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 La Esmeralda, Mexico   She knocked on the bathroom door   ‘Can I come in to shower?’   ‘En el trono,’ he called out ‘Give me a couple minutes’   He was just reaching for the roll of toilet paper on the floor when something happened A reverberating collision and a seasick feeling at once The toilet quivered under his thighs as the walls rattled and the front door – it must be the front door – cracked, splintering as though a tree had crashed through it, but there were no trees in the yard He began to rise from the toilet into something awful, into a new sound, into the rising decibels of the woman screaming from the living room Bent over still reaching for his pants, he knew there would not be enough time to pull them up He was aware of every facet of the bathroom then, as though he had been studying it for escape routes for months The canary-yellow plastic curtain drawn halfway across the tub The rusted showerhead releasing its slow, incurable drip The colourless bath mat with its frayed, dirty edge folded up The dingy rattan clothes hamper The stale towel hanging from a nail in the door And to his right, above the sink, a red hand towel limp on its clear plastic ring over the soap dish The sink was set in a water-warped cabinet with a louvred door   The frenzy in his ears stopped Her scream was cut off It had risen into a hysterical shriek and now vacated itself with a soft humph Like a chainsaw dropped into a swamp Chairs were falling, or maybe it was the kitchen table that someone smashed into the wall Another tremor went through the house No male voices No commands, no shouting All he had heard was a tumult and the hysterical clipped scream The furniture dragging and feet moving   He wasn’t breathing anymore He turned to his right, taking a step and holding his pants He glanced from the faucet and the toothbrushes blossoming, one orange and one blue, from their dirty glass on the sink, to the