Soft Mexican corridos, Xeroxed striped flags glued in the windows, the suspicious looks of the neighbors, the hide and seek game, the stairs that fly up and resist to come down, the loneliness of the space between the sidewalks, the so called street, the old woman chasing away the cats from her threshold:"fuera gatos nos los quiero ver mas en mi puerta", the stubbornness of the cats that come back in compliance with the woman’s subtext, the empty patios.

And the blue sky, the silver streets (Silver City is some miles to the west, nearer golden California), and Miraflores surrounding it all, the warm presence of a detached embrace.

Miraflores.

"Mr. Hachi Yamamoto is the man responsible for the activation of two cities in Germany, one in Iowa and a fourth in Costa Rica", asserted Mr. Johnson, the new aide to the Major in urban development, an enthusiastic young architect who wanted to bring the avant garde discussions on art and architecture to the board of architects of City Hall. "It is said that, now, Brunster really smiles", and Johnston smiled as well, a stupid gesture that the architects sitting around the table didn’t share nor celebrate. "We need to bring him to El Mirador".

Mr. Yamamoto was taking a steam bath in the outskirts of Kobe where he was visiting his lover, the one that for years saw in September from the 6th to the 15th. His cell phone rang. Though Mr. Yamamoto speaks a perfect English it was difficult for him to understand Johnson explaining where this city was, I don’t speak Spanish, though he remembered some words from his stay in Costa Rica, the strip club on Coronado street, that brunette and her deep voice, "agarrame, si no quieres que me muera aqui mismo". Hello, Mr. Yamamoto, are you still there? Her lips, "me muera". Mr. Yamamoto? Yes, I’ll go.

Mr. Yamammoto avoided the metallic glimmering of LA and took the next plane to Phoenix. The undulating landscape reminded him that the Spanish country was near, right there on, the other side.

Mr. Yamamoto’s plane arrived on time. On his way to the hotel, Mr Johnson gave him a quick description of El Mirador.

"What is the best time to meet the restof the team?"

"I need to be alone. Three days. I’ call you when I am ready."

Not quite convinced, and his anxiety catapulted, Mr. Johnson left the hotel as he tried to make up a collection of stories regarding Mr. Yamamoto’s whereabouts for the following days and his unorthodox methodology.

Yamamoto walked all over El Mirador for three days, night and day. He and his backpack. He talked with the locales, withthe women that cross the line to work on this side, with Pamela, a young filmmaker shooting a documentary on maquiladoras and pollution in the border. All sorts of people, the permanent standers of the sidewalks, the newly married. He was even asked to be the witness to a wedding when it was already too late to wait for the groom’s cousins.

Yamamoto followed the feet of women engaged in a race against the shadows of the cars. He sat by the man with the long, grayish beard, as a year-round Santa Claus that brings gifts and hidden treasures for everybody, the carts lined along the western sidewalk of the plaza. He stood behind the guard of the central plaza to read his secret annotations: "Dear, I love you!"

"Hello! How can I help you? The Montana? Turn right in the street lights, my pleasure."

"Dear, I saw you outside my window, your hands extended, offering me your naked breasts"

"Apurale apurale, oh mama, I love that dress, it will be the only quinceañera I’ll have in my life, mama, mama, if I am a princess I’ll touch the sky with my magic stick and it will rain lavender all over Chihuahua and everybody will know I am a woman now."

"Swirl, swirl little girl, that the sun will take some time before it vanishes behind the horizon!"

Yamamoto turned his eyes away from the blinding sun towards the dark mountains on Miraflores: La biblia es verdad leela printed on its side. Verdad, True? What could there be in the bible so important that that he doesn't get yet?

At the end of the third day, Yamamoto was exhausted; he even got a strange stomachache that pushed him back to his hotel for some hours.

The next morning, Yamamoto was found sound asleep on the pavement in a parking lot. The horn of the driver that used to park in that spot awaken him, he took again his backpack and kept on walking. Perhaps not fully awake, mesmerized by the lonely and silent morning, he heard a noise, a whispering, but there was nobody at sight.

It was then that he saw: the building of the Wells Fargo approached the green two story building on the opposite side of the street, home in the first floor of the Kansas Dance club. The windows in the fifth floor opened as if they were clapping their hands to some late show in the club.

Main Street squeezed dramatically, as an orange under a pressure of a skilled hand.

As if a mischievous kid were trapped under the parking lots, the San Antonio street burst, sliding along the electric poles.

A fairy play was staged inside the parkmeters, amid the cloudy setting of numbers, opaque glasses and steel."The gobblins no longer play in my garden!"

Buildings shouted demanding attention, hey, look at me, even if you hate me after that and don’t want to walk by me again!

A lamp coming out of a drain, as an innocent dinosaur waking up late in the morning, unaware that everybody known is gone.

Yamamoto sat down on the sidewalk for a while, and he saw the red balloon stuck in the street lamp. And he remembered his town, a village near Osaka.

On his way to City Hall, he walked across the newest bridge in town. He felt the center where all the bridge was present, the past and future, the forgotten kisses, the dirty tears of Guillermo, one of the workers that built the bridge, who fell in love with Mercedes, a mother of seven and three of her children helped her selling tacos to the workers.

As a frightened animal, the train slided along the tracks, towards Yamamamoto who opened his shirt and received it in his naked belly. The architect let the train travel in his quiescent body for a while.

It was time now to meet the Major and the architects.

Excited, too much perhaps, Yamamoto took a small breath and talked:

"Not only people move, but buildings as well, I have seen them walk, crawl, run, meet, and make love with other buildings, in parking lots, on the streets. Parks from the east and west side dance exotic dances under the clouds, on the mountains. Lamps come out of doors, others hide, stairways fly and trains can play inside of people.

Can’t you see? The city is a playground, a fair, a strippers club, an open library, a fantastic laboratory of our craziest dreams!"

Some of the technical staff whispered: the organic stuff. The Japanese was a keen listener: "That is a shortsighted take into what I am saying. Come and see!"

They all came out of city hall.

Four o’clock. A blinding sun. A balcony, an invitation to swim between the trees randomly lined along the street.

The Major and the architects saw the three-story building swim once; twice. This was its second attempt in a forty years lifetime. Some of the walls had watched on the TV with Veronica, that five-year old girl who moved with her stepfather and her mother in March 1975, a movie of swimmers in the seas of California, once that her parents quarreled. The following day Veronica and her mother left, but the room still remembers.

Splashhhhh, one, two, three, four, splashhh, two, three.

The Major applauded:Bravo! Bravo!. The architects, in silence.

On the opposite corner, on the top of a yellow two-story house, a woman hanged a white sheet on the rope. The wind mischievously played with the cloth and the building twisted as a small tornado, and Isabel raised her arms, laughing as the building tickled her legs.

The architects watched the scene in horror while the Major smiled.

One of the local architects, perhaps uncertain about the future of his job, did his own research and found out that the Japanese had been under psychological treatment when he was redesigning the city in Iowa.

He contacted one of the reporters at the local newspaper and Yamamoto didn’t have much life left. Neither did Johnson.

Yamamoto went back to the hotel and looked for the bible. He browsed through the words and while the images flew around his room. Yamamoto was surprised to see that he hadn’t say anything new.

© María Berns