‘Benjamín,’ I say, a little exasperated, ‘look, you have to understand, I need to know they’re safe. At all times.’

‘I never let something bad happen to the children,’ he says fiercely and makes the sign of the cross. ‘I swear on the soul of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I will die for Jack and M-E.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘Yes, Alice?’ he petitions. ‘It is okay, yes? You let me take them to school again, you let little M-E watch television with me?’

I look at Benjamín, at those features I’ve come to know so well. The downward eyes, the wayward jaw. The peppershot of grey in his sideburns. Today he is wearing a baseball cap with cheap wrap-around sunglasses clamped above the peak. His pale denim shirt is meticulously pressed and snapped up to the last button and its precision almost makes me want to weep as well.

‘Benjamín . . .’ I turn up my hands helplessly.

‘And Duval,’ he persists, ‘he is a good man. You can trust him.’

I shake my head violently. ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I’m sorry but I can’t. Your countrymen, people who are desperate or in need of work, I can understand, but a man who makes his money exploiting them?’

This notion elicits an unusually elongated denial from Benjamín. ‘Noh, Alice,’ he repeats emphatically, ‘Duval does not take money!’

‘Oh, come on, what does he do it for if not for money?’

But Benjamín merely shakes his head. ‘Alice, it is not for me. He must tell you.’

‘Benjamín, I can’t let him go on doing this here,’ I plead, ‘not in Temerosa. I have to call the Border Patrol. I do.’

‘Noh, Alice, no! You must speak to Duval.’

‘Well, fine, here I am. I mean if he wants to talk to me, he knows where to find me.’

‘Yes, good,’ Benjamín says eagerly. ‘You must talk to him, you must wait for him to come back.’

‘What if he doesn’t?’

‘He will come, Alice, I swear to you.’

‘Well, okay, fine, but when?’ I press, then experience a moment of acute déjà vu as Benjamín rubs his jaw and stares into the middle distance.

‘Soon,’ he says, ‘he will come soon.’

19