Where I'm Calling From

and added them to the water, which had started to boil. He put chorizo sausage in the pot. After that, he dropped peppercorns into the boiling water and sprinkled in some chili powder. Then came the olive oil. He opened a big can of tomato sauce and poured that in. He added cloves of garlic, some slices of white bread, salt, and lemon juice. He opened another can—it was hominy—and poured that in the pot, too. He put it all in, and then he turned the heat down and put a lid on the pot.
    I watched him. I sat there shaking while Alfredo stood at the stove making menudo, talking—I didn’t have any idea what he was saying—and, from time to time, he’d shake his head, or else start whistling to himself. Now and then people drifted into the kitchen for beer. But all the while Alfredo went on very seriously looking after his menudo. He could have been home, in Morelia, making menudo for his family on New Year’s day. People hung around in the kitchen for a while, joking, but Alfredo didn’t joke back when they kidded him about cooking menudo in the middle of the night. Pretty soon they left us alone. Finally, while Alfredo stood at the stove with a spoon in his hand, watching me, I got up slowly from the table. I walked out of the kitchen into the bathroom, and then opened another door off the bathroom to the spare room—where I lay down on the bed and fell asleep. When I woke it was midafternoon. The menudo was gone. The pot was in the sink, soaking. Those other people must have eaten it! They must have eaten it and grown calm. Everyone was gone, and the house was quiet.
    I never saw Alfredo more than once or twice afterward. After that night, our lives took us in separate directions. And those other people who were there—who knows where they went? I’ll probably die without ever tasting menudo. But who can say?
    Is this what it all comes down to then? A middle-aged man involved with his neighbor’s wife, linked to an angry ultimatum? What kind of destiny is that? A week, Oliver said. Three or four days now.
    A car passes outside with its lights on. The sky is turning gray, and I hear some birds starting up. I decide I can’t wait any longer. I can’t just sit here, doing nothing—that’s all there is to it. I can’t keep waiting. I’ve waited and waited and where’s it gotten me? Vicky’s alarm will go off soon, Beth will get up and dress for school, Amanda will wake up, too. The entire neighborhood.
    On the back porch I find some old jeans and a sweatshirt, and I change out of my pajamas. Then I put on my white canvas shoes—”wino” shoes, Alfredo would have called them. Alfredo, where are you?
    I go outside to the garage and find the rake and some lawn bags. By the time I get around to the front of the house with the rake, ready to begin, I feel I don’t have a choice in the matter any longer. It’s light out—light enough at any rate for what I have to do. And then, without thinking about it any more, I start to rake. I rake our yard, every inch of it. It’s important it be done right, too. I set the rake right down into the turf and pull hard. It must feel to the grass like it does whenever someone gives your hair a hard jerk.
    Now and then a car passes in the street and slows, but I don’t look up from my work. I know what the people in the cars must be thinking, but they’re dead wrong—they don’t know the half of it. How could they? I’m happy, raking.
    I finish our yard and put the bag out next to the curb. Then I begin next door on the Baxters’ yard. In a few minutes mrs Baxter comes out on her porch, wearing her bathrobe. I don’t acknowledge her. I’m not embarrassed, and I don’t want to appear unfriendly. I just want to keep on with what I’m doing.
    She doesn’t say anything for a while, and then she says, “Good morning, Mr. Hughes. How are you this morning?”
    I stop what I’m doing and run my arm across my forehead. “I’ll be through in a little while,” I say. “I hope you don’t mind.”
    “We don’t mind,” mrs Baxter says. “Go right ahead, I guess.” I see Mr. Baxter standing in the doorway behind her. He’s already dressed for work in his slacks and sports coat and tie. But he doesn’t venture on to the porch. Then mrs Baxter turns and looks at Mr. Baxter, who shrugs.
    It’s okay, I’ve finished here anyway. There are other yards, more important yards for that matter. I kneel, and, taking a grip low down on the rake handle, I pull the