I will violate my own rule limiting myself to one posting per day to add a side note. My Mexicana companion is reading along with you in a beautiful edition put out by Bolaño's Barcelona publisher. She has been utterly seduced by Bolaño's Spanish, to the extent that I now feel as if I am part of some outré threesome with Bolaño. She has lived in Mexico City, Madrid, and Caracas and has a feel for regional variations in the language. She keeps mumbling something about how she loves that fact that Bolaño does not “put too much cream on the taco like those Argentine writers do.” As I imperfectly understand it.

Anyway, this ultimate liaison of Liz Norton and Morini is not a mystery to her. She contends that Liz's attraction arose from the simple fact that Morini maintained a distance from her. In other words, Liz Norton wanted the thing that was not offered to her. Mixed in with that in a minor way is something about Liz Norton's female caretaker instincts having been juiced up. The Mexicana cites text in support of this. Again, this is my translation of something that I only imperfectly understand.