“Yes, you are very beautiful, put on your wedding dress and marry me…”, the rich man said to the beggar woman.
The rain fell on Insurgentes Avenue with that gray fury that makes Mexico City seem even more immense and colder. Alejandro Salazar, a forty-two-year-old real estate developer, left the office early for the first time in months. He had no desire to look at contracts, numbers, or buildings anymore. Since his wife, Verónica, had died of cancer three years earlier, work had become his refuge.
He was walking quickly, with the collar of his coat turned up, when he saw her.
Sitting on the wet bench, huddled under a sodden piece of cardboard, was a woman with dark hair plastered to her face by the rain. Her clothes were worn, her hands icy, and her lips purple with cold. Even so, when she lifted her face and looked at him, Alejandro stopped.
It wasn’t her beauty, though she had it. It was the dignity in her brown eyes.
—Please… even just a coin —she murmured, extending a trembling hand.
