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silver jewelry, junk jewelry, firecrackers, aprons, serapes, ice cream, soft drinks, and hot tacos stuffed with God only knows what kind of meat. And serapes.
    There was evident poverty, beggars with twisted limbs, sick children, stray mongrels, but there Page 15

    was a sense of great life and vitality, of enduring laughter. We found an empty bench. Meyer sat and saw everything, soaked it up, and smiled and smiled. And it was Meyer who spotted a little group on one of the diagonal paths, carrying purchases from the public market, walking toward the largest hotel that fronted on the zocalo, an old ornate stone and plaster structure with a sign proclaiming it as the Hotel Marques del Valle. There was a long, narrow roofed porch across the front of it, a couple of steps up from sidewalk level. Fat cement columns supported arches that held up the overhanging bulk of the ho tel. The porch was two tables wide and about thirty tables long, about half of them occupied, with white-coated waiters hustling drinks and food.
    It was a group of four young men and three girls. The college-age men were wearing faded Mexican work shirts, bleached khakis. Two of the men and one of the girls were barefoot, and the others wore Mexican sandals. The girls wore shorts with bright cotton Indian blouses, and the boys were extravagantly bearded, long-haired. This, as Meyer pointed out, was clear indication they had been in Mexico for a long time. The government had long since closed the border to what were called "heepees," so the shorn locks and whiskers had to be regrown south of the border.
    We got up and followed along. The waiters pushed two tables together for them. Meyer and I took a table about twenty feet from them, which was as close as we could get. The tempo of the public square was diminishing visibly. Shops were closing. It was siesta time, and not until two-thirty or three would the town begin to stir again. Only the serape salesmen along the sidewalk stayed in business, holding up the rough woven gaudy wools, trying to catch the tourist eye, the tourist interest. And a dirty big-eyed child roamed from table to tatile, trying dispiritedly to vend her "cheeeklets."
    The young seven were a closed circle, totally indifferent to everything and everyone around them, relating and responding to one another. Too many for any initial contact. So I looked at the menu. Meyer had to trust me. The waiter was very patient with my verbless Spanish, and I was equally patient with his rudimentary English. So I managed to find a good solution-chicken enchiladas covered with Chihuahua cheese and baked. He said they had no Dos Equis, but if we wanted a dark beer, Negro Modelo might please us. And it did, and we were into the second bottle before the enchiladas came, bubbling hot in oval steel dishes.
    After some thoughtful mastication, tempered with the dark beer, Meyer said, "Offhand, what are the immigration laws?"
    "I'll just leave you here, and you can take your chances."
    "I'll send you a card every Christmas."
    Another student couple had appeared, a huge boy with a small head and a sensitive delicate face, and the blond silky hair and beard style of the Christus. He was with a small wiry black girl with a skin tone like dusty slate, sporting an African blouse and a tall tightly kinked African hairstyle through which she had bleached several startling amber-gold streaks.
    "Wish me luck," I told Meyer, and with beer in hand went ambling over to their table. There was one extra chair.
    "Join you for a couple of minutes?"
    They looked up at me with a quick, identical wariness, and looked away again, and kept talking Page 16

    as if I was not there. Bad tactics. Should have asked the stranger to go away.
    So I sat down, smiling blandly, and cut into their conversation, saying, "I am not on vacation, kids. I am not looking for fun and games. I am not drunk. I am not fuzz."
    She stared at me with a hot, dark-eyed hostility and said, "Did you catch the