“It’s interesting,” Ruiz said.
His Mexico City loft looked over a small park and a line of buildings at the far edge. One structure might have been an apartment house. It’s doors were painted a different color which in my frame of mind meant that there could never be a million or more doors in that one structure alone to carry all known hues. Ruiz remarked on it.
“It’s new,” he said. “The people who live there all come from different countries. The paint on each door is a color significant to those places, to their religions, manner of governance, and household gods.”
I watched people move in the park below. They seemed to have purpose, destination, and subject. Two men appeared to be arguing over something they’d just read on a phone. Several women and several men were seated in a circle, exchanging views on whatever topic. It might have the war in the north, maybe the war in the south, the tremendous building in the west, and the rumored troubles in the east from whose direction smoke would come on the hot days, or so Ruiz told me. Or subjects other than these. Whatever the case, sometimes they would smile or laugh or frown or smoke cigarettes or draw from bottles of water and then put the bottles down and then stub out their cigarettes and then go back to their exchanges, laughter, and other expressions.
Ruiz said, “Actually, it’s interesting.”
A man appeared. He followed a paved trail through the trees. The paved surface was was painted with shoe prints that were obviously the traced ambulations of a man. The man who’d come into view held the string of a strange helium balloon with a feathered decoration dangling and wafting beneath it. A monkey walked behind the balloon. It appeared to be a small member of the species, perhaps a capuchin. The animal would often stand and bat at the feathers of the balloon. The man, the balloon, and the monkey disappeared under the branches of a tree.
“Yes,” I said, turning back to Ruiz. “It’s interesting.”
“But I don’t know what it means,” Ruiz said. “Why you’re here. We know you’re on a bed, that you’re in a coma, and that I’m sitting by the sea side.”
“Yet I’m here,” I said. “We’re here and I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe this is how a person waits.”
Ruiz and I looked out over the park. An escaped balloon rose out of the trees. This one was a balloon without decoration, reblackd in hue, and it kept rising into the sky until it became a bird racing south. Tell me when you see it.
