The Great Divide

by Cristina Henríquez

“I would like your undivided attention, my love. I deserve nothing less.”

Of course the climate was different and the landscape, too, but apart from those things what he found was a sort of miniature reproduction of the United States, like they had come there to put on a play. There were post offices and barbershops and ice-cream socials and Friday-night dances. And limits. The same sort of limits. Here they called it different—gold and silver instead of white and black—but it worked just the same. Along with everything else, the attitude of his country had been imported down here, and he wondered sometimes if he would ever escape it, and he feared he would not.