Once a person becomes a pariah, they can’t live it down.  Either can the Wracks.  His father flew back with him to Mexico in case a legal imbroglio existed to get him back in school.  They play rough down here says Father Wracks.   A fellow student pokes his head in the room and says to the Wracks,

Es muy fuerte el, no le preocupes.

Licensario Aces is the superintendent of students and legal officer for the University.  The Wracks has an appointment with him today.  He waits outside the office in the stone room with the stone chairs and small windows and the electric bug zapper that is never turned off.   A pretty, tall woman who is probably part of the landed aristocracy ushers him into the lawyer’s office.   The lawyer beckons the Wracks to sit down.   He is a man of average height with white skin, and thick Indian hair cut short with a slight red tint to it.  His eyes are grey.

Hello, wracks.   I hear you had a problem with the police.  They wonder if I should let you back in the university and not expel you.   You might get into trouble again.   All the students at the university come from professional or upper-class families and they do not tolerate an outsider causing a commotion.   If you get into one more fistfight, you will expelled and escorted to the consulate.  Do you understand Mr. Wracker?  The only reason I let you back is because you have a near straight A average. 

Yes, I do licensure

I will admit you back to the university and you will start clinical respiratory medicine in one week.  Situate yourself appropriately and keep a low profile.   Do you understand Mr. Wracker?

Yes licensario, I will be on my best behavior.

The lawyer for the university and unquestionably one of Mexico’s elites stands up and offers his hand.  The Wracks shakes it.

Good luck and you will need it says the licensario.  Goodbye.

The Wracks are having a hard time finding accommodations.  No one will rent to him.  They run away saying, El es loco, sale.!  Finally, in the daily newspaper, they find an ad asking for a student to rent a room in the neighborhood next to the plaza.   His father says, take it, if no one will rent to you, your career here is over.  Father and son in a rented Volkswagen go to the house on the cobblestone street next to the Patria. The house is made of stone and has an eight-foot-high stone fence, and a steel garage door designed to stop high-power rifle bullets.  Father and son ring the bell and a small elderly lady with whitish hair that used to be blond, and grey eyes opens the door.

I hear you have a room for rent Madam.  Do you speak English?

My name is Ophelia and I am originally from Chicago. Would you like to see the room?

Yes, we would say the Wracks, can we come in? 

Yes, you can she says.

Ophelia has a small white poodle, daintily groomed by the local animal handler.  She sits on a cushion and wags her tail.   It is an adobe hut she says.   It is in the back of the property.  It has a bathroom adjoined to a single room.  It is five hundred pesos a month.  Do you want it?

Yes, I do says the Wracks.   When can I move in?

Anytime says Ophelia

Wracks and his father go back to the motel and get the luggage then go back to the house and move the Wracks in.  The unit has a single glass sliding door.  A small bed sits in a corner next to a small desk and chair.  There is electricity.   The bathroom is small and tiled and the water runs. The Wracks has a small tensor light he brought from the States, sits down and plugs it in and the semester begins.

At first, the Wracks couldn’t figure out why he would wake up in the morning with bite marks all over his body and a swollen face.  He finally realizes he is being bitten by reduviid beetles that are indigenous to southern Mexico.   These kissing beetles are known affectionately to the Mexicans as Cinche.  They hide in cracks and sit suspended upside down underneath the mattress of the bed.  The Wracks try mosquito netting but the maneuver is of no avail.   The black cockroach-like animals with a proboscis are smarter than he is.  He buys spray insecticide from the store and sprays his bed and floor before he goes to school but it is of no avail.   Either the bugs are immune to the poison or they keep coming.  The latch on the window sliding glass has a key but the mechanism is easy to pick and he can not believe his landlady is letting people in his room when he is at the university.  The best solution is to shower as soon as a person arises in the morning to wash the bug feces off your body.  The dreaded American trypanosomiasis or Mal de Chaga as it is called in Latin America transmits when the bug feces are rubbed into the bug bite by itching or scratching.  The infestation continues for a year until the Wracks secured habitation elsewhere with an American expatriate living in Mexico.

Ophelia periodically requests the Wracks to have coffee with her and talk.  She slides a coffee cup from the cupboard and shares a decanter with the Wracks.  She offers pasteurized crème in a ceramic pourer.  The Wracks notices she slides the same cup from the same place level to the table each time they meet.  The Wracks thinks she puts something in the coffee cup before, setting the cup in front of her and pouring coffee into it so the Wracks thinks the cup is clean and empty.  After all, she is the Landlord and the Wracks complies.  He pours some crème into the cup and only drinks half of it.  And so, it goes.   She speaks of all her luxurious Mexican friends, the help they have, and the marvelous life they live.  She says her friends have live-in maids who constantly wash vegetables and prepare food for them all day long.   In Mexico, the farmers use sewage to fertilize and the crops grow huge and fast but they are covered in Salmonella Bacteria.   It is wise never to eat a salad in Mexico unless the cook prepares it himself or herself.  She also talks about Juan Bond who sells chiclets on the street in a stand in front of the barrio.  The children scurry about and play with their toys and Juan Bond sells chiclets and Mexican cigarettes to the Wracks.  Juan Bond is the richest man in the city and he is small, Indian, with greying black hair, wearing thick cotton peasant clothes, and sporting a black mustache like Salvador Dali.  He smiles at the Wracks.   Ophelia also states that the city is getting too expensive to live and because she is a widow, she would like to move to Cuernavaca, would the Wracks like to come with her and share a mansion in this city?  When the Wracks tells her he is moving out, she swings a fist in an overhand right and tries to the Wracks in the head and he is finally gone to an apartment a mile away situated next to a tennis court.  The court is in Mexican clay, the finest surface in the world.

It is just hearsay, and conjecture at this point but the Mexican students tell the Wracks never to go to Cuernavaca because it is the city of the Vampires and the inhabitants bleed livestock and live on their blood.  Of course, the Wracks have never seen a vampire but from experience know they exist and now Ophelia is moving to Cuernavaca so she can be one of them.   The Wracks went to the house of justice in the city and told them about Ophelia but they told him politely to leave.  She has influential friends and the Wracks has left less than a year to go with life so strange, destination unknown.