Thirteen Heavens

"Two friends two friends, how close could they get without being one man ... one in love with a ghost, the other ... longed for the son who'd more than likely already become a ghost." Rub n Arenal, nicknamed Rocky by his close friends and family, and Ernesto Cisneros are longtime friends, as close as brothers, living in Mexico's northern state of Chihuahua. Rub n is a potter who lives alone in his studio apartment. Ernesto is married to Guadalupe and they have one a son, Coyuco, who is training to be a teacher. Out of these bald facts spins magic. Rub n falls in love with an eerily lifelike mannequin in a shop window, widely rumored to be more flesh and bone than mere artifice and modelled on a local beauty nicknamed La Pascualita, who died young many decades ago. Rub n trails after her ghost while Ernesto leaves their hometown to go in search of his son, kidnapped and disappeared by the police while out on a student protest with forty-two of his comrades from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College.