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she’s been addressed but still detesting the source—“when I know what team you’re on.”
    â€œThat’s what I’ve been trying to find out. Forever.”
    â€œAnswer one question.”
    â€œShoot.”
    â€œWhat are you doing here?”
    â€œI don’t know. I guess I just happened to be here. Think of me as an involuntary volunteer, how’s that? Like an eyeblink.”
    â€œYou better not waste my time this morning,” she says.
    â€œOr what?”
    â€œYou think this is a joke?”
    â€œI think you can’t speak the language of the people you’re trying to help. Some might say that’s the joke. And yet you think you’re their leader.”
    She bites her lower lip, and I think she might cry. I immediately feel bad. She says, “I’m not sure I like you,” turns, and strides off.
    I try to keep pace. Don’t know why. I might as well tell her I’m dying, call her
brother
, and twitch at every step. Might as well ask her for three dollars. Anyway, I just might.
    I wanted to afford the happy crankster the same respect she doesn’t give me, or anyone, but I just added him to a long list of people with whom the next encounter, whenever it happens, will be awkward; I’ll end up apologizing, not out of fault or even misinterpretation but a need to clean the slate, as in, “Before we’d ever met, Mr. Crankster, sir, there were giant unclaimed sins between us.”
    It will be an attempt to repair the weathered, spindly, immemorial rope bridge strung between us time-bound mammals. It will be saying
sorry
for a life lived—not ours, mine or his, but Ours. That’s it: Sorry about this story to which you and I indelibly belong. Simple contrition that we’ve had to cross paths in the first place under thisTaking fate and physics and luck and all that shit and trying to claim it. A secular, interpersonal Yom Kippur.
    Just atone for the blown deal and move on to the next apology.
    We’re alone behind the church in the mission garden beneath an old adobe cloister, restored, you can see, very recently. Vines of ivy branch and climb along the wall. Gardenias and orderly patches of impatiens and petunias line the walkway. It’s a rainbow of petals, touched or kissed by some ineffable spirit that we hope came from the labor of the faithful but that probably had more to do with the tax-free designs of the well-endowed.
    â€œI’m sorry about that back there,” I say.
    â€œDon’t fuck with me,” she says, squatting down to a stack of orange leaflets on the ground. They read, AMNISTÍA POR TODOS. UNIDOS VOTAREMOS. SOMOS AMERICANOS .
    â€œWell,” she says, “are they right, Mr. Translator?”
    â€œ
Sí
,” I say. “
Es
A-OK.”
    â€œNow,” she says, not missing a beat, “what I want you to do is take each of these leaflets and fold them like this.”
    She holds one out in front of me. All that you can see on the face of the leaflet is Che Guevara’s tilted beret: the overused visage, the cliché for the cause. I copy the motion exactly, looking off at the church, folding it in half once and then once again. I hand it over and she nods but doesn’t move. I know she won’t let it rest. She has enough safety and enough time to expect perfection in her life, even in its most minute and elementary details.
    She says, “Try again.”
    â€œI’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”
    â€œWe’ll see.”
    â€œYes,” I say. “
Puedo hacer eso. Un perro puede
.”
    â€œWe need them ready in an hour,” she says. “There will be people at the rally who are in-betweeners. Curiosity seekers. Some will be swayed to our side when they see the passion of the
gente
.”
    â€œThe people.”
    â€œOthers will pick up the banner after a speech that’ll move them, or that they can identify with. Some will