ROBERTO IN THE GARDEN

Mrs. Rachelina’s property was typical of the crumbling Latin aristocracies. A somewhat jumbled garden, unkempt, but practical—they ate the fruit—to the east of a nineteenth-century house which was large and mostly empty. The hallways were airy, long and much too wide, and the rooms made one feel small because of the lack of furniture. The rugs were Persian but worn, the lampshades were different sizes, the fireplace unused. It was a house where the money had run out, leaving its dying scent. Mrs. Rachelina was a reflection of this environment. She was beautiful in a severe way, a woman with her hands in the garden not only on Sundays, but every day and at no particular time, hands in the dirt not as affectation, but for quotidian use. Infamously tight with her checkbook, she was a pernicious bargainer. She ran the house, and if El Senor Rachelina were alive, it’d be the same because she’d always been this way, and if her husband’s death had any effect on her what…