Usually when I get back from town, Duval and I meet for a ‘walk-through’ of the building site. Unlike the sometimes inane task of prettifying window boxes for capricious city dwellers, renovating a house feels intensely satisfying – taking something tired and broken down and restoring form and function to it. I’ve decided that houses are not unlike the women I’ve become so tired of dealing with. Both need constant primping, painting and good lighting. When they’re brand new and prettily decorated everyone is in love with them but sooner or later they get old, their shine begins to fade, bits of them wear out and need replacing. Should they not be properly looked after they become susceptible to dry rot and during prolonged cold spells tend to freeze altogether.

As soon as they see us coming, the Mexicans stop work and break for lunch. Cans of soft drinks, thermoses of coffee and sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper all materialize from somewhere and are consumed in huddles, with only the occasional flicker of curiosity directed at me from under the brim of a hat. After my daily snoop is complete and I’m once again considered to be a safe distance away, the men trickle back into the cabins and the hammering and sawing begins afresh. Despite my friendly little waves, despite my jolly little ‘Buenas tardes’, my cheery ‘¡Hola!’ and perky ‘Hace un buen dia ¿no?’, in fact despite all other salutational plums that drop from my mouth courtesy of my language tapes, no fruit of friendship has been tossed my way in return. Nevertheless I am starting to recognize my crew, if not by name, if not by face, then at least by clothes. Working the drill is red baseball cap, who is not to be confused with the Bank of Texas T-shirt guy, currently digging up the ground, who in turn looks alarmingly similar to, though a little older than, denim jacket man, who was clearly separated at birth from black jeans, black shirt, gold bling, who I swear I once heard addressed by the name of Ramon. Despite such promising anthropological inroads, it’s hard not to merge these flashes of skin tones and features into one single airbrushed photofit of ‘Mexican worker’.

I don’t know why everyone’s so unfriendly towards me. Maybe they’re being relentlessly exploited by Duval, and hold me accountable, maybe they’re just naturally suspicious because I’m a foolish gringa, but if I didn’t think it fantastically unlikely, I’d say the real problem is that they’re scared of me.

10

Duval is harder to fathom.