The vendors in the countries we tend to go to are stocky women with scarves tied beneath their chins, and you don’t dare catch their eyes. Doing so means beaming as they hold up a shorted-out curling iron with dried nail polish on it, or a crocheted blanket the color of sorrow. Please don’t unfold it, Patsy and I think as the woman inevitably unfolds it, smiling to reveal three gold teeth in an otherwise empty mouth and saying, we can only imagine, “Look at how wretched my life is!”
