When the long oar dips, there are ripples. There is one—a circle, and it breeds, growing into a fallen bangle (on the water), then a plate. Now it is a hula-hoop and there are more ripples, coming together, joining. So the canal is a rectangular universe of ripples and oars and painted boats floating like leaves. This is a good thing to watch, even the trees, soaked at their roots and mossy, dragging on either side of the passage and sometimes finches flutter from branch to branch. You would think there is no direction, but there is a sense the tour guide in sneakers and striped tattered sweater reflects: that he knows what he is doing and it is obvious which water road to take. You can tell from his dark leathery face, his absent expression, the baseball cap a tilted afterthought on his head, that his mind is on another land. Maybe on a cockfight he wishes to bet on, a girl he wants to bed, a crying child in need of medicine (and in all cases, the tips you will give him are already spent). Che wanted to hire Mariachis to sing for them, but Maru said five hundred pesos was too much to pay. She was happy, she said, to watch the water and the trees and frighten the cold under a scratchy blanket.
         Che embraces Maru’s waist underneath the blanket, his fingers moving along her thick waist and hips round and fattened by pork rinds and salt tacos, Coca Cola. Sprite. He wonders, smelling the cream on her face, when Maru decided to manage his funds. She is his woman—so what? Now, he feels less than a man because she knows (when? how?) the truth of his pocket. That he is too poor to pay for Mariachis.
         And he would sing for her, if he could sing—he’d chose a ballad, perhaps and maybe then she would let him into her blouse and under things. He would feel more than her breasts, stiff hills underneath a bra and dress. Impenetrable! Like the expression of the tourist guide making ripples Maru is so glad to watch and touch with a brown finger, making new circles, making her spot on the water’s land.
         He will ask her to marry him, even though she does not let him touch her skin. Even though she knows the secret of his finances. He’ll ask her because she makes rice pudding without raisins and takes it to his toothless grandmother, who lives with Che and his family. And she washes the dishes with his mother underneath the open faucet in the garage because there is not enough room for a kitchen sink. And because her hips are fattened—she likes to drink Coca Cola straight from the bottle.
         There will be no engagement ring, but Che will promise her one in the future. Like his cousin Memo promised his wife, Chela. He has not gotten her one yet, but they already married in the church and had a party with Mariachis and chicken with chocolate sauce. Paper decorations hung from strings wrapped around branches and there was rum. If Maru had been his woman then, he would have sung her a drunken song, passionate with half-lidded eyes like men sing. Because he’s a man—twenty is already old if you want many children running around, learning how to fix car motors and recite the alphabet.
         Che will ask the tour guide to take him to the Island of the Dolls, which is not far from where they are now drifting. If the tour guide says there is an extra fee, Che will put him straight. He won’t even have to lift his hand from Maru’s fleshy waist. He will raise his head and say:
         The waters of Xochimilco I know like the palm of my hand. In all the years I rowed when I was a young boy, this was before I could come here to pay my own way (he’d remark in a confident tone)—I never charged extra for a compatriot. The gringos, I charged them two hundred, three hundred pesos more.
         And the tour guide will suck his teeth, angry to have been caught in a swindle, and paddle to the Island of Dolls, where an old man who doesn’t remember his own name, but likes visitors just the same, will welcome them to his home. A shack made of drift wood and fallen branches, a hotplate and a creaky bed, and his collection of lost dolls hanging by plastic necks from branches, leaning against rocks, nailed to shaky walls. Che does not know why the old man collects the dolls but understands he is crazy and that’s okay.
         Che thinks Maru would like that because she likes different things; things that show her there is a different world for every person. That is why she likes to glide past other boats in Xochimilco and why she watches soap operas on the television. He has never taken any other woman to this place—for him it is special. Special like the way tortillas and fresh whole beans taste together, or special in the way of Maru.
         He will take her there and they will wander around while the old man makes them coffee in a tin can and he will pull her closer, tighter and taste her face cream on their kisses. But now, he watches Maru watch the river and her eyes are dark—dark almost black. And he can see the ripples of the water inside them.

Trained in Fine Arts, Zett Aguado found her true calling three years ago when she began writing her first short story. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vestal Review, Painted Moon Review, Small Spiral Notebook,  Snow Monkey, Eclectica, Literary Potpourri, In & Out Magazine and The Vallarta Voice. She is the 2001 National Short Story Winner for Mad Dog Publishing. She has lived most of her life as an expatriate in one country or another, and has lived with her husband in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for almost two years.