Sara and Arthur once rented a porno film, though they didn't learn much. The film was set in a mental hospital, where doctors and nurses screwed the strapping young patients. They began to fast forward during the actual sex, though the storylines leading up weren't much better.

That has to be fake, Sara said.

It's not fake.

Come on. That would hurt.

It's not fake, Arthur told her.

They fondled each other under an authentic Mexican blanket. They were housesitting for a professor who was in Nicaragua with his Nicaraguan wife and half-Nicaraguan daughter. There were small Peruvian statues on the tables and expensive Oaxacan carpets, and Sara was terrified she would spill something or break something else.

I hope we don't get like this, she told Arthur.

The professor owned another house in Managua and was active in liberal politics. He had hardback books on indigenous peoples and old growth forests and bananas and corporate greed. Sometime later, they came across his IRS records filed in a milk crate; he had paid no taxes for years.