Woes of the True Policeman

The clinic in Tijuana where Amalfitano took the AIDS test had a window that looked out onto a vacant lot. There, amid the rubble and the trash, under a blazing sun, was a stocky little man with a giant mustache who seemed to be the enterprising type and who was carefully assembling a kind of tent from a collection of sheets of cardboard. He looked like the red-bearded pirate from the Donald Duck cartoons, except that his skin and hair were very dark.

After Padilla let him know that he had the antibodies, Amalfitano decided to be tested, but in Tijuana rather than Santa Teresa, so there would be no chance of running into some university acquaintance. He told Isabel Aguilar and she decided to drive him there. They set out very early and made their way across a plain where everything was a deep yellow color, even the clouds and the stunted bushes scattered along the highway.

“At this time of day it’s all like that,” said Isabel, “the color of chicken broth. Then the earth shakes itself awake and the yellow vanishes.”

They had breakfast in Cananea and then they continued on to Santa Ana, Caborca, Sonoyta, and San Luis, where they exited the state of Sonora and entered Baja California North. Along the way Isabel told him about a Texan who had once been in love with her. He was a kind of art dealer, introduced to her by an art professor. This happened after she had ended her relationship with the mechanic. The dealer looked like a boor in his cowboy boots, string tie, and Stetson, but he knew a fair bit about contemporary American art. The only problem was that she had taken a dislike to him, spooked as she was by her previous relationships.