Confidence of the Heart (1995)

David Schweidel's first novel, published by Milkweed Editions in 1995 and marked on its cover as a Milkweed National Fiction Prize book, is narrated by Armando Santiesteban, a quiet and passive man whose best friend, the impulsive anthropologist Patrick McGuffin, known as Spoon, persuades him to travel to Guatemala as best man at Spoon's wedding into a prominent Guatemalan family. (Open Library)

Watches

Rolex (fake): On Armando's thirtieth birthday Spoon leads him to a vacant lot in San Francisco's Mission district, where a Mayan called Sonny Tzoc tends a fire. Armando judges Sonny a legal resident partly by the casual way he checks his watch, a flashy Rolex much too massive for his thin wrist (p. 20). Sonny's brother Ignacio wears an identical one, and when a police officer asks to try it on, Sonny says his neighbor buys them in Hong Kong (pp. 23, 27). In Guatemala Armando is shocked to see the same watch on don Lazaro, the military commissioner (p. 105), and when Clara opens a container that spills from an envelope a commandante tosses over, it holds another. The novel itself calls the watches fake.

Source text: A few photographs spilled out, along with an egg-shaped panty-hose container, which Clara pried open to reveal a gold watch, the familiar model of fake Rolex worn by Sonny, Ignacio, and don Lazaro. (David Schweidel, Confidence of the Heart, scan cataloged as Milkweed Editions, 1995, p. 117; Sonny's watch is first seen on p. 20; Internet Archive scan OCR)