Quito on a Sunday afternoon. The city quiet. Families and tourists at El Ejido park, looking at the art, listening to music.
But Isabella wanders the quiet streets alone. One eye out for officious security guards, some with dogs. Her shoe shine kit hangs heavy from her shoulder and Isabella is one of many who find a little money shining shoes perhaps for school books perhaps for shoes perhaps for supper tonight.
There is a difference though. Isabella is beautiful. Not cute, not pretty but out and out beautiful and she is ten years old and she walks the streets alone.
A man from Colorado also wanders the streets. He is saying goodbye to a city he has come to love. A Methodist, he has worshiped with Catholics in a crowded, noisy church. He has used the last of his film. His personal project on this business trip has been the dogs of the city. Dogs with calm, intelligent faces. Dogs who do not appear to be starving. Dogs who sometimes look as though they are wiser, more thoughtful than the humans who surround them. He took only one picture of the security dogs who look like they'd tear your throat out in a heart beat. The man from Colorado has thirty two pictures of the dogs of Quito, and when he is home in Cortez he will prepare a calendar from them to give to friends for Christmas.
He turns toward his hotel off Amazonas and there is Isabella with her shoe shine box. She smiles her brilliant smile.
``Shoe shine?''
``No thanks.''
``Shoe shine? How much you pay?''
``Twenty five cents?''
``Fifty cents?''
``OK fifty cents. I am in a hurry...''
Isabella is a pro. In a couple of minutes his shoes are glittering. She sits carefully, he notes, with her skirt pulled well down between her knees. He asks her a few questions as he always does. Yes, she lives with her family. Yes, she goes to school. She lives ``over there,'' with a jerk of her head. Then Isabella is gone. Disappeared with a quick goodbye, his dollar bill slipped magically out of sight.
On the plane he finds himself thinking of Isabella. How will she survive? What can be done about such children? Did she really have a home, a family? He'd had his shoes shined a dozen times by the kids of the streets and he had never really thought about them. Why Isabella? Of course he knew. It was her beauty that touched him. Her beauty that made her seem so vulnerable. He wished he'd had film left, instead of taking that last dog.
Isabella stayed with him at least three weeks, her smile appearing randomly in his working day. Then the trials and sorrows and moments of laughter of his own life closed around him and he forgot Isabella.
In a court yard on the edge of the city Isabella rinses out her shoe shine rags and spreads them to dry. She prepares for sleep, crouched in a corner, her hands pulled into the sleeves of her sweater and curled inward at her chest. A young dog joins her, crouching too, with paws turned inward.