time for others.

I first witnessed this remarkable generosity several years ago in Mexico City, where I was doing archival research and struggling to formulate a thesis topic. Aura offered me the sort of guidance I'd never find on a bookshelf, pointing me to original sources and even putting me in touch with members of her family. She wasn't only concerned that I find the right materials, however, but also that I had plans at night. She made a point of inviting me out and introducing me to both her friends and her favorite places in D.F. I'm grateful for those days with Aura, and for that glimpse into her vibrant life.

Aura was my classmate in the Hunter MFA Fiction program. Our class size is twelve, ideal for a writing group, and as intimate as one might hope for. Everyone carries such distinct personalities, senses of humor, and even different ways of sitting in the chairs that if somebody is missing on a night of Craft or Workshop, it's easily noticeable. Aura's childlike gap-toothed smile, lovely accent, and gentle way of speaking belonged, in our tiny cirlce, to no one but her. She will be missed tremendously.

In the short year that I spent with Aura, I came to know her slowly. She appeared shy, reserved, and one-hundred percent sincere. The sincerity is what I valued most, since it's hard to find in the cynical canyons of New York City. She aslo seemed eternally busy with her work at Columbia, but this did not prevent her from being a generous, honest, and articulate classmate in the workshop. What more could you ask for? In the spring, we were assigned a project wherein we had to research a given life, based on a non-fiction interview, and write a story around that research. Aura chose a woman named Baby Dee who had lived in The Bronx, and she asked me to show her around the borough, as I had lived there before. On the first day we planned to go, she cancelled because she caught a cold, and on the second she was very late to our meeting spot in the Union Square Subway. When she finally did arrive, with that bright grin and a bundle of apologies, I teased her that perhaps, subconsciously, she didn't really want to go. "Oh no, no,no," she gushed. "I really want to see it." Her sincerity overflowed at my stupid joke.

What followed was a brilliant day of fun, walking up and down the Grand Concourse, Fordham Road, Jerome Avenue, the two of us lost in the steaming mass of a Bronx Saturday afternoon. The #4 subway was doing one of its annoying express runs where it bypassed certain stops, so it forced us to get off early and walk a little more then expected. But Aura didn't mind. She was a willing partner in the adventure, and, of course, spoke the langauge of the street, interacting with folks in ways I could not. We bought avocados at a fruit stand, and my Gringo Spanglish sounded wretched next to Aura's native tongue. She teased me slightly about having lived in The Bronx for so long and not improving my speaking skills. I must have blushed and made some stupid excuse.

As fellow writers, we were on more even ground, and we observed more than I can possibly relate. Aura noticed, before I did, A trio of boys, no more than eight years of age, smoking on a bench; In St. James Park, a horde of young Mexican men climbing over a fence that read, 'No Soccer Playing' and who then proceeded to kick around a ball; A skinny white guy dressed in a tattered leather coat, standing outside a sporting boutique with a megaphone shouting, "Leather items are fifty percent off! Shoes, jackets, pants! Come on down!" (Actually we both heard him at the same time, but Aura noted, after watching him scratch his ankle and pull up his jeans slighty, that he was wearing pink socks!) We stopped at the old Paradise Movie Theatre, Poe Cottage, and Arthur Avenue, where we ate oily Italian subs. She was game to take every side street and alley that I could remember (and some that I didn't remember) At one point ,we had to take a bathroom break in a creepy dive bar that sat under the subway. There was one patron, asleep at a table, cheek resting on a copy of the Daily News, and the bartender, muscular and tattooed, who called out 'Stay for a drink guys." (It was barely noon) Aura laughed no thanks, and we left quickly.

Who knows, I thought then, if any of these details will end up in Aura's story? Probably not. The real gift of that day was that I was walking the streets with a fellow writer--both of us still young and perhaps unsure of ourselves in the classroom, but out here in the world, confident in our heart's desire to record the life we witnessed.

During the long subway ride home we talked of liberation theology, traveling, writing, political acts of courage in artists we had known--so much of common interest. Of course, I saw Aura after our trip, but this subway ride is how I will remember her: Cheerful, inquisitive, upbeat, full of everything that shines in this life. I will miss that spark, as well as the potential friendship that was snatched away so rudely. Blessings on her spirt, wherever it resides now. I know she is still smiling.

Aura,

-- It is late August, the end of summer, and these warm days with their whisper of fall have ushered us into the start of the new academic year. Can we rewind, please, go back, and revisit that first class at Hunter only just a year ago when you sat two seats down from me and introduced yourself. “Aura,” you said, with your lovely accent. And then you proceeded to teach us all how to pronounce it, “OW-RA or AH-RA, whatever works,” you explained, shrugging your shoulders and flashing that huge, open-mouthed smile of yours. “I will be friends with her,” I thought to myself. How easily such friendships begin—sensibilities shared, kindred spirits, kismet.

-- We weep and mourn and still these many days later the disbelief remains. I knew you for only a year, but in that year we formed a lifetime friendship, and oh, how eager we were to race on ahead to more days of writing and sharing work, to first novels, and to building and planning out our literary lives. I still store up things to tell you, out of habit really. And I find myself remembering even the most benign of moments I spent with you—our trips to Book Court, searching for books and making endless book recommendations to each other. Or the subway rides to and from class when, distracted by our constant chatter, we would get on the train in the wrong direction, miles from our intended destination, but secretly grateful for the chance to spend more time talking, analyzing, dreaming and laughing together. I have been walking over the Brooklyn Bridge too, missing you and the walks we took together. Do you remember? We would sometimes get so excited about our conversation or an idea that we’d stop, turn to each other and launch into a full-on discussion, waving arms, nodding heads, laughing, until it would dawn on one of us that if we didn’t keep moving we’d be late for class. I see you next to me on those walks with your big smile. How much you loved getting up and out of the city, above it all. And always you’d instruct me, “Looooook, Van-ey-ssa, loooook how beautiful,” you’d say and we’d stop and pause to do just that—looking at, and loving, the way the spring sunshine flashed and shone on the water.

-- I have learned in your death—my first lesson in tragic loss—that life in all its beauty and joys is so very fragile. It’s so often said, a dreaded cliché, but it’s easy to get mired down in the stuff of life and to forget our frailty, our mortality. A walk taken, a good sentence written, a great novel read. Is it proper to say I take comfort in these more than before? Is that fair? For you cannot have these simple things, and I weep not only for my own loss, but also for yours—for the aspects of life, of your life, that you can no longer relish, the rewards you cannot reap from a day’s work, the loving wife you can no longer be, the mother you will not become, and the brilliant stories and novel you now cannot finish.

-- Last week I held my friend’s six-day old baby (Scarlett, Aug. 14). I held her for close to an hour, thinking of you and wondering at the new life in my arms as she tried to focus on my face, eyes gently opening and closing, and as she struggled to get her tiny hand wrapped around my finger. A new joy amidst all this loss. But that’s how it goes, no?

-- Aura, I can hear you in my mind, scolding me for over-thinking something (a trait we both shared), urging me to let go of a worry, an anxiety, “Oh, Vanessa, no, no, no. Do not suffer.” I can hear your laughter too and the wonderful way you had of saying “Wichita.” These memories are like flashcards, fleeting, they emerge and I fight to hold on to each one before a day’s tasks take hold.

-- The morning of the day you died, I peered down Henry Street toward your home. I was happy to be back in Brooklyn after a summer of traveling, but I felt your absence even if you were only then a country away. “But Brooklyn is not the same without Aura here,” I found myself thinking, taking comfort in the fact that we’d see each other soon in the famed Mexico City I so longed to know because you loved it and because it belonged to you and you to it. But I was selfish too, wanting the summer to end so the new school year could begin and so that we could launch into another splendid year filled with subway rides in the wrong direction, trips to Book Court, walks over the Brooklyn Bridge—another year full of sharing work, hopes, worries and laughter.

-- As the fall takes hold, I am trying to settle into school work and writing to be done, and I like to think of you just ten blocks down the street, me awaiting our late-afternoon phone call (¡hola!) during which we’d share our latest work or worries, but most of all offer encouragement and support. I’d like to keep this idea of you, dear Aura, down the street, poised at your writing desk, at the beginning of some remarkable story.

Muchos besos,

Vanessa

I would run into Aura before class at a coffee shop or sitting in one of Hunter’s institutional waiting areas. Her smile always wide, echoing the warmth of her character. We were both trying to write. Endeavoring to improve, awash in a painful humility. We compared our feelings of uncertainty, the fear, what an awful pile of work it all was. This certainly helped our budding friendship. We knew it was hard. I had lived in another country and wallowed in inarticulateness. I knew what it meant to wrap your mind and tongue around an alien grammar and vocabulary. I was of course impressed that Aura was pursuing a creative writing program in a second language. I was impressed by her courage and her talent. Mostly though I was impressed by what a lovely person she was. Friendly, humble, easy to be around, a beautiful natural laugh. I was always happy to see her. Happy that we were classmates. Certain that we would become better friends.

Now we all feel robbed. Hit over the head. All explanations cheat. We all say hello and goodbye every day with little feeling, little recognition, in denial of our mortality. The loss of Aura seems like the cheapest, meanest reminder. I still hope to be Aura’s friend. The how is what I am trying to work out. I am hoping we can all try to keep her here with us in some unknown way. That will have to take the place of goodbye.

The car to the airport showed up early. When I went outside Frank and Aura were standing near the trunk rearranging their luggage and laughing brightly, Frank in blue jeans and Aura in a black Oaxaqueña blouse embroidered with flowers. It was a brilliant July day, and, as we escaped afternoon traffic, there was a sense of buoyancy in the air all the way to the airport. It was a stroke of luck that I had ended up on their flight, and at the check-in counter Frank conspired to get upgrades to first class, or at least rearrange our seats, before we went to the airline lounge, where we drank Champagne, elated to be spending the entire summer in Mexico. As we talked and joked and teased each other the love between the two of them was palpable and lighthearted, captivating everything near—as it always did— in the strength of its orbit. The devotion of their spirits.

At the gate the agent told Frank he could only manage one upgrade to first class, and Frank immediately gave Aura his ticket. They had travel rituals, and back in coach, after our picked-over dinner trays were cleared away, as the beverage cart made it way down the aisle, Frank produced a tiny pink flask of tequila, just large enough for two drinks.

“What do you think Aura had for dinner?” He asked, inventing dishes that would have pleased her, until the flight attendant spotted the flask. She made her way over officiously to explain airline policy, and threaten to confiscate it, but Frank’s boyish charms and frequent flier status managed to dissuade her. “I bet Aura is drinking wine, with her real food,” he said, after she had gone. “Out of a glass. Hey why doesn’t she come back here to visit us?”

Eventually she did appear, staying with us until the lights of Mexico City appeared in the basin below, and the plane began its decent past the mountains. She left us then, Frank peering after her as she went back to the front of the plane, her beautiful black eyes smiling, shining on.

I'm not sure I've ever met another woman who managed to be so immensely smart and bookish and also so warm. I wish I could have had more time with her, which also means I wish I could have had the chance to become a little bit more like her. She seemed so joyful and dedicated, made fiction writing seem full of bold possibility, and I was very much looking forward to one day reading the novel she was working on. All I knew was that it (at least in part) involved Mexican psychoanalysts in Paris in the 70's, and that it was thus going to be like nothing else I'd read, and that also it was likely to be something like Aura, and therefore, clearly, great. A few days before I heard of her death I read a wonderful essay she'd written in the Boston Review about Cesar Aira and Roberto Bolaño; I went right out to get the books she discussed so that I could read them under her spell. Of course her thoughts made the novels sparkle and open up far more vividly--I would have missed half the humor--than they would have without her, and without the thought of getting to talk about them with her. I don't know how she managed to teach, study, write and be so kind all at the same time; to know there was such a person is at least a small if selfish comfort alongside the terrible tragedy that she didn't get to live longer. We'll all miss her.

Aura was my closest friend for three years that fortunately now seem like a lifetime, yet I can’t say I had gotten to know her completely. We hadn’t arrived at that point in a long tight friendship in which the other’s behavior and reactions in certain situations start becoming predictable. She never stopped surprising me. She said the funniest things sometimes: that she’d like to give up everything and work at a theater’s box office, for instance. Her reasoning made perfect sense; she loved people watching (in fact, her stories demanded that she do it) and would have lots of time to read and write if all she had to do for a living was give people tickets for a show.

The typos abounding in e-mails had inspired her to come up with a simple code consisting of switching around the first and second consonants of a given noun. The comical results often struck an accurate metaphor: Columbia became Locumbia, for instance, Locumbia implying both the Spanish words loco and cumbia, the upbeat musical genre. Thanks to this small displacement of letters our ordinary lives would take on the vivid colors of a cartoon in which she, as Raua (since her name has only one consonant), and I, as Nómica, were surrounded by characters such as our respective partners Kranf and Crube, and Bagy and Rauleana, our close friends and collaborators in the writing collective she instigated. Being with her guaranteed my out-of-the-ordinary enjoyment of whatever it was that we were doing, regardless of whether it was grueling or mundane: studying for our comprehensive exams at Butler Library, browsing at corny and stuffy overpriced wedding gowns for her at Saks Fifth Avenue, or being stuck in traffic with a stinking wet dog in the car for an hour and half coming back from Pennsylvania last June. At her funeral, I couldn’t help but think that she was the only person who could have made being there somewhat bearable.

She had the unusual habit of thanking me whenever we did something even slightly amusing together, like going to a movie, for instance. Now I regret not having thanked her more for spending her time with me. One of my favorite memories is of us in Coney Island last summer. She’d never been there so we decided to go on a blistering Sunday at the end of August. We were both grossed out a bit by the throngs of people at the beach and the raw chickens that a few people who were crabbing were dipping into the ocean. I could tell that, at some point down the line, Serpentina, a striking young woman who played a number of roles in the variety show, would end up in one of her stories. She thought as a fiction writer and I—hopelessly a poet—had vicarious pleasure in feeding her imagination. At the end of our visit we drank a beer along with a host of oddball characters at one of the bars there and made a vow to return every year.

Just when I had made up my mind about some trait of Aura’s, she’d do something that would force me to revise everything I’d ever thought of her. On a party for her 30th birthday at her house last April, for example, I was a few hours late to her & Frank’s apartment in Cobble Hill. I had offered to come over beforehand and cook a few batches of some Mexican meatballs I had found in one of Diane Kennedy’s cookbooks. Judging from her initial shyness in certain social situations, I thought she’d be anxious when guests started arriving and the food wasn’t even close to being ready. I couldn’t even say hi to people, my hands and t-shirt were covered in ground meat. She was still working on three or four dishes and hadn’t had a chance to shower yet. It wasn’t even my party and I was a nervous wreck. She instead walked into the bathroom for what seemed five minutes and came out looking radiant in a beautiful navy blue dress. Her hair was soaking wet and all the makeup she had on was dark red lipstick. She looked stunning and, better yet, was relaxed enough to have about thirty people over at her house and actually enjoy herself.

We would spend a significant part of the conversations we had on the train rides from Columbia to 14th Street—where we each parted ways, she would take the F train there and I, the L—to our split feelings toward academia and writing. We usually tried to maximize the time we spent together during the train ride regardless of how eager we were to get home and eat the dinners we were lucky to have Frank and Bruce prepare for us, respectively. Not switching to the express train on 96th Street could afford us some extra 10 or 15 minutes. (How the more precious they seem to me now.) In hindsight I realize that perhaps what tore at us both was that we came from a place where fiction writers and poets tend to be the best and often only critics, were the term “intellectual” has no Old World pompous whiff. As women brought up in Mexico we faced gender-related obstacles that we thought would fade when coming to the U.S. In different ways, we each had to come to terms with what we ignored about the confining place reserved for writers in this country. As Frank has written, Aura wasn’t only massively talented at writing; she was also a serious thinker. It is no coincidence that she devoted so much of her scholarly writing to Borges, a giant in both regards.

Parts of the conversation I had with her the last time I saw her on the evening of June 28 are still fresh on my mind. She had just finished teaching the course “Introduction to Hispanic Culture.” (I taught in the room next door, and since my class ended a few minutes earlier than hers, I’d overhear her talking to her students. This would needlessly embarrass her; she was bright and enthusiastic at teaching and her students seemed to appreciate this.) We had an unexpected pep talk, and I said to her that I had no doubt whatsoever that she’d become the writer she always wanted to become. She had to have known it for she was speaking in a voice more self-assured, more accepting of her contradictions, than I’d ever heard her speak in. I was certain then that Aura was coming into her own. As we said good-bye, I was secretly thrilled about what was to come: she and her writing were blooming, our friendship could only deepen.

One of the last things she wrote is the mysterious beginning of a story called “Are There Signs in Life?” I can’t but think back and look for signs of the impending darkness. One of the best moments in my life was when she and Frank were visiting in Pennsylvania in June. She and I went kayaking in the pond at the house. The oar was broken in half so we each had one the pieces. We couldn’t row together. As we began paddling we started going in circles. We laughed hysterically thinking about what the neighbors might be thinking of us fools. We figured we could only move forward if one of us did the rowing, so we took turns from then on. We must have been in there for 25 minutes at the most, but I’ll never forget floating there in the water with her, the glorious light illuminating the birches at the edge of the pond.

It’s hard to believe that she’s not around anymore. She was like that in life sometimes. You could never rely on whether she’d show up for something: she’d often take the wrong subway or lose her way in New York. She was always bustling, juggling, squeezing time for her many loves. I couldn’t take her for granted and I loved her all the more for that. Aura was extraordinary, as anyone at whom she ever smiled must have instantly realized.