"What did I do?" Sam grew soft and weet once he had had his breakfast.

"Nothing. Amore." He was not at the moment to be blamed for the sins of the other billion-and-a-half of his persuasion. "Nothing."

Slap slap puff puff growl.

To stop Alfred's new kindness and her cop's old cruelty, Merilee got up and went for a walk. Her entourage followed and Sam was left to finish arrangement for the evening with Palenque's only cabdriver and pimp.

20. The world, as we were promised, is a wedding

Join now in the glad moment. Relax. At the midnight hour while bats circle the confectionery temples of Palenque and Mother Moon gladly lends her bluest light, ascend with Merilee and Sam the steepriser steps of the Temple of the Prince.

The bride wears Navaho earrings and a rayon huipil embroidered with paste pearls. In her hands she carries Steppenwolf. The groom looks dashing in a white manta shirt with brass buttons and a red sash to hold up his droopy drawers.

At the top a Maya curer of seventy-two years and no teeth, bolstered for the sacrilege by many chill beers the cabdriver has put in him, awaits the couple. 343 chickadees and a pigeon chirrup away and 3 unfortunately die of heart failure when Girl and Alfred come snooping around their wicker cages.

Down below, at the foot of the temple stairs, waits the cop. He is convinced the gringos are doing something bizarre up there, but since he makes no overtime he won't climb 192 steps to find out what. He considers making a wholesale arrest when the party descends.

Trailed by Alfred, Sam comes running down to borrow a box of matches to light the incense and the candles. He hurries back up, but Alfred remains with the policeman. After a bit he tries to hump the cop's leg and is given a kick and a lecture.

On the mezzanine, music plays from a transistor radio the cabbie pimp has thoughtfully provided. Sam is trying to figure out whether once he has paid for the wedding they will have enough pesos to buy gas to get back to California. Merilee beams at the toothless priest who is gumming the consonants in his chants, and suddenly through an access of amazing grace, she comprehends Maya. Candles flame, incense smells, Girl pants, chickadees are released and a pigcon and the entire entourage totters dizzily down 192 steps without casualty, preceded by the pimp carrying the still-chanting priest.

The wedding night is spent in a bower on the edge of a clearing in the jungle, Merilee and Sam and Girl and Alfred surrounded by oleanders and watched over by the spirit of the jade-eyed jaguar and most of the children of Palenque, who hang like exotic globed fruit in the trees above them. Mean temperature 89 degrees Farenheit. During the consummation Merilee meows and meows. Alfred and Girl hardly blink, the jaguar is not surprised, but the children find it strange and wonderful the way gringos do it, and their curiosity is satisfied.

21. At the swapout

Flat broke, they wired South Philadelphia and South San Angel and from various parents received just enough money to get them back across the border through T.J. The ghee had long since run out and the trip was a real sweetheart, Alfred humping away uselessly at Girl in the cramped back seat, Sam driving in silence and Merilee and Girl getting bad karma from everything. Girl finally bit Alfred's tail, but Merilee restrained herself.

They found a tiny bungalow on a treeless back street in Costa Mesa. Sam went back to blaming out "La Primavera" but it was already October in his blood and he couldn't concentrate. The new neighbors were friendlier than the old, convinced as they were that Sam was running a clandestine body shop in his garage. Everyone on Azulinda Avenue did something shady for a living, so the young Bollos at 1239A fit right in.

Delighted that her wayward daughter had at last settled into a life she could dig. Ada and her latest charlie sent more money. When it arrived, Merilee set out to become a proper wife.

With young Stefan, who had moved in with them, they set off for a Sunday afternoon swapout in the lot of an Anaheim drive-in. So much for Merilee to buy in order to transmogrify herself into a proper Samfrau. A refrigerator, a stove to replace the habachi she had been cooking on since the move to Costa Mesa, a huge musty Persian rug to sleep and meditate upon, and many other cosas. Trippy old hinges for doors, rubber plants which manufacture rubber-bands, a larger cage for Birdie. They flaired out of the lot at last with the dowery nearly spent, Sam quiet, and the TR sweating hard to pull Merilee's purchases along behind in the U-Haul she had conned a man into lending her.

At the top of an on ramp Sam paused and they all five gazed at the freeway below them. Wondering what possible cause for all the fishtailed bleepbleep boats to be zooming so fast toward the horizon. Five watching the flow and marveling that those below couldn't see what they could: if the river is us, we can go nowhere on it, we can only be