Summary

The narrator begins this section of the book with the comment that she “could walk through hours like doorways in the middle of the night, if only the middle of the night would last for hours” (21). She narrates the journey back to the cheap motel where she is staying, referring to how the middle of the night is the only relatively cool time of day, and how “nothing explains why [she] did what [she] did” (22). This perhaps includes her choice, before arriving in Nicaragua, to convert all her U.S. dollars into local currency (cordobas) despite knowing that virtually every business would demand the former, and refuse the latter (of which, she says, she has “tens of thousands” (24)). This is why, she says, she is in such a cheap motel – and also why she is unable to pay for transport to...