The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes

catches.”
    â€œHow do you know that?” she said with genuine amazement, genuine fondness.
    â€œI don’t like American cooking, but I do admire American culture—sports, movies, gringo literature.”
    â€œWillie Mays,” said the un-made-up woman, rolling her eyes up toward heaven. “It’s funny how someone who does things well never does them just for himself. It’s as if he did them for everyone.”
    â€œWho are you thinking of?” asked Dionisio, more and more ravished by this trou normand of a woman.
    â€œFaulkner. I’m thinking of William Faulkner. I’m thinking about how a single genius can save an entire culture.”
    â€œA writer can’t save anything. You’re mistaken there.”
    â€œNo, it’s you who are mistaken. Faulkner showed the southerners that the South could be something other than violence, racism, the Ku Klux Klan, prejudice, and rednecks.”
    â€œAll that came into your head from watching television?”
    â€œIt really does intrigue me. Do we watch television because things happen there, or do things happen so they can be seen on television?”
    He went on with the game. “Is Mexico poor because she’s underdeveloped, or is she underdeveloped because she’s poor?”
    Now it was her turn to laugh.
    â€œYou see, people used to watch Willie Mays play, and the next day they read the paper to make sure he’d played. Now you can see the information and the game at the same time. You don’t have to verify anything. That’s worrisome.”
    â€œYou mentioned Mexico,” she said, questioningly, after a moment in which she lowered her eyes, doubtful. “Are you Mexican?”
    Dionisio nodded affirmatively.
    â€œI love and don’t love your country,” said the woman with the gray eyes and the clouds crowning her honey hair. “I adopted a Mexican girl. The Mexican doctors who gave her to me didn’t tell me she had a serious heart problem. When I brought her here, I took her in for a routine checkup and was told that if she wasn’t operated on immediately she wouldn’t last another two weeks. Why didn’t they tell me that in Mexico?”
    â€œProbably so you wouldn’t change your mind and would go ahead with the adoption.”
    â€œBut she could have died, she could have … Oh, Mexican cruelty, the abuse, the indifference toward the poor—what they suffer. Your country is a horror.”
    â€œI’ll bet the girl’s pretty.”
    â€œVery pretty. I really love her. She’s going to live,” she said, her eyes transfigured, just before she disappeared. “She’s going to live…”
    Dionisio could only stare at the melted sherbet he’d had no time to eat; the charro genie, impatient to carry out his orders and disappear, had fired his pistol again, and a cute woman appeared with curly hair and a flat nose, nervous, jolly eyes, dimples, and capped teeth. She gave him a big smile, as if she were welcoming him onto a plane, school, or hotel. It was impossible to know what it meant—appearances are deceiving. Her features were so nondescript she could have been anything, even a bordello madam. She wore jogging clothes, a light-blue jacket and sweatpants. She never stopped talking, as if Dionisio’s presence were irrelevant to her compulsive discourse, which had neither beginning nor end and seemed directed to an ideal audience of infinitely patient or infinitely detached listeners.
    The salad appeared, accompanied by the waiter’s scornful gesture and his muttered censure: “Salad is eaten at the beginning.”
    â€œThink I should get a tattoo? There are two things I’ve never had. A tattoo and a lover. Think I’m too old for that?”
    â€œNo. You look as if you could be between thirty and—”
    â€œWhen you’re a kid, that’s when having tattoos is good. But now?