Restorations

“What do you care if the papers don’t come? The minute they write down the news, it’s already history.”

“The gospel according to Victor Manuel Vásquez.”

Behind the old wooden counter, scarred like a grade-school desk, Victor smiles. He’s paying bills, glasses on the tip of his nose. In addition to newspapers and magazines, his shop carries tools, bolts of cloth, burlap sacks of coca leaves. He’ll stock anything that sells.

“Not that you don’t have a point,” adds John Case. “But if everyone thought like you, I’d be out of job.”

Case speaks Spanish in the easy tones of someone who learned the language without having to try, courtesy of his hippie Peace Corps parents, who dragged him around South America during his formative years. Fluency honed as a stringer covering the countries of his expat youth.