Could see out there a corner of “SAN JUAN DE PINOS” set in white shells on a turf bank beyond the shoulders of travelers arriving, walking up the path between the beds of hot-country flowers, the patches of halfhearted grass nursed by revolving sprinklers, between two giant palms with spikey gently bowed trunks and feather-duster tops sliced off by the waiting-room ceiling; and at the same time see the passengers behind him standing dry in the spraying water, walking through the pair of wet palm-trunks, stabbed through their chests now and then by the white arrow of a plane slanted up or down—the out-there stirred into the behind-him, mixing ahead-of with back-of, tomorrow’s reverberations with yesterday’s drums and yesterday’s dancers stomping the bare ground. And yesterday’s, “You seek, and you find, but what you find is not what you were seeking,” from somebody on the boat, he had already forgotten his name. The mirrored clock above the ticket counter confused him but his wrist watch (with its gold overlay of wife-daughter-death) showed a clear 11:44, told him again he had a long wait, brought back the hotel clerk and “Yes sir, there’s a non-stop flight to Miami at 13:37,”
