Things I Love About Mexico City is a very short list, but here’s something right near the top — even in this gargantuan frenzied dystopia, you stumble across pockets of unexpected beauty and calm. And I’m not talking about the well-known retreats, like the lush glades of the Bosque de Chapultepec and the sunny gondola-choked canals that crisscross Xochimilco. Any tourist with a guidebook can find those places, to say nothing of 25 million locals. I’m talking about the offbeat stuff. Like the pristine and silent Leon Trotsky Museum, ignored by all the crowds flooding to the Frida Kahlo Museum further down the street. The agricultural research station in San Angel, with its endless open-sided greenhouses and humid rows of tropical plants. That spectacular English country garden in Polanco, hidden behind the ivy-leafed walls of an imposing compound — but accessible, if a dude like Elliot Parner shows you the secret door buried in the vines.

And now, this small sleepy cathedral a few blocks from Inez’s apartment in Coyoacan. It hides in plain sight, camouflaged by its sleek 1930s-era architecture. The Catholic Church of that future — all layered lines and sloping corners and squat height, like a stubby cement spaceship waiting to rocket to God. Driving past I assumed it was a private residence or maybe a hip new store, but pausing on the sidewalk its true nature becomes apparent. Crosses are indented into the lintel, and a cobblestone path leads around the side to an octagonal chapel, protruding from the side of the cathedral like a fuel pod.

“Come on, Nooshin!” barks Inez’s mom, peeling open the front doors, a pair of massive concrete shutters that must pivot on hidden counterweights. Her mom resembles Jackie O, looking back at us in those goggle-eyed sunglasses and white silk scarf tied around her head.

I feel Nooshin’s hand slip from mine. “Well, I better go get blessed…” But she hesitates, tall and pregnant and conflicted in my peripheral vision.

“You still haven’t told Inez’s mom that you’re Muslim.” A statement, not a question.

“Well…” She elongates it, we-lllllllllll.

I turn to look at her. The clouds gap and sunlight washes over us, highlighting the tiny scars that ghost across her forehead and down the bridge of her nose, casting shadows under her steep cheekbones. Her right eye jerks nervously when Inez’s mom barks “Nooshin!” again.

“I’ll wait outside,” I decide. I lean in for a quick kiss, then watch her traipse up the flattened steps to the cathedral entrance. She pauses to wave at me, like a traveler bound for deep space, then the doors swing shut.

I wander the grounds, following the cobblestone path around to the octagonal chapel. Seven sides are enclosed, one is open. Inside is a forest fire of votive candles and a scaffolding matrix. A half-restored fresco looms overhead. The face and flesh tints of a crucified Jesus are missing, as if the artist is afraid to tread on divinity, and pots of pigment line the scaffold.

“Will you shoot me?”

What the — ?!? I whirl around and discover a young mexicana holding out a digital camera. She’s silent in crepe-soled pumps and wearing a demure blocky dress the color of charcoal.

“Will you?” she asks, gesturing with the digicam again.

“Uh, sure.”

I take the minuscule thing and peer through the sight, expecting her to stand smiling. Instead she flushes her long hair out over her shoulders, then kneels down on the cobbles. In profile she remains praying and crossing herself for long minutes, while I snap a couple gigs of pictures.

“Thank you, thank you.” She takes the camera and then my hand. “Beatriz.”

“I’m Nick.”

She sends me a disconnected smile, then stares around us. “Look at this, look at this.”

I glance around at all the icons, dancing in votive flames. “Uh, yeah.” I grope for the conversational thread. “Just, uh…look at this.”

Beatriz has produced a taper and is searching the chapel, moving from one bank of icons to the next. She pauses in front of a framed picture of John Paul II contemplating the Virgin of Guadalupe during his last visit to Mexico.

I feel obligated to comment. “I hear the new pontiff, Ratzinger, put John Paul on the fast track to canonization.”

She flares angrily. “He is already a saint, already a saint! He heads the saints in the cathedral of heaven!” Her voice is lilting with passionate certainty. “He and the Virgin of Guadalupe send all our prayers to God. Direct.”

Jesus fucking Christ. Praying action shots and talking in double and hotlines to god. I start backing out the door.

“Why are you here?” Beatriz asks suddenly.

I freeze. Her tone is almost accusatory, as if she can see right through my ribcage to this atheistic heart. “My girlfriend, uh, she’s pregnant, and she’s here to get blessed.”

“Then may God bless you too.” She considers the taper wrapped in her fervent hands, then dips it into a flame. “I will pray for both of you, I will pray for both of you.”

I watch her park the taper in front of a sheaf of flickering lights. Beatriz bows her head and clasps her rosary and begins praying to…Hispanic Barbie? I peer at the doll in fascination, at its handmade garments and slippered feet. Somebody has painstakingly crafted it into a miniature replica of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The slur of praying stops. She raises a placid face and beams at me wetly. “Soon, Nick, soon the Church on earth will be united with the Church in heaven. A celestial union. Soon, very soon!” Her voice is a hypnotic music. “Light for the future of the world! Very soon, very soon!”

I’m looking at her like bats are about to burst forth from her eyesockets. “When?” I ask dully.

“When?” Beatriz tilts at me oddly. “Did you ask when?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what I asked. When. When is all this going to happen.”

“Very soon!” she repeats. Like, duh. Wasn’t I listening?

Very soon also seems like a perfect time to get the hell away from her. I thank her for praying for us, edging toward the door, hey I think my girlfriend is calling me…

Every stride back toward the street is an escape building momentum — and not just from Beatriz’s rapture of Catholic belief. A famous anthropologist once said that if you want to know a Mexican, you should ask him about God. But I want to be done with Hispanic Barbies made into icons, and superstitious mexicanos who cross themselves to ward off Nooshin’s evil eye, and a country sinking into a morass of drug cartels and beggars and snarling dogs. For the first time in my life, I want to be done with Mexico.