[Editor's note: this story is the winner of the "one sentence travel writing contest."]

I’m packing up the last of my clothes to leave Buenos Aires when Marcia calls me into the hallway, she’s opened one of the photo albums on the bookshelf and now she’s showing me Marcelo’s old snapshots, here’s a picture of Marcelo at 22, fresh out of law school and sans the laugh lines that crisscross his face, and here’s Marcelo’s señora, not the mother of his children, about two girlfriends after that one, and three or so before Valeria, here are the children, the daughter who lives in the suburbs with her husband, and the other daughter who lives a neighborhood away but doesn’t speak with Marcelo anymore, and the dead son we don’t talk about, the one who OD’d and collapsed in a supermarket ten-odd years ago, who was born around the same time I was, and I think back to one day early in spring, to Marcelo sitting in the backyard in his shorts, eating breakfast and telling me that he was thinking of moving because of the hijodeputa developers and the condo they had put up next door; houses have lifespans, he tells me, just like people: a couple more moves and he’ll be an old man, and won’t want to move any more.

Adam Roy has been writing professionally since the age of 17. When he’s not traveling or writing about travel, he leads a secret double life at Tufts University in Massachusetts, where he is pursuing a degree in Latin American Studies. He maintains the blog Ill-advised Adventures.