“They have their own police, just imagine. A lot of people come to take photos. A lot! People are obsessed with taking pictures of it. I give them directions to the place, but it’s not going to happen. If you do get in, let me know, I have a lot of interested folks.”

“I’m going to try, we’ll see,” said Gaspar, and he took a sip of cold Coca-Cola with two headache pills. It wasn’t as intense as he’d thought it would be. With the sun in his face the whole trip, he’d expected to see black flowers start growing in the blue sky, taking over everything. Instead, it was a slight, annoying pain. He could allay it with some food.

“Do you ever see them?”

“No, and they don’t shop here in town, either, they have servants who buy further up. My grandpa says that years ago they used to have parties and he’d see the cars, but no one stayed here. The patrón used to come around, before. He’d have some drinks, or buy fishing supplies. That was a long time ago. The patrón likes his drink.”

The patrón, thought Gaspar. My grandfather, the boss.

He had to go to the end of the main street and turn down the unpaved road. He decided to walk a bit first. Red sidewalks, curbs painted an even deeper red, shops selling ice, girls using umbrellas as parasols, the sky perpetually threatening a storm, white houses. Had his mother walked through that town? Had she bought something in its markets? Would anyone remember her if he asked? Once, Marita had told him, after sex—she said the most intense things after sex—that if he wanted to live he had to give up his dead, let them go. A lot of motorcycles, red earth. The soles of his sneakers were already totally red. The municipal farmers and artisans market was closed, like almost all the businesses. The hallowed siesta. There wasn’t much to see. He went back to the car and opened a fresh bottle of water before driving down the main avenue and reaching the dirt road to the house. On either side, dense jungle, full of green depths. No animals. He had to go to the house because they had summoned him. He had been repeating that to himself ever since he left, and he kept on repeating it to fight off sleep, hunger, emptiness.

They sought me out, here I am. I don’t know how to let go of the dead.

He’d expected abandonment, madmen and women sequestered in the jungle, moldy tapestries, overgrown plants, underbrush he’d have to hack through to reach the house. He passed a security cabin that was empty, but not abandoned—there was a steaming mate on the reception table and the radio was on—and then he stopped the car and took in the view of the house. He got out and walked in: the giant iron gates were open.