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and laughing playfulness. Yet in his head, while meeting the demands of one who would be considered educated, he tried to assume the serious, impersonal, linear, and analytical tone of words that seemed to move around stiffly and awkwardly, unrestrained words that used up the entire dance floor of paper in twirling and rocking patterns and tried to polka when he needed them to waltz.
    He understood Spanish much more than he spoke it. And when he did speak it, Place’s Spanish was a curious mixture of school-taught Castilian Spanish in which he always enrolled to earn an easy A; home-spoken Chicano Spanish mixed with English and using words from both languages to form the bicultural expressions with which he was most familiar; and a spicing of Argentinean Spanish that he picked up during his year as a vagabond in Central and South America, where he settled for six months when he had left the United States in his late teens because a girlfriend had broken up with him. At that time, he had sworn off American women and decided his heavy heart needed a change. Going south, he had reasoned, would be like returning to an archetypal home and mother.
    He slowed his pace as he rehearsed his salutation and thought of the most tactful way to deliver his message. He looked down at the ground as he mumbled words and phrases, some of which did not sound right to him or sounded clumsy.
    The front door was as closed as it could be as it hung from its frame. There were streaks of light at the top, bottom, and sides of the door where it did not close flush. Place knocked carefully, and the door swayed lightly in many directions.
    A short, stout, dark man pulled the door in and staring at Place, jerked his head upward to ask with that gesture what his order of business was. His face was round, like a jack-o’-lantern’s and later when he smiled, Place would see that his teeth were just a little more substantial than the ones cut into a traditional jack-o’-lantern’s scary grin. His hair streaked forward and fell flat on his forehead as if an invisible cap smashed it down. His eyes were dark and big, like a frightened animal’s eyes, and the horizontal red lines that mapped the whites of them completed a ghastly and jaded expression.
    Place studied him carefully. He looked at the man and saw more than his moon-round face. He saw the many faces of the weary field workers he had seen as a boy. It was that once familiar expression of futility that never quite defeated a person like this, but poked and prodded at him just enough to scratch a festering and cynical indifference toward life.
    Place gulped slowly and began. “Buenas días. Cómo e—”
    The big-eyed man interrupted him curtly to correct, “¡No! No es día, es tarde. Y no es buena con día, es bueno. Buenos días o buenas tardes.”
    Place looked at him with surprise and managed a profound “Oh.” He gathered himself and tried again, this time telling himself to concentrate on what he had just learned and felt he should have already known. “Buenas tardes. ¿Cómo estás?” he started out safely, measuring each syllable metronomically.
    “Fine. Thank you,” the man answered with a shrilled accent that exuded effort in careful expression as much as response.
    Place soured his face in confusion. “Do you speak English?” he asked.
    “No. And you?”
    “Well, yes,” Place began, and then chuckled nervously as he realized the incipient conversation was not making sense.
    The dark man laughed at Place’s twisted face and offered, “I speak little bit English. Poquito.” And he held up a hand with his index finger and thumb narrowly separated to indicate his limited second language. “What you name?” the dark man asked.
    “Plácido Moreno,” Place replied with a fine, ornate accent. He reached out toward the man.
    “¿Plácido Moreno, eh? Salvador Campos. Mucho gusto.” He accepted Place’s smooth, clean hand with a scabrous and solid grip, and then he invited