Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli Page A

story, and, emboldened, I went on. I’d been in the Lebanese café for a few hours waiting for the rain to pass, half reading a scholarly edition of Rousseau’s Meditations, half studying a group of old men drinking coffee and silently playing dominos at the next table. I’d got stuck on a Rousseauian phrase, possibly more ingenious than rational, about how adversity is a schoolmistress whose teaching comes too late to be truly useful. Salvatore remembered that meditation, he said. I had a Pentax with me that I’d just picked up from one of the camera repair shops on the street and, more from boredom than real interest, I’d been taking photos of the old men. Slow-witted pupils of adversity, Salvatore concluded, thinking himself very clever. When it finally stopped raining, I took a last gulp of coffee, put a twenty-peso bill under the sugar bowl, and made my way to the door. (Passing the old men’s table, I overheard them speculating about the firmness of my ass.) I stopped in the doorway for a moment to look along the street: rain-soaked, Mexico City returns to being that valley that obsessed Cortés, Juan Zorrilla, and Velasco. I raised the camera, focused on a Rousseauian pedestrian who, at that moment, was jumping over a puddle, and shot.
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Note (Owen writes): “The public servant commonly suffers the abominable influence of the rain with Christian resignation and calmly prepares to edge his way meticulously from his home to the office, avoiding the mud and the potholes, doing balancing acts that make him sentimental and philosophical.”
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    Today I found Rousseau’s Meditations on my husband’s bedside table. He says he needs them for an article he’s going to write for an urban-planning magazine. I can’t imagine what relationship there might be between the two.
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    One night, Salvatore wanted to sleep with me. Do you know Inés Arredondo? I asked while he stroked one of my legs. Of course, he didn’t. I’m going to give you her best story to read. It’s called “The Shunammite Woman.” It’s about a young woman who goes to visit her uncle in the provinces. The uncle is dying and sends for her because he wants to bequeath her everything he owns. The young woman arrives in the town and her uncle immediately starts to improve. He forces her to marry him and to sleep in his sickbed. Thanks to the niece’s vital presence, the uncle gets better by the day, until he’s completely recovered. Salvatore caressed me; I, out of compassion, didn’t stop him. That night, after dinner, I went back to my apartment. Before going to sleep, I cried a little and masturbated, looking at Owen’s photo.
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    I took White the forged original. The truth is that with a little help from the villainous Moby, I had produced something worthy of being sold to an authentic collector. White promised to have an answer for me the following Monday and gave me the rest of the week off.
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    That bit about masturbating with a photo is disgusting, comments my husband. I’m annoyed, I defend myself like an insect and, so as not to go on listening to his reproach, I read aloud from a pamphlet the neighbor who breeds frogs and Madagascar cockroaches gave us: “When it is attacked or angered, the giant Madagascar cockroach flattens itself against the floor or ground and sharply expels the air in its respiratory passages, producing a disturbing snort, the aim of which is to frighten the aggressor.”
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    During my week off, Dakota and Moby were both staying in my apartment. I couldn’t cope with the two of them at once, so on Friday I decided to go to Philadelphia to visit Laura and Enea, and see if there might be an archive with documents about Owen in the Mexican consulate. The three of us had breakfast together and then I left. Moby would spend the entire weekend in his boxer shorts. Dakota would be occupying the bathtub the whole time. Perhaps, at some point on Saturday, Moby went into the bathroom and saw Dakota’s clothes scattered