Chapter One

Chapter One


For eleven years an elderly man with a silver-knobbed cane visited Louise's grave with flowers. He came every Saturday with a plastic bucket, brush, cleaning fluids, and a fold-up canvas chair. He was always impeccably dressed for the occasion. A black blazer, white slacks. A bright red flower in his buttonhole drew attention to his snow-white hair.

The year before his death it was his habit to visit the cementerio at La Chacarita with his ten-year-old granddaughter. While he sat by Louise's grave fanning his face with his fedora the granddaughter would go and stand in line with her plastic bucket and the other mourners at the water taps.

He had his own car, but for this particular excursion Paul Schmidt favored the bus. The conductor helped him down the steps. He didn't experience any of the same uncertainty or hesitancy on the dance floor. He could always count on the same instruction, "Careful of the traffic, senor." With a dismissive grunt Schmidt would set off across the busy road for the flower stand on Coronel Diaz.

For someone with a huge deception at the center of his life, Schmidt prided himself on cultivating many small loyalties. That particular bus conductor, for instance. Another was the Paraguayan flower vendor from whom he always bought blue irises.

One Saturday morning a special flower of a competing vendor's display caught his eye-the bright yellow flower of broom-arousing in him an old memory. With some difficulty, as the bus was still moving, he stood out of his seat and stumbled past the knees of the woman sitting next to him. The bus lurched, and as his hands pawed at the dangling hand grips his cane