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I have spent three years living downtown Tijuana with Ramón or rather next door renting in apartments above his restaurant. Finally I am ready to write. I have watched him use up workers and watched them walk away. His housekeeper died sometime last year. She had cancer and her husband didn't even tell Ramón that she had died so he could do nothing about a funeral or the wake (velorio) or anything. But the husband came around weeks later looking for money.Ramón had paid for her cancer treatments and surgery and associated expenses. "Now the cabrón wants what do you call it in English, Gringo? The death benefits? Something like that. But I tell you I will give him nothing he will only buy himself new ostrich boots or snakeskin and a ridiculous cowboy suit and hat so he can look like some drugdealer my God the man cannot even ride a horse, ah, can you ride, Gringo? Your cousin? That is right, you told me once she had a horse when she was young. Two of them, no? Well my grandfather, he could ride like a real caballero, and he made sure that all five of us, his grandsons, could ride. Did you know Gringo that when we were in our teenage years he gave each of us a horse to be kept on his ranch out by Tecate; but mine was the best because I was the oldest you see I was his little prince." Ramón looks at me over his kitchen table. It's after midnight and the last restaurant workers have gone home. "The truth is, Gringo," he says, not a little drunk, "the truth is by then he was trying to buy us all back, but it was already too late. After what he had done fifteen years before to our mother and grandmother and our aunts, no, it was too late.... "And I am afraid it is too late for me, also... because you see I carry his name. Excuse me please that is the way it is with we Mexicans, you know -- we always carry two last names from our father and our mother."
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