Root yelled back, in his broken Spanish, that he was not Rosa. But the man in the blue car was not satisfied.

He ran over and grabbed Root by the wrist.

Root could smell stale rum on the man's breath as he whispered impatiently over and over again the name Rosa.

The man's blinding drunkenness and anger were due to the recent departure of his wife. She, in turn, had killed herself because her husband had lost all of their savings and their home to some scheme conjured up by investors from the US. In creating neo-colonial relations, the Platt Amendment had contributed to the creation of an underclass in Cuba, and with it the criminalization of the poor. So not only had they lost all of their worldly possessions, but the man was in trouble with the law for stealing to put food on the table for his family.

The man realizing that the person in front of him was not Rosa, but an American man dressed in women's clothing, proceeded to give Root the beating of his life.

When he came to, hours later, his beautiful cotton dress had been stained with blood from his nose and mouth, where he had been repeatedly punched by the angry Cuban.

Numbed to pain by his obsession with the mechanic, Root viewed the entire incident as a mere pause in a sentence which had yet to be completed. And so, with his swollen lips and with one broken high heel, he resumed his search.