The rainy season begins in Mexico.  The vegetation is everywhere, greens and grows.  The Wracks stands in front of the foreign students’ office of the University.   He has acquired a house to rent and needs to find 2 or three roommates.   He waits outside the office on the stone abutment that even in the tropics, is cool to the touch.   In the tropics, they are built from stone because it lasts, doesn’t burn, and insulates well.

The first person he encounters has sandy blond hair, is about five feet nine inches in height, and dresses in wranglers’ cargo pants with a clean linen shirt and Sperry topsider shoes.   He must be of the upper class so the Wracks approach him.  

Are you a student here asks the Wracks.   Would you like to rent a room in a house close to campus?

Yes, I would say the blond.   My name is Mr. Madera and do I get my choice of rooms?  

Yes you do says the Wracks, here is the address.   See you there

Mr. Madera smiles, turns like an automaton, and enters the foreign student’s office.  I have business he says

Next up is a tall man with black hair and a big nose.   He dresses in casual clothes unlike a local in the tropics and wears black socks.   He must be from the east coast of the U.S.    Would you like to rent a room in a new house close to campus, asks the Wracks.

Yes, I would say the tall student with bushy black hair.   My name is Mr. White.  

Here is the address says the Wracks.  See you soon.

They are the roommates for the first year.   And so, it goes.   The year begins

Mr. White is a jet setter.   He likes to go out twice a week to Mexican discothèques.   He dresses up, and in a shirt open to reveal his chest, he takes a taxi and leaves till late at night.   The wracks can not understand how he passes his classes.   Learning science is hard.  Learning science in a foreign language is harder.  His room is meticulously kept clean and ordered and he hires a housemaid to clean his room and the shared bathroom once a week. 

Mr. Madera is an athlete.   He has been chosen for the varsity water polo team at the university and goes to the campus pool three times a week from four to seven o’clock.  He studies until two o’clock at night and even later and lines up his coffee cups on the stairway rail for everyone to see.   They must be a badge of courage.   He has little need of sleep, and his schedule keeps the Wracks in awe.   Girlfriends from the United States fly in to see him and he has a Mexican girlfriend too who obtains the exams for him to study that he does not share.   He seems like an all-American, upper-class, success story in the making and the Wracks envy him until…

The Wracks sleeps a lot and sleeps hard but he dreams in the middle of the night that Mr. Madera is standing over him in a gold priest robe with a chalice and beginning a mass and the Wracks wakes up.  No one is there and it is two o’clock at night the wracks look outside of his room and Mr. Madera’s door is closed but a light shine outward from the space between the door and the floor.  The Wracks makes certain that the door in his room is functional and he checks it, locks it, and goes back to bed.  

The Wracks gets up early and goes to class.  He has a Mr. Coffee coffee maker in his room that is promptly broken so he goes to instant Mexican coffee.   Mr. Madera is up making his ethereal meal of fried egg on bimbo bread three or more times a day.  Mr. White goes out to eat breakfast every day.   The year goes on and time flies and the night becomes dark and finals in the first block occur.  The Wracks are up late making instant coffee with a traveling water boiler and smoking Mexican cigarettes.

Going up the stairs he spies Mr. Madera’s room light on.  A girlfriend from the United States is visiting him.  She is of average height, wears tight jeans, and has a good figure.  Her brown hair is cut short.  She darts out of Mr. Madera’s room in a towel and runs in the bathroom and turns on the shower.   The Wracks retreats to his room.  He is studying Gross Anatomy.  His wristwatch shows past eleven and he locks his door and goes to bed alone in the large bed that comes with the house.  Dreams begin.  In the Wracks’ dream, Mr. Madera’s girlfriend is in bed with him, like any young red-blooded American would and then he wakes up with a start because a woman is sitting on his face.  It is her, and she looks at him, and he looks at her, and Mr. Madera’s head looms over the bed and smiles and then he is asleep again.  He wakes up frightened and no one is in his room, just a vacant bed and a desk, and he peers outside and Mr. Madera’s room shows the light out the crack of the door.   Mr. White is gone for the night.  He double-checks the lock on his door, closes it, and goes to sleep. 

Mr. Madera says nothing about the incident and the Wracks wonders.   He comes home one day and Mr. Madera is buck naked on the floor, spreading his buttocks and saying, sodomy is an oath of fealty.  Mr. White is drinking a glass of baby formula and laughing and the Wracks until he gives up his house in June of next year and barricades his bedroom door every night with his desk and chair.  Sometimes late at night, Mr. Madera heads out the front door and visits the neighbors at two o’clock at night promptly returns in about an hour, and heads to his room.  Occasionally a pack of wild animals concentrate and growl and howl outside his room at night but he is dreaming.  One night before the barricade, the Wracks dream that a vampire is biting his neck and drinking his blood, and Mr. Madera is in his gold robe.  He wakes up in the morning and sees two fang marks on his neck.   The Wracks becomes a religious man and he lives in harmony with the others to survive

Mr. Faulkner was correct when he wrote the Great Gatsby novel.  The Great Gatsby says that the rich are different from you or me.   The Wracks secures his desk against the door, says a prayer and goes to bed.   I hope I transfer he thinks and he doesn’t know why.

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