The next day, Esperanza went straight to her boss and gave her notice. The staff was pretty excited for her since the job in Houston was definitely a step up and things were looking good for Esperanza in the way of career opportunities.

As it turned out, she got a message before the end of that week from a certain Rubén out of her past. Lunch tomorrow? the message read. Sure, why not? Esperanza thought. Enough time had passed so that she could almost say she bore no hard feelings against her college sweetheart. She was doing all right for herself and she was certain he had seen her on the nightly news, so he knew it, too. Soon she would be getting out of New Mexico, broadening her horizons, freeing herself from the provincialism of her upbringing, and Rubßn with his blond wife and their three-bedroom house, coyote kid, dog, and minivan could just live happily ever after as far as she was concerned.

But as it turned out there was no more house in the Northeast Heights and no more minivan. Rubén was driving an old clunker, and Donna had split with their kid to Houston. (Apparently she too was intent on starting a new life, broadening her horizons, freeing herself from her provincial upbringing, and so on.)

“I have thought of calling you for a long time, Esperanza,” Rubén told her. “I have gone back to the Native-American Church and everytime I go pray at a meeting at one of the pueblos or go to the sweat lodge, I think of us, and how it coulda been.” He had put on a few pounds, well, more than a few, but to Esperanza, he still had that kind of animal magnetism she always felt toward him.

“You remember, vieja, when we used to go to the peyote meetings together, when we sweat together at the lodge back in the days when we were in college?” he asked, giving her a nudge with his elbow. He was holding a mug of beer in his hand, and she saw as he waved his arms with great animation that he didn’t spill any of it, but instead chugged it right down and grinned at her. No, he wasn’t drunk, just feeling good. It was good to see him again, to be back together, and she ordered herself another beer too.

Esperanza didn’t go back to work that day, but they ended up picking up where they left off, and to make a long story short, she didn’t get to Houston that year, either. Every two weeks she was right there with Rubén, at the teepee meetings of the Native-American Church, Rubén singing and drumming, keeping the fire, watching the “door,” teaching her the dos and don’ts of his interpretation of lodge “etiquette” and the role of women and the role of men and how they were not to be questioned. And she concluded as she had during their early days, why not?