The plot begins by informing the reader of the protagonist and setting up the stage for the story. Carlos is cleaning out his residence and finds an old card with a drawing on it in a book. He then tells us that it is the map from the park to Amilamia’s house and the text “Amilamia will not forget her good friend – com see me here wher I draw it”. Amilamia is a little girl of whom he was quite fond and often used to play with her in the park. Though he was fourteen and she was seven, they had a special relationship and one feels a little aghast in his ever occurring vivid memory of her flowered panties, “Amilamia frozen in her flight down the hill, her white skirt ballooning, the flowered panties gathered on her legs with elastic…” One suspects that his feelings for her are probably g

She astonishingly lets him into the house and they venture into another room where he sits down on a couch and she on a rocking chair. He leads the conversation and she barely answers. There are a few toys scattered around the room that he observes keenly. Carlos tries to ferret out how long they have lived here, “…You have been living since…?”, which he follows with “…for at least fifteen years, isn’t that so?”, “…you, your husband, and…?” She does not answer or even provide visual clues. “Well then, I’ll be back this afternoon with the papers…” “The woman nods and in silence picks up the lipstick and comic book and hides them in the folds of her shawl.”, an obvious attempt to hide the fact that a woman aged from sixteen to twenty-two is also a resident of this house. This leads the reader to a suspenseful initiation to the climax. The reader knows that the woman is hiding something, or otherwise why would the author advert to it.

Now Fuentes displays another attempt at getting to Amilamia. Less than a year later, he begins to think about her again “The real Amilamia has returned to my memory and I have felt, if not content, sane again: the park, the living child, my hours of adolescent reading, have triumphed over the specters of a sick cult.” His feelings become a little strange, “…I shall live forever with my real Amilamia, the conqueror of the caricature of death.” Deciding to return to them to offer the card containing the remaining remnants of Amilamia’s life, he puts on his jacket and fixes his tie.

“Señor Valdivia sent me.” I cough and run my hand over my hair. I should have picked up my briefcase at my office. I realize that without it I cannot play my role very well.

Some topics in this essay:
Carlos Fuentes, Señor Valdivia, Fuentes Carlos, Carlos Don’t, Amilamia Surely, Valdivia Carlos, checkered apron, blue checkered apron, blue checkered, getting amilamia, comic book, feelings little, moments spontaneity, flowered panties, park bench, , real amilamia, señor valdivia,