Two families, one Puerto Rican and straight, the other, Dominican, Polish and gay, ask the
question, “How DO you love thy neighbor once the sofrito hits the fan?’ 

When Nilda and Caroline discover that someone has slashed their tires,
Caroline thinks it’s time to head for the suburbs. Peace and quiet and privacy
are at a premium. She’s having horrible dreams and migraines, she’s tripping over her
students and finding it harder to relate to neighbors who think the answer to their problems
lies in the frozen food section of the local bodega where Our Lady of Guadeloupe is making
a guest appearance.

Nilda is finding she likes this city and being able to concentrate on her new life with Caroline and her stalled career as a dancer/choreographer. But even she could do without people firing cannons ostensibly to express their religious faith and, more importantly, the wild fights she hears in the apartment upstairs. 

Caroline and Nilda send letters upstairs to try to quell the noise, urging that Magdalena get help if she finds her life so out of control. Magdalena challenges them to help her family and Nilda reluctantly does, feeding and tutoring Michael and Frankie (when he shows up.)     
        
Little by little community is growing in the five-story, railroad walk-up where both condo-owners and rent-control tenants uneasily live. Magdalena brings Nilda
dinner, a brass lamp; she offers a ride the one day her on-again, off-again boyfriend,
Paco, has access to a car.

Still, Nilda is uneasy. She’s sure Frankie is getting into trouble. She’s not sure how much she’s willing and able to do to help. More and more she misses her own sons who are living with their father in New Mexico, even though it was her decision for them to go there. When her daytime, concrete plans don’t seem to be working her unconscious takes over. St. Ann appears to her in a dream, looking blonde and sounding like a Yankee. Caroline steps into Nilda’s dream, drawn by the smell of the Saint’s trademark roses. Recognizing the Blessed Mother’s Mother Caroline asks her for advice.  St. Ann offers them Goya products and Rolexes and a challenge to “think outside of the box” that Nilda can’t accept.

At last, Caroline and Nilda are about to escape to Las Cruces to relax and see Nilda’s kids.  They are thwarted by a detective who has sealed off the building in order to
arrest someone he will not name. He ignores their pleas that they’ll miss their plane if he
doesn’t let them go to their waiting taxi. He hands them flowers someone unknown has
left for them, bearing a Spanish inscription that “it is beautiful to dream while you are
awake.”  Exasperated, they watch as a mysterious woman with long hair blithely takes
their cab, leaving them with no easy exit from their neighbors’ latest crisis.