It’s like some cheesy movie cliché—it’s like every cheesy movie cliché. Their eyes meet across a crowded room. His heart skips a beat. Fireworks explode. The earth shakes. He hears music, smells flowers, sizzles with a lightning bolt of love. The girl is lithe and lovely, whirling to the techno salsa beat as if her body is made of music. Hair like blond silk whips through the air; slender arms twirl overhead. A radiant smile lights up the room, and Jago’s heart. Then the strobe lights flash and go dark, the song changes, dancers flood the club floor, and she disappears behind a sea of bodies. Jago forgets her in a heartbeat. It’s like that for him: love, girls, beauty. He loves to love, falls hard and fast, gets distracted just as quickly. Sometimes it takes a month, sometimes a week, sometimes, like tonight, only a few minutes. Nothing pleases him more than parading through the streets of Juliaca with a beautiful girl on his arm, lying beside a warm body on the shores of Lago Titicaca, stroking an exquisite face in the moonlight.
