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.