"Well, anytime. I don't know the details. I suppose it will happen when she finishes packing. She said that sometime this week she will have the money to buy a bus ticket. Her mother wants her to be responsible and save the little she gets here and there."
"You have an estate and guards and she is supposed to be some type of a beggar. I don't understand any of this. I don't know why my aunt wants her in the states after so long. I don't understand how I'm supposed to get her over the border. She just said, 'Do it!' and gave me some money to come here."
"Watch your mouth. Be careful what you say to everyone. No tiene sentido? Maybe it has a sense not so obvious to you. Maybe it has sense or doesn't have sense. You know women, Guillermo. My wife's reasoning for things is why I stay separated from her. Maybe she's got good reason for sending her to the states. I wouldn't know."
"I thought that she did not have a job and that this was the primary reason for getting her to the US."
"She doesn't. She dabbles around from time to time, drinks, and runs around with the wrong types. I don't know many of the details, Guillermo. Well, I've got to get busy. Did you find the contact man, Ricardo, waiting for you at the shelter?"
"I don't understand. Contact for what? If you are needing a smuggler to get her across why isn't that done in Tijuana?"
"Enough. There is always more at work than meets the eye. You just need to get her to Ricardo."
"A transient?"
"A transient as rich as the US Treasury."
Sang Huin's backpack felt increasingly heavy and so he obtained a motel room in "Centro" T.J. It had a barren mattress without sheets or blankets. The window was nailed shut and there was no ventilation outside of what came around the cracks of the door and a draft that swept through a crack in the wall. There was no dresser and no furniture at all beyond a wooden chair. Outside the room at the far end of the hall were the water cooler and the shared bathroom. When the night clerk showed him this it baffled him why, when he was not given a key, that they needed to photocopy his passport and needed him to sign his name in a guest book.