“Leaving too soon…”

(shoulders high in the room, I whispered the words as they came to my mouth)

“Pardon?”

No, I didn’t say anything, I just… I’m just… (wondering aloud)

“When Walter Williams told me you were coming, I thought I would have the chance to get to know you a little bit… Stay…”

(Boingo! I told him there was something in the air, he told me to stop acting like Mr. Jones!) I’m so tired. (I lied) I haven’t slept (a wink… Words were flowing out, like endless rain, drifting through my open mind again, filling the cracks in my ceiling and… I was starting to worry about me. I thought I was cured.)

“Come on! I’ve made some guacamole, there’s sour cream, W.W., it’s how you call him?, brought every different type of Doritos…”

(I looked inside over her shoulder to the top table, then away into the falling rain, as if my decision depended on a precise calculation which did not include her wish, hoping maybe that a distant thunderbolt and lightning made the call. She had made an undisguisable move to make me stay. She must have rushed through the saloon, catching everyone’s eye, she somehow let me know that she knew that I liked Mexican food, she got completely exposed… I was trying to minimize it, so that she would not feel so vulnerable. As I would soon find out, there was no reason for that)

Ok then, I could get a taste of your guaca.

(She smiled, grabbed my hand and said to W.W., who came to see what was taking place between us.)

“Here, look who was leaving without paying the bill…”

(“Let him go! Bismillah”) (I could hear he screaming silently…)

I was just catching a view of the rain… But if there’s a bill to pay let’s make it worth it!

(W.W. took her other arm, laughed out loud because it was the one thing he hadn’t been trying. People looked at us kind of strange, as if they were suddenly abducted from Mexico City to Paris.) (France, not Texas…)