Summary

Another history lesson. The author describes how, during the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900’s, residents of El Paso were so interested in the events across the Rio Grande in Juarez that they would pay to watch them from a rooftop. “Twenty-five cents could buy you a viewing spot … and if fighting did not materialize you could ask for your money back” (132). The author comments on how “only a year before, the residents of both El Paso and Juarez had been brought to their rooftops to witness … the passage of Halley’s Comet” (133). The author also comments that relatives, including Frances, watched the comment from the other side of the world, in Spain, “beholding the comet as an incomprehensible streak of light” (133).

Beto takes the author to a nightclub, where he warns the author against looking at a particularly beautiful woman because...