Breakfast and lunch were one in the old Spanish kitchen which served as the Cantina. Afterward she walked into the patio, dallied over a cigarette in the bright, hot sun. She didn't want to leave this pleasant town. She didn't want to go to Santa Fe. Something held her back, perhaps the grim woman's final remark: “An unhealthy place.” But the woman had mentioned refugees. That held hope. She packed, bought the local papers. The New York ones hadn't caught up with her yet. The locals didn't mention Maxl's death. New York was far away. She took the three o'clock bus. It pushed over the highway, past the same scenic barrenness of yesterday's long train ride, endless flat brown land spotted with scrub trees, barren, low-lying mountains on the far horizons. There was but one town, a half hour out, a Mexican village where some passengers left the bus. In the next hour there was nothing but the barren land, occasionally a small brown mud house, twice filling-stations.
