All Roads Lead to Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith Page B

children called home early by their maker. She dies happily after all.
    The house felt more like home after I set up the cozy little library of fotonovelas on the built-in bedroom shelves, one of every current title, along with a huge number of back issues I’d found at a secondhand store.
    Diego finally returned that evening, filling the house back up with sunshine and dispelling any doubt about my decision to come to Mexico. I felt as comfortable and content with him as if we’d already lived together for months. Some men might be irked to come home and find an empty refrigerator and no food on the table, but Diego laughed out loud to see that I’d spent my day buying bargain reading material instead of groceries.
    â€œLet’s go out to eat,” he said, kissing the end of my nose.
    My Spanish might be rough, but that man definitely understood me.
    ***
    Puerto Vallarta was a quiet fishing village until the 1960s, when John Huston decided that Mismaloya, just north, would make a perfect setting for his film Night of the Iguana . Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton began their tempestuous relationship during the shooting. Dick bought Liz a house in Puerto Vallarta and then, more or less, tourists starting showing up. But while the population has expanded to about 250,000, the town center remains compact. There’s a small central square, which often has free entertainment and dancing on the weekends, and close by is the town’s loveliest church, Virgin of Guadalupe, with a huge lacey metal crown where you’d expect to find a steeple.
    Directly across from the square, extending north and south along the shore is the Malecón, the attractive beach walkway where folks go to see and be seen. Soon after my arrival Diego and I went for a stroll and a swim so that I could reacquaint myself with the sea. After a leisurely day, we went to deliver Sentido y Sensibilidad to the first couple in the group. I was curious if Sense and Sensibility , less popular with U.S. students than Pride and Prejudice , would be more appealing to Mexicans.
    On the bus ride there, Diego explained that he’d been friends since childhood with Salvador, whose wife Soledad was a perfect match for him. Both were sincere, hardworking, intelligent—and “ chiquititos .” Very, very small. Then he squeezed my hand and said, “Their house is simple.” His emphasis gave me pause. Many of the houses I’d seen outside of the tourist center struck me as simple, so clearly he wanted to prepare me for a bit more. Was he afraid that I would be uncomfortable or that I’d make his friends uncomfortable? Or both?
    Midway there we switched from bus to taxi, leaving behind the city’s main traffic artery. The houses became smaller, the neighborhoods more ragged, and the terrain increasingly steeper. Diego pointed out a left turn to make but when the taxi driver saw the street, he balked and let us out. What used to be a road had disintegrated into dust, chunks of concrete, and stones from the local river. From there, we walked.
    The small army of waiters and waitresses, taxi drivers, maids, clerks, and vendors who work in the tourist industry—that is where they live. Puerto Vallartans were around well before the crowds arrived in the wake of Taylor and Burton, but many local jobs now depend on tourism. Septiembre is jokingly dubbed “ sept-hambre ,” hambre meaning hunger, for the lean times between the summer and the high season beginning in November.
    Salvador and Soledad’s neighborhood wouldn’t be appearing on the cover of any tourist brochures, but all of the people with whom we exchanged a buenas noches as we passed looked at ease, lounging on plastic chairs in the dusty streets with friends and family, surrounded by miscellaneous dogs, enjoying the evening breeze and the music from competing stereos.
    Salvador greeted us just outside the door, and as we entered, introduced Soledad.