mexico, part ii

in Todos Santos we stay in a huge poured cement house with mismatched linens and doors that slam. in every room there is a dead bug on its back. some with wings, some without. one night, clutching tequila and limes in plastic tumblers, all of us gather to peer over a particularly many-legged one and try to decide if it is a cockroach or not.

it is.

the waves sheer feet from the beach. the noise is so intense we are often startled from sleep trying to decide if there is thunder outside or not. the moon is waxing while we are there. the pale reach of it is cool and dusty like fluorescent bulbs. one night i rise from the bed to see if we had left a light on and instead got an eyeful of moonlight in an instant when the curtains groped into the room on a breeze.

we buy tortillas by the two dozen, stagger out of the bodegas delirious with joy and open the damp brown paper parcels on the ride home. the road to the house is so bad we have to let our jaws go slack so our teeth don't cracks and slam into each other over the ruts.

in the afternoons everyone separates like a fraying rope. some to verandas to torque the cracked and dusty plastic chairs on back legs and regard the tide. some to those deep and disoriented naps the seaside breaks across the day; waking crease-faced and bleary at strangely lit early evening hours.

some days we realize we haven't eaten enough and catch ourselves looking around, baffled, with our shirts on backwards and our hairpins falling out. we grate large blocks of soft cheese over the little corn tortillas, push them around in a wide, scratched aluminum skillet. the stove, four gaping and sooty burners sunk into the concrete counter, hisses solemnly when we spin the sticky dials. there is no pilot light, only that clandestine smell of gas blooming in the air. if we are too slow at ticking the butane lighter across the burners, a howl of blue light and flames swoop and swallow our arms briefly, the hair on our forearms singeing, fronds of ash pale and curled against our skin.

on the fourth day we buy oranges from the bed of a pickup truck, the sign is written in pink and green chalk and has curled at the corners from the damp air. we buy ten kilos of fruit in a crackling plastic net sleeve and try to count out our coins without looking too baffled. sometimes the denominations snag in our brains, decimal points and conversions leaping about and tangling. in the end, sheepishly, we hand over bills of inappropriate size and ready our palms for a rain of change in tiny coins. this jumps and rattles in the car. some of the oranges escape the bag and go knocking forwards at backwards as we jerk home.

the oranges are dusty, perfectly round and heavy. green and gray patches are streaked over their sides. so much juice comes out of them we grow suspicious. surely so much could not be contained in such a small vessel? we drink some, peer at the folding juicer, put our glasses down, pick them up, squint into the cloudy depths, drink some more and shake our heads. the seeds are enormous