The Bird Hotel

Luis and Maria, Leila’s staff, are aging. Elmer, their son, is in love with Mirabel and watches her adoringly. Mirabel has a talent for making fresh blended drinks, different each time she makes them. She wears a beaded belt she spent over a year making. At the hotel, Irene feels that “in small ways, I was coming back to life” (89). Every evening, she enjoys a marvelous meal on the patio with Leila, who tells her stories. Some stories are about foreigners who try to make money off the local culture, like a designer named Ariadne who profited from a clothing line she designed inspired by the patterns of the huipils the native women make. Ariadne promised to start a weaving business with them but never did.

Leila tells the story of a man from the Midwestern US, Fred, who came to the area and developed a drink using cacao, based on a Mayan recipe, which he then marketed as having mind-expanding properties, and which the tourists love. He calls himself Federico and built the Cacao Temple. Instead of being annoyed that he had appropriated their Indigenous culture, the locals, Leila said, mostly seemed amused.