A celebration breaks out in the Zócalo. Guitars play, people hug and kiss, some cry in joy.

“Will you go home now?” Keller asks Marisol.

“Only if you come with me,” she says.

—

“I want to take a shower,” she says when they get to her condo. “I’m a filthy mess.”

Keller waits on a sofa in the small living room. The condo is nice but not elaborate and has the barely lived-in look of the divorced person who spends little time at home. Through the thin walls, he can hear the water running. It finally stops and he thinks that she’ll come out, but it takes forever.

It’s worth the wait.

Marisol’s amber hair hangs over her bare shoulders, above a black negligee that shows tantalizing glimpses of the body underneath. “Shall we go to bed?”

Keller thought that she’d be tentative, he thought they both would be. But their bodies take over and she quickly lets him know that she wants him inside her, and when he is she’s surprisingly unladylike.

Later, her head on his shoulder, her hair splayed on his chest, Marisol says, “Well, you worry that the fantasy is going to be better than the actual event, but in this case…no.”

“You fantasized?” Keller asks.

“You didn’t?”

“I did.”

“I should hope so.”

A few minutes later Marisol sighs. “It’s been a long time.”

“Me, too.”

“No,” she says, “I meant since I’ve loved someone.”

And that’s it—una locura de amor, that’s what they have.

A crazy love.

—

“I’m looking at some interesting intel photos,” Taylor says over the phone, “of you at a demonstration. Some people aren’t happy, Art. They’re wondering whose side you’re on.”

“I don’t give a fuck who’s happy,” Keller says. “As for sides, I’m on my side.”

“Same old Keller.”

“Don’t call me anymore with this bullshit.”

He clicks off.

—

August in Mexico City is wet.

The rains usually come in the afternoon, and many of those afternoons find them in bed together, when her practice and his work allow. They meet at Marisol’s and make love as the rain spatters against the bedroom window, then they get up, make coffee, and wait for the shower to pass before venturing out.

The protests against the election continue during the recount. There are marches out to the airport, marches downtown—demonstrations break out in other parts of the country, including Marisol’s beloved Juárez.

Keller keeps up his surveillance of the Tapia money machine—it rarely varies as money finds its way to Los Pinos, or at least to its senior staff. And he keeps playing his dangerous game, socializing with the Tapias, provoking a response.

The Zetas don’t contact him again, but he figures that they’re doing what everyone else is doing—waiting for the election results, which might render their government problem moot.

Mexico is holding its collective breath, and then on August 28, the election commission releases the final count. By the slimmest of margins, virtually identical to the original results, Calderón is declared the winner and PAN retains Los Pinos.

New president, same party.

Marisol is devastated.

“They stole the election,” she tells Keller, citing the various allegations of fraud, voter intimidation, miscounts, and no-counts. “They stole it.”

The confirmation of the election results is also the confirmation of everything she’s feared about her country, that it’s hopelessly corrupt, that power will always protect power.

The rain keeps coming down.

Marisol becomes depressed, morose. Keller sees a person he didn’t know was in there—quiet, uncommunicative, remote. Her disappointment turns to bitterness, her bitterness to anger, and with no legitimate outlet to turn it on, she turns it on him.

She’s sure “his” government is pleased with the results, maybe even complicit. “His” politics are a little further to the right than hers, aren’t they? He’s a man (Keller pleads guilty), and no man can really be a feminist, can he? Does he have to hang his shirt on the bathroom hook, does he have to read her the headlines from the paper (she can read herself, can’t she?), can a North American man really understand a Mexican woman?

“My mother was Mexican,” Keller reminds her.

“Do I remind you of your mother?” she asks, deliberately taking the argument sideways.

“Not remotely.”

“Because I don’t care to be a mommy figure to—”

“Marisol?”

“You interrupted me.”

“Fuck off.” He takes a breath and then says, “I didn’t steal the election, if, in fact, it was stolen—”

“It was.”

“—so don’t take it out on me.”

Marisol knows she’s doing it. Knows it but can’t seem to stop doing it, and she’s not proud of herself for it. She did the same thing to her ex, blamed him for things that he couldn’t do anything about—for her own dissatisfaction, her own anger, her rage that life isn’t what it should be, when she doesn’t even know what it should be.

And Arturo—this beautiful, wonderful, loving man—is just so…North American. He’s not only a North American, he’s a North American law enforcement official, a drug cop who does God knows what and now somehow he’s come to embody her…

…anger.

She tries to be reasonable. “What I’m saying is that there are a thousand years of history here that you North Americans don’t comprehend and you come here stumbling around in ignorance and—”

“I came down here to—”

“Down here?” she asks. “Do you even hear the paternalism and condescension implied—”

“I meant ‘down’ as in ‘south.’ ”

“South of the border, down Mexico way.”

“Jesus Christ, Mari, stop being such a—”

“Bitch?” she asks. “That’s what a woman who stand up for her own opinions is, right?”

Keller walks out of the apartment. He’s angry about the election, too, and for reasons he can’t tell her.

The continuation of a PAN administration is going to force his hand vis-à-vis the Tapia money tube. He’ll have to do something—trust Aguilar or Vera—or finally take it to Taylor, who is going to reasonably ask why he wasn’t told sooner.

And pull you out of Mexico, Keller thinks.

And then what?

Do you ask Marisol to come with you? She loves her country, it wouldn’t be fair to ask her. So far, she’s put up with the secret part of his life. She’s smart, she senses that his job is more than “policy liaison,” and she doesn’t ask where he goes or what he does when he’s not with her.

But that can’t last; it’s no kind of life.

In a different life, he’d ask her to marry him, and he thinks she’d say yes. In a different life, he’d leave the agency and settle in Mexico, find something to do—a job in SEIDO, or a private security firm. Maybe he’d open a bookstore or a café.

But that would be a different life.

You’ve been at this for coming on two years now and you’re no closer to getting Barrera than you were when you started. Adán is more entrenched in power than he ever was.

And it’s more than that—the validated election result will free Barrera to come after you.

He’ll hunt you down in the States, or Mexico, or wherever you go, and it isn’t fair to ask Marisol to endure that.

You don’t do that to someone you love.

Keller knows what he should do, and knows that he should do it soon. The holidays will be here soon, and it’s cruel to break off a relationship then. It’s going to be cruel anyway—on both of them—but he doesn’t have a choice.

That night at her place in Condesa, he says, “Marisol, I want to tell you something.”

“I want to tell you something, too.” She walks him over to the sofa and helps him sit down. Then she gently sits down next to him. “I guess this isn’t the best time, but I want to tell you that I’ve moving.”

“Where?”

“Valverde,” Marisol says. “I’ve decided to go home.”