somehow alive, though she left said picture. It seems that Jesus Christ and his apostles were so thoroughly engaged in their repast and the company they kept that they wouldn’t have time to watch the disgusting things Demetrio and his lover might do. Doña Rolanda’s act was quick and silent. She did ask permission to carry out what she considered “a liturgical and appropriate act,” in her words, and: “Excuse me,” and: “I won’t disturb you again.” The saints: displaced, as to The Last Supper—what can we say?: an act of carelessness and, indeed, partial guilt. Increasing guilt, because at night she heard the lovers’ savage grunts—sex maniacs! Her curiosity to hear somehow connected with her compulsion to count three times a day the incredible sum Demetrio had paid her. Guilt-ridden sex … within … hmm, only in part, for Mireya had turned The Last Supper to face the wall. She had done so as soon as she stripped. Demetrio, for his part, after observing the maneuver, smiled but also crossed himself. And now, finally, without further ado, they went at it; during those days of plenty they enjoyed each other only at night. Let’s imagine the agronomist at his job, from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon, and she locked in the room, getting all tangled up in ideas about how to finagle an almost fantastical felicity. She didn’t want to be seen, either by Doña Rolanda or the other lodgers; and as far as being observed by passersby on the street: well, as few as possible. Even when she went out to get provisions she tried to scurry back, racing at great speed. No breakfasts or dinners in the dining room: well done! They clearly came to a mutually convenient agreement. They clearly shared the dregs of guilt.
We could say that Mireya and Demetrio’s fears were growing by slathers. He knew that he couldn’t keep working in the orchard, that his Oaxacan chapter had come to an end, that he was on the verge of fleeing with his lover to an unknown locale. Life as a couple—guilt ridden! and, bountiful! and, sinuous! and all the rest. This was the mischief happenstance makes, the unexpected arrangement destiny had handed him out of the blue: to live perennial sex to the hilt: screwing in the morning, perhaps at noon, in the evening, and in the middle of the night, and the ever-turning wheel of continual consent: oh, undulating tenderness! the never-washed-nor-aired-out filth, and of course the most plausible theory always obviated: that this was perchance the devil at work, but God in turn was elbowing his way through. He mentioned all these avatars every day to Mireya, who, for her part, declared her mettle three times: I’ll go wherever you take me, and also more than three times added that if they stayed in Oaxaca things would go very badly. Just knowing that they would be looking for her because she’d left her job. Madam knew where her room was and, what was worse, her friend Luz Irene, though Mireya was sure she wouldn’t reveal a speck of information. Hence the most dreadful conjectures: the bodyguards, the police, the supposed furious efforts of the ongoing pursuit. And at any moment—poof! Demetrio told her he would go to the bank to withdraw his money so that they could run away. If only they could leave tomorrow! Money in hand for the down payment on their love nest. A nest far away, of course. They would be left in peace if they lived in some border town, but the crowning effort would be to cross over to the other side, by any means necessary and as soon as possible, and there find a new reality. Why don’t we go to your mother’s? You told me she lives in the south of the United States. You ought to introduce me to her. Demetrio had made a mistake by mentioning that migration, he hadn’t remembered that … When he told her … Who can know!? … And in that (induced) effort to dig up a name of the town where she lived—did you gather as much?—what would he invent to answer Mireya’s insistence? That it was near Laredo, Texas: with a difficult name to pronounce in English: a salad of letters all crammed together like sardines, that starts with an f, and at the end there’s a t and an h: a teensy place located … let’s see … about fifty