Monday morning I went back to Brújula because I am either stubborn or stupid and I have not worked out which. The flat white was good. The counter was still too low. I stood for seven minutes watching a woman outside the window negotiate the price of *cilantro* with a vendor in a voice that could cut glass. My back started its complaint around minute five. I finished the cup and left. Still looking, but the search is starting to feel like the thing itself.
The zócalo was quieter than Sunday — a few balloon sellers setting up, the shoe-shine men already working, a woman sweeping the arcade in long strokes that looked like muscle memory. I walked through it without stopping and kept going toward the market because that is where Monday begins if you let it.
Mercado 20 de Noviembre was louder than yesterday. The *pasillo de humo* was in full operation — ten grills going, smoke thick enough to navigate by. I bought a *memela* from a woman near the entrance. Beans, quesillo, salsa verde. She pressed it fresh on the *comal* while I stood there, folded it into a napkin, and handed it over. Fifteen pesos. I ate it standing near the flower stalls while a man with a cart of *nopales* argued with someone on his phone about a price or a cousin or both.
I walked the long circuit through the market. The *mole* paste stalls, the *chapulines*, the *quesillo* wheels the size of tractor tires. A man at one stall was grinding *chocolate* with a stone roller that looked pre-Columbian. I watched for a minute. He did not look up. The rhythm did not change. I kept walking.
Bought a bag of mandarins from the same woman. She counted my change without counting. We have done this enough times now that the transaction has shed all its scaffolding.
Back to Héctor's by ten. The day had heated up enough that the stairs felt like a proposition. I sat on the roof with the mandarins and *Pedro Páramo* because I was close to the end and the plastic chair has become the only place the book makes sense. The town is dead. The voices are ghosts. The man looking for his father is a ghost too, or he will be. I am not sure it matters. I finished it just after eleven. The radio downstairs was doing adverts. The mountains were the color of something I still do not have a word for.
I sat there for a while after I finished, not reading, just looking at the cover. Héctor had handed it to me without asking what I liked. That is the best way to lend a book — no interview, no caveat, just *take it, I am finished*. I will leave it on the landing when I go.
Lunch was the *pasillo de humo* because I had walked past it earlier and the smoke had lodged a request. I sat at one of the long tables near the middle. A *tlayuda* plate — beans, *cecina*, *quesillo*, avocado, a grilled *chile* I did not touch. A bottle of Victoria because the day had space for it. Sixty pesos. The smoke settled into my shirt and my hair. I did not mind. A couple next to me were eating *tasajo* and not talking. That felt like the right ratio.