Chapter 8 Summary

The story of Francisco's sad demise begins with the adventure of two women from California, Helena and Maria, on their way to explore Maria's ancestral land, specifically the village of Truchas in New Mexico. No longer in love with each other, they make the best of their journey together, "just as a pair of astronauts must do, having been launched into outer space knowing that the person next to her, however much a stranger, is really the only other human being that exists."

They don't make it to Truchas, though later they will get to Maria's grandmother's rancheria, after which they will finally part company for good, an account that strays from this story "about all kinds of beginnings and endings but mostly, like all accounts, about what goes on in the middle. Maria, a tarot reader and pseudo-poet, herself would have said...