The lobbies and hallways were tiled with black and white linoleum and lit with dim sconces; each
room contained an iron bedstead, a deal dresser, a sink. The windows were decked out with the same
jaundiced blinds that hung in Maria’s windows. I saw this room time and again at the movies, where
the camera seemed to be waiting for me in that empty room. My mother was out of work, and we
were living in one of the hotel’s vacancies. There was the whitewashed bedstead with a headboard
whose iron bars had a Romanesque curve, a chenille spread, nearly bald from my picking out the
threads, and a dish filled with pinion nuts on the deal dresser.

I loved the idleness of my life at that time. I was not bothered by having to play with other
children. There were no other children. I was deliriously alone and surrounded by adults. I would
follow the maid on her rounds, trailing from room to room, a small and avid voyeur with the shaky
hand-held camera of my attentiveness. Aside from my grandmother, my mother, and the maid, I saw
no women at the hotel, except for one - - in [her] room, over the end of the unmade bed, hung a
battered pair of white underpants. Its core stained a deep red. The image was biblical: a shroud with a
bloody mark. And the odor of the body was powerful. The maid opened the window, swabbed out the
sink, and left. I was impressed by the way the room seemed untouchable, the way I would later feel
seeing the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History. The next day, I saw that woman, wearing
men’s khaki pants and flannel shirt, standing in the lobby with my grandfather, who was dropping
quarters into her outstretched hand. After that, the window closes forever.