The speaker in the first of these stories (full title: “Anguiano Religious Articles Rosaries Statues Medals Incense Candles Talismans Perfumes Oils Herbs”) goes into a religious articles store to get a picture or statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, apparently to offer at a shrine for a very ill friend. The owner insults her when she can’t decide what to buy. She says he’s headed for hell.
“Little Miracles, Kept Promises” is a collection of 23 notes and letters, some accompanied by objects, left at a shrine (or perhaps several shrines) in a San Antonio church. These are both petitions and notes of thanksgiving, addressed to Christ, St. Mary, and various other saints, and dealing with a variety of human problems from a teenager’s pimples to the painful illness of an old gentleman’s wife. The final note is preceded by a short monologue in the voice of that note’s writer, a young woman who has cut off her hair to signify that she rejects the traditional woman’s role in life.
The elderly man who is the speaker in “Los Boxers” is doing his wash in a coin laundry, talking to a woman who is there with her very young daughter. He relates problems with his laundry and talks about his wife, who has died.
The section’s title story tells (using third person and an omniscient narrator) of two lonely people, a man and woman, each of whom is paid every two weeks on Fridays. They go on payday to the same bar to drink with their friends, get relatively drunk, go home, and look sadly at the moon. Because they get paid on alternate Fridays, they have never met.
