Light glittered from the roof of the next building, a three-story brick apartment with wrought-iron balconies and fire escapes. A man was on his stomach with a gun barrel trained on Lupe. The barrel followed her as she approached.

When I was about eight years old visiting my grandaddy one summer in Tennessee, some friends of his took me fishing with them on the Obed River. They had their daughter, who was about my age, with them. I think her name was Beverly. She was sitting fishing next to me with her legs dangling in the water when a cottonmouth moccasin swam up alongside her chubby tanned calf. For one long moment I looked at the snake, knowing it was poisonous, without saying anything to the girl because I didn’t know what to do. Only daddies could protect us and save us. Quietly and slowly I got up and went to get her father. That’s the polite little girl I was, the one who waited for daddies to fix things.

“Lupe!” I screamed.

She glanced across the street without acknowledgment. At the sound of my voice, the man jumped up, moving away from the edge of the roof. Lupe kept walking and went inside Casa Guatemala without looking at me again. I ran over to the apartment building. The door was partially open, and I pushed my way in. There was a central staircase and I ran up to the second floor. It was deserted. Somewhere down the hall I could hear children in one of the back apartments. I hurried up the last flight of stairs to the top floor. I could smell dinners cooking. Onions boiling, fried meat. Cilantro. A ladder led up to the roof. I climbed it with my heart pounding, not tired or out of shape, but scared.

I pushed the trapdoor in the ceiling above the ladder. It stuck for an instant, then flopped open into the persimmon blaze of sunset. I was able to climb out on the roof. There were beer cans, a couple of broken dolls, a sagging laundry line, television antennas and some discarded rubbers. Another ladder hung over the side at the rear of the building. I saw a man in black pants and a white shirt running down the alley. He disappeared behind another building, and I didn’t see him again. Winded, I walked back over to the ledge in the front of the building, where I had first seen him.