DF

I cannot rent this room, the concierge tells me. When I ask Whyever not he says they rob the güeros frequently, that I look too obvious: he points to his eye and to me, then to the bag with this computer.

I'm fairly happy, though, and happier to sleep. I walk stairs to the ninth floor, where a naked bulb hangs some eighteen inches by a wire.

I hit the light, tie the computerstrap to a wrist and run the strap under my back. A moth lights on the window way up here above traffic, and refracted headlights cast across the ceiling from below.



Morning,

I leave the bag of clothes and grab a train to Librería Gandhi. It's closed, but the sun's still low, and I eat tamales beside some stand with some chocolate corn drink so thick it barely pours, almost a pudding or a porridge, and walk the damp streets. We must have had a light rain last night.

A woman sits crosslegged on the sidewalk, weatherburnt face, rotting teeth, legs doubled, a scanty rebozo beneath and around her.

I want to avert my eyes, but as she reaches towards me, lifting her hand, her arm, her mouth, her eyes, I see the baby nursing, wrapped in a woolen blanket. A large smooth, full perfectly formed breast pulls from its lips so softly my tongue presses against the roof of my mouth.

I'm back -- or forth

I'll explain.

I'm in a hotel on Benito Juárez off the Zócalo in Mexico City. I took a gamble, figured my money would last longer. I paid the ISP up front, hung the bike from a rafter in my dad's garage, and hiked up to catch a train to LAX. I'll wind up on my his door again; he'll wind up supporting this project another way, but six months later, so I won't worry when I write.

The trip -- everything officious at LAX, this plane a snug living room with almonds in the sky, the California grid computer chip grids in someone's rumpled motherboard below; then Tijuana streets some cattywampus termite-lust linguine, here sofas on the boulevard, there a bridge to zilch.

At Mexico City a thousand cabbies flood the airport. Nobody asks; the quickest grabs my bag. I grab it back. I do not own enough to pay someone to carry belongings, and no one carries my computer. The cabbie hollers something through the crowd, some explanation, I suspect, though it sounds like a complaint. He has waited because I'm a tourist, and now I won't produce him any money.

"Perdón."

Lo siento, I have been told, is sorry. But it translates as "I feel it," something I'm trying to not say in this crowd. The next cabbie grabs at my bags; I hoist one on my shoulder, hang the computerbag by a strap from my neck and plunge off towards the metro, at the end of the airport.

The second I hit the platform at the bottom, I find a slim young man beside me. He looks slightly shy behind thick, Ginsberg glasses. I notice he's in uniform.

"This is hard," he said. "You travel very far from home."

"I love to see all this." I adjust the army duffle square between my shoulders, cock my head to nod around its bulk. The boy's too young to be a cop. His friend, another cop, stands at the entrance looking with what seems distaste.

"I think I find it very strange to be far from my father. Somewhere I can't read the signs I don't know what to do."

"One makes mistakes. People usually forgive."

"Sometimes. But I would want someone to help. It must be very hard."

The train came. I waved and smiled patiently, perplexed at his attentions and only as the train pulled out noticed the sign behind him:

BULTAS GRANDES PROHIBIDAS
VIOLADORES SERAN MULTADOS