I open my eyes here. I’m jostled a bit by the sax of an acid jazz tune trickling from the speaker. I wave the monitor over my arm: stable. I get up. I walk down the hallway where I took my first steps. I exhale at the top of the stairs, remember how I went from none to three in a single stride. I don’t know what to do with this place, don’t know if I want to fill it up again. I go down, look into the living room, the dining room, go into the kitchen and open the refrigerator, longing to fit my whole body inside; I take out the pitcher of water and close the door again, pour myself an ice-cold glass. Probably the very glass I’d learned to drink with after my sippy-cup days. Ay. I could throw in the towel, sell the house, get out of here forever. I could do what people suggest: remodel again, turn it into a tourist posada with nothing native about it. I could live here. Ha. Of course I could.

My eyelids are heavy and I feel a tickle in my stomach. I giggle. For now, I’ll just let it be a summer night with no breeze rustling the banana fronds, the occasional dog barking in the distance, the slow midnight cruise of the patrol boats. I smoke more, feel dizzy. I take soft steps down the corridors, hear echoes, turn the corners, stare past the clutter in the bedrooms and into the edges of the scratched tiles. I want to see it all again, every smudge on the walls.

I search for something, some special thing, among the brushes and rollers and screen-frames, and focus on the surface of the desk in the back room. There are two typewriters I used in school, one mechanical and the other electric; old books I haven’t thrown out but know I’ll never read; a briefcase I haven’t opened because I remember it from when I was little – it must be full of insurance files, old policies. I can’t stand the thought of reading words like deductible, protection, clause, risk or conditions. The electrical typewriter still works. I look for some paper to type on. I used to pretend to be my mother’s secretary. Deep in the back of my mind is the rhythm of a school marching band I heard in the distance this morning, and I mimic the cadence of the lazy little trudge, the pace of parades on 20 July. I snicker, amused to remember it after all this time: that’s it, go on, a voice in my head, right foot first, then back, shake your hips and march, forward, back, shake your hips and march, shake your hips. I let out a burst of laughter in the emptiness of the ruined room.