Sooner or later

On Wednesdays, movies are half-off in Mexico City. I went with my roommate Khaled, and friend Alex to the Cineopolis Diana right by my apartment. It's named after this huge fountain built to the goddess Diana, a.k.a. Artemis, and exudes enough girl power to make it my favorite stop on my daily commute. 

Since I had just gotten out of class, and Alex out of work, we needed to grab some comida corrida around the corner. Like drive-thrus, only more convenient, social, and tasty, these fast food stalls invite you to stand under a plastic tarp and devour greasy tacos right off the grill, while passing napkins and lime wedges to your fellow diners, who are usually in business attire, with neckties flipped over the shoulder.

The movie was alright, but the real drama came afterwards. I'd planned to help Alex with his masters' application in English, in exchange for him proofreading my Spanish emails to teenage musicians. We hopped on his moped to go to his apartment, located in the quaint cobble-onial part of town near Parque Lira. We circled the Diana fountain on our way, a breathtaking sight after dark.

Alex's apartment building has a central courtyard and a garden, which is eerily populated with white statues of nuns and, surprise, more greek goddesses. When we arrived, he stuck his key in the door and discovered that the lock had been torn out. Within the next 2 minutes, my Mexican Bad Word Vocabulary nearly doubled in size.

His apartment was unusually clean and fortunately did not show signs of ransacking. But his laptops, both personal and from his job, were gone. So much for working on his application. The robbers also took his camera, DVD player, modem, and to really rub it in, his aftershave. He stood in the middle of his kitchen and didn't say much, until he eventually sat down on the couch and sighed. I didn't know what to say, so every now and then I blurted out one of the bad words I had just learned, before forgetting them. That seemed to be appropriate.

I was pretty awed by the whole experience, though mainly the calm resignation with which Alex accepted the fact that he'd been majorly robbed. Estas cosas pasan, he said. These things happen. I told him that if he had watched me discover that my laptop had been robbed, it would have been a scene similar to the one in the movie we'd just watched: a woman sobbing over a man's dead body and sinking into years of depression.

"Naah," he said. "You're in Mexico City now. Plus, check it out -- they didn't take my passport or my television!" He seemed genuinely relieved at that, and taught me another handy phrase: the Spanish equivalent of what are you gonna do.