It was a dark and stormy night...somewhere, but not in Guadalajara that day last week when I went with El Arquitecto to inventory the doors at Salvage Guy’s. Two days previously, we had been there for 6 hours, doing who knows what, and had arranged to return to go to the Other Warehouse to look at (read “count”) the doors I’ve been purchasing in spates for three years.
Salvage Guy was futzing around on the patio when we arrived. Although he returned my “¿Como estás?” with a “Bien bien”, he didn’t look bien bien. He looked like he’d been run over by a Corona truck. He was unshaven, disheveled, baggy eyed and dismayed. He soon admitted that he had a problema. A big problema.
To make an excruciatingly long story short, three (or maybe four) of my doors had gone Missing. Apparently Salvage Guy’s wife had mistakenly (probably) sent them to Ajijic to sell on consignment. S.G. had (maybe) driven to Ajijic yesterday to track them down, but the place she had consigned them to seemed not to be there any more, replaced (according to S.G.) by a car repair shop.
“No problema,” said I (although Arquitecto, a normally calm guy, was looking fairly apoplectic). “I’m going to Ajijic tomorrow! What a stroke of luck! I will look for them myself.” Perhaps, from S.G.’s facial expression, this was not what he would consider a stroke of luck, but he put on a brave face and wrote down for me all he knew about the guy in Ajijic who had received my doors (some time ago, apparently). Mostly, this was the guy’s name.
In Ajijic, I explained the situation to Travis and Allen, my hosts. Being excellent hosts, they immediately offered to have a field trip and go track down the doors. I called El Arquitecto to tell him.
“AhA!” he said in his charming English. “You will be Sherlock Holmsing! You need a...what do you call it in English? A lupa. You know, those round glass things you look through?”
“A magnifying glass,” I said.
“That’s it!” said he. “Put on your Sherlock hat. Oh, what an adventure!”
Travis and Allen and I climbed in the old Honda and headed out. We started in Chapala because we were hungry. But first we had to go see the new Jesus statue in the lake.
Then, we had to go eat.
Allen and I had carne en su jugo (beef in its juice) which was warm and tasty and just the thing for detectiving. Travis had the zapote which was a chalupa. I helped him eat it. He suggested, since we were already in Chapala, that we stop at a junk/antique place he knew of over by the train station and see if the people there knew this guy we needed to track down (let's call him Alejandro, because that's his name).
The train station:
(No trains stop here. That's a story for later.)
We turned into an unlikely neighborhood and found a little shop with some interesting stuff in it, including some old doors.
But they were not my doors. We asked the woman there if she knew Alejandro. Not only did she know him, but she provided directions (not easy directions, and all in Spanish) to Travis, the Driving Detective, who decided we needed further fortifying before we tackled this part of the adventure.
So we went back to the malecón for gelato.
It was really, really good gelato. So good, in fact, that we were sufficiently energized to continue the search. We headed back into Ajijic, hung a right at the overturned cement truck blocking the intersection which they STILL hadn't managed to pull upright, and cruised observantly up the hill past all the new housing developments. No stores, no warehouse, not even an auto repair shop to be seen. Travis turned around at the top of the hill and started back. We had just begun to admit temporary defeat when suddenly he yelled, "That's it!! That has to be it!", slammed on the brakes and squealed into a gravel lot. Allen threw open the car door, strode to the iron gate, then leapt back as a snarling dog hurled itself against the bars.
By now, we were all together. "Hola?" we offered timidly. "Anybody here?" A man appeared. A smiling, friendly man, who took his dog to its chain where it lay, wagging, as he let us in. Yes, he was closed, but come on in anyway. Sure enough, his name was Alejandro. He recognized one of the photos I detectively had brought along.
He'd had that door, some time ago, but sold it. "Sold it?" I wailed, once I'd figured out what he was saying in Spanish. "To whom?" Well, to a woman in Chapala who owns a shop near the train station.
Still no trains...
So I took his picture...
...and off we went, back to Chapala.
The woman at the Chapala shop did not seem thrilled to see us return, for some reason. Perhaps this was because I happened to mention as we were leaving the last time that we were trying to track down some doors that I had PAID FOR and that had somehow hitched a ride to Ajijic. This time I showed her the picture. She knew the door immediately. She had, she explained, sold it. In December.
Well #@**!&%!. It was one of my favorites, too. The others aren't that important. In fact, I didn't even want one of them. But fooey. So I took another picture of her shop. That'll show her.
On the other hand, we had solved part of the mystery, the part I cared about. We were planning to go to some other Ajijic antiquey shops and look for the others, but we got sidetracked.
I called El Arquitecto and reported in.
"We solved the door mystery," I said.
"You did! I can't believe it! Fantastic!" he exulted, until I told him the outcome. He's not all that happy with Salvage Guy at the moment, or with Wife of Salvage Guy, either, although El Arq is a compassionate sort and has already found plenty of reasons to forgive. I have too, although I still think we should get something out of it, but that's probably just my Sicilian and Basque heritage oozing out.
I have to go now because I have to rearrange all the doors on the second floor before first light and send the new plans to El Arqui's daughter La Arquitecta before all the holes are bricked in, which the builders are doing tomorrow (probably). And then I have to envision the Perfect Door for the master bedroom to replace the disappeared one, which I will strongly encourage Salvage Guy to manifest ASAP.
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