Hypothermia

whole, irredeemable. During the four years of his first prison stint no one ever came to visit him, not once. Even so, he spent his time thinking of going home, about regaining his dignity by playing the role of the prodigal son.
    They let him out on an icy Friday in February. To better stage his dramatic return to the world of the living, Marcus spent his first two nights in a hotel, waiting to appear at his father’s church during Sunday services. In order to proclaim his rebirth as loudly as possible, he paid more than he could afford for a brand new blue suit. On Sunday he arrived at the church ahead of schedule, then hid out in a café, killing time so the whole congregation would be there to witness his return. As they were singing the opening hymns he came walking up the aisle with a slow, humble step dogged by the worshippers’ murmuring. He sat down just a few rows from the altar, in the pews opposite those occupied by his mother and brothers, his sisters-in-law, his older nephews, and the children born while he’d been away. Before the pastor appeared to deliver his sermon from the pulpit, one of the ushers was sent to escort Marcus out of the church.
    The front door to Guadalupe’s was still locked, so Marcus went round to the service entrance and knocked hard. He was already soaked in sweat and hadn’t even started working yet. It must have been about a year now since his last outbreak of perfectionism; he remembered painting his room canary yellow one day during an equally unpleasant heat wave. When he’d come back to the apartment with the can of paint, the young girl who was turning tricks for him at the time was asleep. He punched and slapped her awake and, in no time at all, had kicked her out with all her belongings. Then he cleaned the corners, emptied out the closet, pushed all the furniture into the center of the room, and covered it all with a sheet. He finished painting the four walls quickly and thought that he might continue with the kitchen. Instead, while the first coat dried, he got a chair out from under the sheet and sat down to do some bird-watching. The bedroom was impeccable for half the afternoon—floor mopped, furniture dusted, window washed—but then he didn’t have the strength to continue. All the satisfaction he required came from observing his neighbors’ squalor from a sterile vantage. He called the contractor to let him know he was ready to take on some new jobs.
    Although he wasn’t wearing a watch, he knew from the angle of the sun that it was no longer so early, so he knocked harder. The door opened abruptly. A young woman—slight shoulders, sinewy arms and legs—stared out at him with a confused mixture of surprise and fear. She said something to him in Spanish. Marcus thought he could probably pick her up off the ground with one hand. In English, he said that he had come to fix the electricity. She told him to come inside, that her husband would be right back. He stroked his scraggly beard, bit his lower lip, and crossed the threshold with professional resolve.
    He found the semidarkness inside the restaurant quite disorienting. A silent tremor shook the air and something moved among the furniture. The woman noticed that he was uneasy. It’s the kids, she told him, then shouted at them in a threatening voice. They instantly bolted for the stairs and he only managed to get a good look at the last one: about ten years old, barefoot, shorts, no shirt—a long scrawny torso like a plucked chicken. The woman screamed at them again and their laughter answered from a back room. Then she led Marcus to the dining room and showed him the fuse box. The cooks get here at eight-thirty, she said. See if you can fix the problem before then. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.
    The restaurant fit the typical TV image he’d gotten of Mexico: large windows, bright colors, mismatched tables. The relative familiarity of the place allowed him to concentrate on the job at hand. He dismantled the fuse box, checked the circuit, and quickly located the socket causing the short. Working very calmly, he isolated the zone, replaced the burned-out pieces, upgraded the wiring, and cleaned the insulators. Every so often he turned to look toward the door that led from the dining room to the house, with the hope of catching sight of some bird—any bird at all.
    As the restaurant owner didn’t return, and there was no one to keep an eye on him, he left the fuse box hanging open so that he