Chapter 24: The Door Still Reads Salazar & Montalvo

The painter had finished the door by the time Valeria came.

He stood on the pavement with his brush, packing his tin of gold leaf, and he stepped aside to let her see.

SALAZAR & MONTALVO, in tall letters on the glass, every edge sharp, the R solid again.

Valeria stopped on the kerb with the baby in a sling against her chest.

"It looks new," she said.

"It is," said Inés, behind me. "Mostly."

Valeria's mother had stayed in the car.

Emilio had come on his bicycle, to be unnecessary, and he leaned on the railing with a paper cone of nuts.

My mother was upstairs, with the kettle.

It was an odd afternoon, and I had stopped trying to name it.

We all went into the studio, the three adults and the baby.

The young architects stood up from their desks, and one of them said "Doctora," and the other said nothing and blushed.

Valeria walked slowly down the big room, past the drawing boards and the scarred table.

She passed the model of the Zapopan stair under its glass lid.

She stopped at my own drawing table, which stood against the back wall by the window.

Its brass crank gleamed, and the compass lay in its place.

"You kept it by the sofa," she said.

"I moved the sofa."

She almost laughed.

Then she turned and held the baby out to Inés.

"Would you take her? My arm's gone."

Inés took her.

The baby stirred, found her thumb, and went still.

Valeria watched the two of them for a moment, and her face did something that I would think about for a long time.

It wasn't pain, and it wasn't envy.

It was the look of a woman setting down something heavy and finding her hands empty.

"I have to go," she said. "I'm on call at six."

"You're on leave," I said.

"I'm going back on a short shift. They need me. It's a simple valve."

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