I ask the man when he last worked. His feet curl with toughness against the pavement, and I judge my own bare feet as weak. Oaxacan heat yanks the sweat out of me. He tells me about his career of slaughtering bulls with his hands and a large knife, every day. Of drinking a small amount of their blood each time. He once received hell from his daughter when he taught her daughters - his granddaughters - this ritual.
"Tiempo no es muy bien amigo," he said out of nowhere; time is not a very good friend. Everyone in the proximity laughs along with the faded twinkle in his eye. He smiles, turning away.
His wife says he hadn't worked for 20 years. His second oldest grandaughter interjects to explain that their concept of time was not exceptionally accurate. Everyone nods. No one attempts to correct the statement. (If indeed it was false)
He asks what the boards were for, and I said surfing. Nods. I don't elaborate, but list a few places I had been. More nods. We talk random stuff at low volumes, the heat receding slightly with the sun on a nameless corner of a nameless town. Everything turns grey blue. I leave.
Now the only one awake. Coffee spilling with every poor attempt to anticipate when and where the topes, potholes and road detritus will appear. Girl Talk slams out at volume, working in tandem with the coffee to keep the eyes open until a 3 am trade-off for the wheel saves me at a shimmering PEMEX. I wake up in the back at 6 am, and watch Ixtapalapa's over and underpasses zoom by in the fluorescent lights and the roar of commuter traffic. A 9 am meeting looms.
Tiempo no es muy bien amigo. I laugh lightly through the exhaustion.
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