Fifteen days later we went back to Silverado. One afternoon I ran into John on the street and I told him that if he kept calling me and bothering me I would kill him. John apologized and said that he'd fallen in love with me, but that he wasn't in love with me anymore and he wouldn't call me again. Around that time, I weighed one hundred and ten pounds and I wasn't losing or gaining weight and my mother was happy. She had a steady relationship with the engineer and they were even talking about getting married, although my mother never sounded as if she meant it. She opened a shop of Mexican handicrafts with a friend in Laguna Beach, and the business didn't bring in much money but it wasn't losing much either, and the social life it gave her was exactly what she wanted. A year after Mr. Schwartz's death Mrs. Schwartz got sick and had to be admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles. The next day I went to see her and she was asleep. The hospital was downtown, on Wilshire Boulevard, near MacArthur Park. My mother had to leave and I wanted to stay and wait until Mrs. Schwartz woke up. The problem was the car, because if my mother left and I didn't, who would take me back to Silverado? After a long discussion in the hallway, my mother said she would come pick me up between nine and ten that night, and if for some unexpected reason she was held up, she would call me at the hospital. Before she left she made me promise that I wouldn't budge. I don't know how much time I spent in Mrs. Schwartz's hospital room. I ate at the hospital cafeteria and struck up a conversation with a nurse. The nurse's name was Rosario Álvarez and she was born in Mexico City. I asked her what life was like in Los Angeles and she said that it was different every day, that sometimes it could be very good and sometimes very bad, but if you worked hard you could get ahead. I asked her how long it had been since she was in Mexico. Too long, she said, I don't have the money to be nostalgic. Then I bought a paper and went back up to Mrs. Schwartz's room. I sat next to the window and looked up the museum and movie listings in the paper. There was a movie on Alvarado Street that I suddenly felt like seeing. It had been a long time since I'd been to the movies and Alvarado Street wasn't far from the hospital. And yet, when I was outside the ticket window I didn't feel like it anymore and I kept walking. Everyone says that Los Angeles isn't a pedestrian city. I walked along Pico Boulevard to Valencia and then turned left and walked along Valencia back to Wilshire Boulevard, a two-hour walk in all, without hurrying, stopping in front of buildings that might have seemed uninteresting or carefully watching the flow of traffic. At ten my mother came back from Laguna Beach and we left. The second time I went to see Mrs. Schwartz, she didn't recognize me. I asked the nurse whether she'd had any visitors. The nurse said that an older woman had come to see her that morning and had left just before I got there. This time I came in the Nissan, because my mother and the engineer, who had just arrived, had taken his car to Laguna Beach. According to the nurse I talked to, Mrs. Schwartz was fading fast. I ate at the hospital and sat in the room for a while, thinking, until six. Then I got in the Nissan and went for a drive around Los Angeles. In the glove compartment there was a map that I consulted carefully before I turned the key in the ignition. Then I started the car and left the hospital. I know I passed the Civic Center, the Music Center, the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. Then I headed for Echo Park and I merged into traffic on Sunset Boulevard. I don't know how long I was driving. All I know is that I never got out of the Nissan and that in Beverly Hills I got off Highway 101 and meandered along on side roads until I got to Santa Monica. There I got on Interstate 10, or the Santa Monica Freeway, and I headed back downtown, then took Highway 11, passing Wilshire Boulevard, although I couldn't turn off until farther up, at Third Street. When I got back to the hospital it was ten at night and Mrs. Schwartz had died. I was going to ask whether she was alone when she died but then I decided not to ask anything. The body wasn't in the room anymore. I sat next to the window for a while, breathing and recovering from my trip to Santa Monica. A nurse came in and asked me whether I was related to Mrs. Schwartz and what I was doing there. I told her that I was a friend and I was just trying to calm down, that was all. She asked me whether I was calm yet. I said yes. Then I got up and left. I got to Silverado at three in the morning.
A month later my mother married the engineer. The wedding was in Laguna Beach and the engineer's children were there, as well as one of my brothers and the friends my mother had made in California. They lived in Silverado for a while and then my mother sold the shop in Laguna Beach and they went to live in Guadalajara. For a while, I didn't want to leave Silverado. Without my mother, the house seemed much bigger and quieter and cooler than before. Mrs. Schwartz's house was empty for a while. In the afternoons I would get in the Nissan and go to a bar in town and have a coffee or a whiskey and reread some old novels whose plot I'd forgotten. At the bar I met a guy who worked for the Forest Service and we slept together. His name was Perry and he knew a few words of Spanish. One night Perry told me that my vagina had an unusual smell. I didn't answer and he thought he'd offended me. Have I offended you? he said, I'm sorry if I have. But I was thinking about other things, other faces (if it's possible to think about a face), and he hadn't offended me. Most of the time, however, I was alone. Each month there was a check for me from my mother at the bank and I spent my days cleaning the house, sweeping, mopping, going to the supermarket, cooking, washing the dishes, taking care of the yard. I didn't call anyone and the only calls I got were from my mother, and, once a week, from my father or one of my brothers. When I was in the mood, I would go to a bar in the afternoon, and when I wasn't in the mood I would stay home reading beside the window. If I raised my eyes I could see the Schwartzes' empty house from where I sat. One afternoon a car stopped in front of it and a man in a jacket and tie got out. He had keys. He went in and ten minutes later he came out again. He didn't look like a relative of the Schwartzes. A few days later two women and a man came back to visit the house again. When they left, one of the women put a sign out saying that the house was for sale. Then many days went by before anyone came to visit it, but one day at noon, while I was busy in the yard, I heard children shouting and I saw a couple in their thirties going into the house led by one of the women who'd been there before. I knew immediately that they would buy the house and right there in the yard, without taking off my gloves, standing there like a pillar of salt, I decided that the time had come for me to leave too. That night I listened to Debussy and thought about Mexico and then, I don't know why, I thought about my cat Zia and I ended up calling my mother and asking her to get me a job in Mexico City, any job. I told her I'd be leaving soon. A week later my mother and her new husband were in Silverado, and two days later, one Sunday night, I flew to Mexico City. My first job was at a gallery in the Zona Rosa. It didn't pay much, but the work wasn't hard. Then I started to work at a publishing house, the Fondo de Cultura Economica, in the English Philosophy division, and my work life was finally settled.