I have been spending a lot of time in a town called Malinalco, finally finishing a book that I have been working on for what seems like a century. The closest other place of note is a town called Chalma, which has a sanctuary that is the second-most visited religious institution in Mexico, after the Shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The other day, after dropping off someone in the Chalma bus station, I stuck around, because as many times as I'd passed through to get to Malinalco, I had never visited the church. I thought it might be a good opportunity to put in a word to Tezcatlipoca (often known as the "black Christ" of Chalma), and ask for a safe passage for the book into the world at large. But it was a Sunday. The lines to get inside were dizzyingly long in the blazing sun and I didn't have a hat. I thought it prudent to plan a return in the middle of the week.