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was sleep.
    Longoria spoke quietly, looking down at the carpet as he talked. He thought he should remain humble before his boss. When he looked up he saw that Duarte’s eyes were wide open, the face of a child listening to a fantastic bedtime story.
    *   *   *
    â€œThis room is so sad, Guillermo. You should decorate it. Put something on the walls, a poster at least. It’s like a cave in here. It makes me sad to visit you. My bathroom has more personality than this.”
    Reginalda Peralta was the only woman Longoria had ever granted the privilege of staying overnight in his room. A twenty-three-year-old native of the port city of La Unión in El Salvador, she had long, curly black hair and full lips the color of red wine. She was frank and outspoken, a common trait among Salvadoran woman, Longoria believed, especially the ones from the big cities. They had a date every Saturday afternoon.
    On this particular Saturday, Reginalda was sitting next to him on the edge of his bed in a tight polyester black skirt and a frilly yellow rayon blouse. It was the awkward, obligatory intermission between the time they entered his apartment and the moment they started having sex. As usual, Longoria didn’t say much, though Reginalda felt compelled to fill these minutes with something resembling conversation. As she talked, her small feet tapped against the green linoleum.
    â€œDo you like my new shoes?” she asked, raising her black pumps into the air. “I bought them on Broadway. Just fifteen dollars. The shine never goes away, it’s permanent. Nice, huh?”
    When Longoria first met her, she had been wearing tennis shoes and a silly Taco Bell uniform covered with bean and avocado smudges. It was last summer, on a day when the hot, dry air had left Longoria feeling especially weary and spent. He was eating alone, as he always did, his face buried in the bland but inexpensive Mexican food before him. He looked up and saw a woman wearing an aquamarine shirt and a small rectangular name tag. Her curly hair was tucked under a purple baseball-style cap that had a yellow bell on the front, and she was wiping the tables in the outdoor dining area, stacking discarded cups and paper wrappers on a bright orange tray. It was late afternoon, a few hours past lunchtime, and Longoria was the only customer left.
    It was not his habit to talk to women he didn’t know, to begin a conversation out of thin air, but Reginalda intrigued him. She frowned as she scrubbed a rust-colored salsa stain from a plastic tabletop. Longoria looked at her lonely eyes, the hurried, resentful way she wiped the tables clean, and decided that she was as angry and disillusioned as he was. Life has not been fair to me, she seemed to be saying. I deserve better than this, I wasn’t meant to wash salsa off tables. He felt he instantly understood everything there was to know about her. His natural inhibitions were overwhelmed by the desire to talk to her, to reach out to her with words, and he said the first thing that came to his mind.
    â€œPeople should learn to throw away their own trash, don’t you think? It’s a bad habit people have, to leave their trash for someone else. Son unos maleducados. If people were more polite, if they were more considerate, you wouldn’t have to pick up after them.”
    Reginalda’s forlorn mouth broke into a wide smile. She dumped the trash in a plastic receptacle and looked briefly into his eyes.
    â€œYou’re right,” she said. “People are inconsiderate.”
    Longoria had the feeling that he had stumbled upon a great, unspoken truth. They talked for a few minutes, mostly about the sad state of a world filled with so many ill-mannered people, until Reginalda’s supervisor emerged from the kitchen and told her to stop goofing off and get back to work.
    Now, six months later, Longoria’s meetings with Reginalda followed a strict schedule, just like