Lucas decides to return to Buenos Aires

Lucas Pereyra’s decision to return to Buenos Aires ends his attempt to turn longing into a new life in Montevideo. After a day spent moving between an imagined city and an uncertain present, he accepts that escape to Brazil will not resolve what has happened; a moment of unexpected kindness from Enzo Arredondo helps make the choice legible to him.

The city imagined and encountered

Lucas arrives with a mental map of Montevideo assembled from a few memories and the videos Magalí Guerra Zabala has sent him. Avenida 18 de Julio is the spine of that map, linking places he knows by name—the bank district, La Pasiva, the plazas, and Enzo’s home—to a city he has largely experienced through distance. He recognizes that he has been in love both with Guerra and with the city where she lives, while admitting that much of this Montevideo was invented. The actual streets and the imagined city overlap, but they are not the same.

As he walks, ordinary details become charged with his private associations. A familiar internet series, music, and Guerra’s videos make the avenue feel intimate; a handbill advertising tattoos and piercings turns his thoughts toward her genital piercing, a subject they had never discussed in their emails. He keeps the handbill in his jacket pocket. Later, at Plaza Independencia, the Palacio Salvo recalls a record cover Guerra had sent him and draws his attention toward the Radisson Montevideo Victoria Plaza Hotel. His route is repeatedly redirected by memory and desire, so that walking through the city becomes a way of pursuing the imagined life he has attached to it.

The same layering of literature and geography appears in Cordón, where Lucas recognizes the University of the Republic and connects the street to a scene by Onetti. The city offers him real places, but he approaches them through the books, images, and messages that have already shaped his expectations. That tension helps explain why leaving is not simply a change of destination: he is also relinquishing the fantasy that the city can make his longing into a life.

From possibility to recognition

At an earlier point in the day, Lucas had felt ready to give himself over to its movement. He was on his way to meet Guerra and had taken precautions before going to the bank, where he planned to keep his money in the zipped inner pocket of his jacket. Yet after the events that leave him disoriented, possibility becomes paralysis. Standing at a street corner, he imagines several routes: going to the Radisson and perhaps jumping from a high floor, sleeping there until he can decide what to do, or taking the money in his pocket and escaping to Brazil. He cannot make sense of the immediate past, including the possibility that Guerra was the person who had handed him over. The future appears to him as a set of choices that all end badly.

The decisive change comes not through a new plan but through an emotional release. At Enzo’s home, Lucas showers beneath water that begins cold and gradually warms. He thinks of Guerra embracing him and telling him that he does her good, and of the way he protected her against his body as they walked. Then he begins to cry, leaning against the tiles, trying to muffle his sobs and biting his arm. He recalls other people crying, among them Guerra and her friend, and recognizes that affection—not only grief—has brought him to tears.

In that moment, his thoughts widen beyond Guerra. He feels Catalina’s love, remembers Maiko clinging to his neck when he does not want to leave, and registers Enzo’s hospitality, made tangible by the clean blue towel. Lucas reflects that being kicked makes a person wary, as if nobody is on his side; being treated well can lower that guard and undo him. The kindness does not erase the day’s uncertainty, but it gives the confusion a human counterweight. His conclusion is direct: he has to return to Buenos Aires.

Departure and its cost

After crying, Lucas dries himself and gets dressed. He describes his chest as cleared, though taking a deep breath hurts his left ribs. The decision therefore brings emotional relief without restoring him physically or making the experience harmless. His body retains the cost of what has happened even as his mind settles on a destination.

The departure is preceded by a farewell to Enzo that has already spent its words. Lucas forgets his ukulele and taps on Enzo’s window; Enzo lets him back in, and they go up and down again without speaking. When Enzo opens the street door, Lucas pats him on the back and wishes him luck with the biter. The awkward return for the forgotten instrument, followed by the wordless goodbye, gives the parting its subdued, worn-out character.

Lucas is among the last passengers to board the boat. Its spotless carpets prompt passengers to put on gauze shoe covers, and the rows of travelers make the vessel feel crowded with people whose journeys continue alongside his own. He finds four empty seats at the back and sits down because he needs to be still. His side hurts badly. Without his backpack, he has no paracetamol from the blister pack he normally carries, and he runs through the practical losses represented by his stolen belongings: he will have to cancel his Visa card and replace his identity document, health-insurance card, transit card, and driver’s license.

In his jacket pockets, however, he finds sand and a candy from that afternoon. He unwraps and chews the dulce de leche caramel; the wrapper bears the name Zabala and the image of an eighteenth-century man with a long powdered wig and curled mustache, whom Lucas identifies through Wikipedia as Montevideo’s founder. This small remnant of the day travels with him as he leaves. Its sweetness is distant rather than triumphant: the city he is departing remains present in an ordinary object, even as he turns back toward Buenos Aires.

The meaning of the return

The return is not presented as a clean resolution of Lucas’s attachments. He has been deeply moved by Guerra and refuses to dismiss the affection she showed him, but he also recognizes his love for Catalina and Maiko and the importance of Enzo’s welcome. His departure follows the recognition that these bonds cannot be reduced to a single romantic escape or replaced by an imagined fresh start in Brazil.

The movement from Montevideo’s streets to the shower and then to the boat gives the decision its shape. At first, the city seems to confirm Lucas’s private fantasy because every street, video, song, and landmark can be folded into it. His disorientation exposes the fragility of that construction; the shower scene brings his attention back to the people whose care he has actually experienced. Boarding the boat does not settle every uncertainty, but it turns the recognition into action: Lucas leaves, carrying the day’s hurt, the residue of the city, and a clearer sense of the relationships that still claim him.