Pueblo Azúl
A play in one act
Characters:
Jessica, a white woman in her late thirties, dressed in a knee-length skirt and a sleeveless black shirt with a prominent avocado smear on one shoulder. She is never seen without
Lulu, an energetic child of about a year and a half
Adam, a white man, also in his late thirties, wearing a pair of paint-stained shorts and a t-shirt. Currently the family breadwinner.
Rat, a medium-sized rodent
Waiter, a Mexican high school student with carefully styled hair
Mariachi band, enough said
Act I, Scene 1
A one-room apartment above a restaurant in a small Mexican beach town. Outside the door, laundry hangs on a line. The Beatles’ "Imagine," played at top volume, is abruptly turned off, replaced by a blast of cumbia music. Two men can be heard arguing in Spanish. The music gradually fades as light comes up on the room shared by Jessica, Adam, Lulu, and Rat.
Toys are scattered across the floor. Five beds of different sizes have been pushed up against the walls. A plastic table, of the kind used outdoors, with a single plastic chair, sits next to the refrigerator. Rat is poised on its haunches on top of the refrigerator, preparing to eat a ripe avocado with a spoon. Jessica and Lulu lie on one of the beds. Jessica is reading a detective novel aloud as she nurses the baby.
Adam enters. He places his hat and sunglasses on the table and prepares to sit. Notices Rat.
Adam: Wha—this is disgusting! Rat is eating our food!
Rat drops the spoon with a clatter and runs into the rafters.
Jessica looks up.
Jessica: At least it’s not drinking our coffee.
Lulu sits up abruptly. Da!
Jessica: We missed you. Do you want a sandwich? We have cheese.
Adam: Sure.
Jessica: So, is it getting finished?
Adam: No.
Jessica: Any idea when it will be finished?
Adam: Not really.
Act I, Scene 2
A room in another apartment complex in the same small town. The walls are painted an unpleasant yellowish beige. On top of a dresser a pepper grinder, a half-empty bottle of beer, and a roll of toilet paper are visible. A bed takes up much of the room. In one corner a miniature refrigerator with a small microwave bolted to the top emits a loud, variable hum.
Adam sits in a large, food-stained chair, holding a laptop computer, several pillows shoved behind his back. Jessica enters, carrying Lulu.
Jessica: What’s that smell? Do you smell something?
Adam: Yeah. It’s sewage. We are right next to the sewage treatment plant.
Jessica: Yeah. (Sets the baby down)
Lulu: Baila, baila! (dances)
Adam: So, what’d you guys do today?
Jessica: We bought some organic beans at the Mega. I was thinking we could cook in the fridge—you know, like, sprouting stuff! And I found this thing that froths milk without using electricity!
Adam: Uh, sounds good.
Jessica: How was work?
Adam: OK.
Jessica: Are they making progress?
Adam: Not really.
Lulu: Ererehehbop?
Jessica: So—how much longer?
Adam: I have no idea. (Pause, then) Should we go for tacos?
Jessica: Sure. Um. I’m pretty sick of tacos.
Adam: Well, we could get pozole.
Jessica: That’s more corn.
Adam: Yeah.
Act I, Scene 3
A taqueria. Smoke from a grill billows over three plastic tables set in the street. Across the street at the bakery a child aged about two, covered with red spots, is eating a donut.
Lulu: Acos. (Notices bakery) Num!
Jessica: No num. Let’s have meat.
Lulu (smiles): Num!
They sit. Waiter appears.
Adam: Hola, buenas noches. Tres de asada, por favor.
Jessica: Igual. Gracias. (Turns to Adam. Lulu gets down and runs toward the sidewalk. Jessica follows. Several minutes later, they return. Lulu squirms, is put down, runs away again. Jessica prepares to follow)
Adam: (sotto voce) Keep her away from that kid. He has mumps or something.
Jessica: What? (Disappears)
Adam remains at the table. He looks preoccupied.
Several minutes later, Jessica and Lulu reappear.
Lulu: Agua!
Adam: Here’s your agua.
Waiter arrives, sets down plates of tacos. Algo más?
Adam: No, gracias.
They begin to eat in silence. Sound from loudspeakers atop a traveling vegetable truck can be heard in the distance: Señoras de la casa, tenemos jitomates, veinte pesos por kilo, si, solo veinte pesos cada kilo. Aprovecha! (Sound fades away.)
Adam: Watch out. She’s getting salsa everywhere.
Jessica: Could you pass me a napkin?
Suddenly, a mariachi band appears stage left. The guitarist strums the first notes of a song and the singer steps forward. Rat appears stage right, holding a miniature pair of maracas.
(Singing)
Parece un camino laaaargo,
A veces necessitas esperar.
(Repeat)
But as time is passing
Life is passing
A-pro-ve-cha!
Oh, it might seem like a long road,
But you know what, it’s a short life—
Que agarres los cojones!
(Together) Que agarres los cojones!
Adam: I didn’t know mariachis could swear.
Jessica: Maybe they can’t. I just made all this up. Except for the part about the rat. Come on, let’s finish our tacos, buy a family-size Corona, and go watch the moon come up over the breakwater. (They smile at each other.)
Lulu: Go! Go! (Turns and waves at audience)
Exeunt.
THE END
Showing posts with label making stuff up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label making stuff up. Show all posts
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Flecha Caída continued
They heard a door slam downstairs and a woman’s brassy voice calling, Hey, who’s here? She was starting up the narrow wooden stairs just as the two men appeared. Oh, she said, looking up at them.
It was his client. She wore a tiered calico skirt with a silver concha belt around her waist. If you looked close, you could see fantastical creatures stitched into the soft, worn leather of her boots. An old Indian had made them for her. Her blouse was stained under the arms, and her curls, unnaturally red, were piled on top of her head. Her name was Jane Riordan. The dead boy was her nephew.
When she heard, she’d come from New Mexico alone in a battered pick-up, a .38 on the seat next to her, the fringe on her jacket whipped in the air from the open window. She learned everything at once. Annie’s son was dead. Her husband had disappeared.
Joe was a cowboy. He used to sit at the end of the table like a slab of granite—when he was gone, you could see what had been in back of him. Jane kept the thought to herself: he must have ridden out into the desert and just kept going. He must be halfway across Sonora by now. He’d never spoken more than a few words to her, but she’d seen how he got when he felt crowded. And now, she decided, the desert had reclaimed him. He was just a thing the sun glinted on, out there among the jackrabbits and the cholla.
Jane was holding the family together now. She was upholding the memory of it, would be more accurate. Annie was a paper doll lying on the rough, straw-filled mattress, staring at the wall. Sometimes words slipped from between her dry lips. She was remembering—she was living in the world before Will died. Jane didn’t know if it would help to find out what had happened, but it was, just now, the only hope she had.
She sat on the front steps of the cabin and rolled a cigarette in the sun. The detective and that uncomfortable little man had gone—Sloan following as if keeping a safe distance. Sloan had a haunted look that made her trust him. He hadn’t said much. Just enough to let her know he was doing what she’d hired him for. That was plenty.
She heard the sound a horse makes when it’s being reined in, that irregular rhythm of hoofbeats, taut breath. She bent to light her cigarette, striking a flint across a stone at her feet. When she looked up, a young woman was leaping off a dusty Appaloosa. She spoke to the horse then stood there with her shoulders thrown back. Her light hair was shorn under her wide-brimmed hat. Her face was open, young, but lined around the eyes. Jane thought she knew who she was—Katie, the daughter of a rancher a few miles to the north. A bit of a loner, they said. One of Will’s only friends.
Coffee? Jane offered after a minute had passed. Cigarette?
It was his client. She wore a tiered calico skirt with a silver concha belt around her waist. If you looked close, you could see fantastical creatures stitched into the soft, worn leather of her boots. An old Indian had made them for her. Her blouse was stained under the arms, and her curls, unnaturally red, were piled on top of her head. Her name was Jane Riordan. The dead boy was her nephew.
When she heard, she’d come from New Mexico alone in a battered pick-up, a .38 on the seat next to her, the fringe on her jacket whipped in the air from the open window. She learned everything at once. Annie’s son was dead. Her husband had disappeared.
Joe was a cowboy. He used to sit at the end of the table like a slab of granite—when he was gone, you could see what had been in back of him. Jane kept the thought to herself: he must have ridden out into the desert and just kept going. He must be halfway across Sonora by now. He’d never spoken more than a few words to her, but she’d seen how he got when he felt crowded. And now, she decided, the desert had reclaimed him. He was just a thing the sun glinted on, out there among the jackrabbits and the cholla.
Jane was holding the family together now. She was upholding the memory of it, would be more accurate. Annie was a paper doll lying on the rough, straw-filled mattress, staring at the wall. Sometimes words slipped from between her dry lips. She was remembering—she was living in the world before Will died. Jane didn’t know if it would help to find out what had happened, but it was, just now, the only hope she had.
She sat on the front steps of the cabin and rolled a cigarette in the sun. The detective and that uncomfortable little man had gone—Sloan following as if keeping a safe distance. Sloan had a haunted look that made her trust him. He hadn’t said much. Just enough to let her know he was doing what she’d hired him for. That was plenty.
She heard the sound a horse makes when it’s being reined in, that irregular rhythm of hoofbeats, taut breath. She bent to light her cigarette, striking a flint across a stone at her feet. When she looked up, a young woman was leaping off a dusty Appaloosa. She spoke to the horse then stood there with her shoulders thrown back. Her light hair was shorn under her wide-brimmed hat. Her face was open, young, but lined around the eyes. Jane thought she knew who she was—Katie, the daughter of a rancher a few miles to the north. A bit of a loner, they said. One of Will’s only friends.
Coffee? Jane offered after a minute had passed. Cigarette?
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Flecha Caída
...This was what Oscar had to work with, and so far it wasn’t much. He stood for a moment, taking in the sadness of the place. And, truth be told, listening. If the boy wanted to tell him something, if the killer was going to let something slip, he would be ready to hear it, though it might come in low whispers like a breeze rattling the sage leaves, an inadvertent burst like a shout in a dream. The silence of the overheated room was broken by a trapped fly bouncing against the streaky windowpane, the occasional whoop of a duded-up tenderfoot.
He looked over at Elmer. The man was sweating, mopping his forehead with a red bandanna he’d drawn from his hip pocket, his dark hair stringy and thinning across the pinkness of his scalp. What do you think happened? Oscar asked. Uh, the man stuttered. Only thing I can think is, it was some—one of these Mexicans. The Indians are all drunks, on a Saturday night, one of them takes out a knife after they’ve all piled out of a bar at closing time—but the Mexicans, you look in their eyes you see all kinds of calculated meanness, yes sir. A white man can’t understand why they do what they do. Oscar turned away, thinking Elmer didn’t look so white himself—Italian, maybe. So the management wanted to pass this off on a handy scapegoat. He wouldn’t be getting much help from them—that they knew of, anyway.
They heard a door slam downstairs and a woman’s brassy voice calling, Hey, who’s here? She was starting up the narrow wooden stairs just as the two men appeared. Oh—it’s you, she said, looking up at them.
It was his client. She wore a tiered calico skirt with a silver concha belt around her waist. If you looked close, you could see fantastical creatures stitched into the soft, worn leather of her boots. An old Indian had made them for her. Her blouse was stained under the arms, and her curls, unnaturally red, were piled on top of her head. Her name was Jane Riordan. The dead boy was her nephew.
He looked over at Elmer. The man was sweating, mopping his forehead with a red bandanna he’d drawn from his hip pocket, his dark hair stringy and thinning across the pinkness of his scalp. What do you think happened? Oscar asked. Uh, the man stuttered. Only thing I can think is, it was some—one of these Mexicans. The Indians are all drunks, on a Saturday night, one of them takes out a knife after they’ve all piled out of a bar at closing time—but the Mexicans, you look in their eyes you see all kinds of calculated meanness, yes sir. A white man can’t understand why they do what they do. Oscar turned away, thinking Elmer didn’t look so white himself—Italian, maybe. So the management wanted to pass this off on a handy scapegoat. He wouldn’t be getting much help from them—that they knew of, anyway.
They heard a door slam downstairs and a woman’s brassy voice calling, Hey, who’s here? She was starting up the narrow wooden stairs just as the two men appeared. Oh—it’s you, she said, looking up at them.
It was his client. She wore a tiered calico skirt with a silver concha belt around her waist. If you looked close, you could see fantastical creatures stitched into the soft, worn leather of her boots. An old Indian had made them for her. Her blouse was stained under the arms, and her curls, unnaturally red, were piled on top of her head. Her name was Jane Riordan. The dead boy was her nephew.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Flecha Caída
Oscar slumped in an armchair in a corner of the room. He watched the men looking awkward but eager in their stiff jeans, the women affecting bandannas around their necks and pert western hats on their way out to pose against the rails of the corral, he supposed—a few kids running around outside in leather chaps, just bought at the outfitters in town. It was swell. People came here from back east because they were sick. To pretend they were Gary Cooper, Dale Evans, maybe even Cochise or Geronimo—he didn’t know or care. He was here to do a job.
It had taken him precisely 203 hours to travel to this outpost in the American desert. Women boarding the bus, crying “Arroz y gallina!,” men with cases of patent medicines, even clowns doing their hackneyed routine for spare change. Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora. Leaving the ocean behind, the air grew so dry that he choked on it.
And maybe he was sick. He felt dull in the heat that descended from heaven and rose again with a great bounce. He’d let himself think he’d grow old on the coast of Jalisco. Might as well admit he’d imagined himself in Maria’s soft arms, fleshier now that they had the boy and the girl—it was a pathetic dream. He shoved it roughly aside.
His partner, Jones, had cabled him at the hotel where he’d holed up in Puerto Vallarta—BOY DEAD AT RANCH STOP CAN YOU TAKE CASE STOP And what else was there. Perhaps one death would erase another.
Mostly he wished he were anywhere but in the corner of this low-ceilinged, wood-beamed, white-plastered room with the leather chairs that were supposed to say something like “gaucho” when you sat in them. When you sat in them, you were waiting for something.
The manager of the Flecha Caída came up, rubbing his palms. The man was short, an eastern type, like a marshmallow. Could be he came out west himself to take a cure, found a demand for his bookkeeping skills, maybe not much to go back to in Des Moines or Scranton or wherever it was he came from. Oscar straightened up. The man’s eyes were sliding around the room. When he finally looked at Oscar it was only for a second, literally one second, and then they slipped south again, veered over to the entrance to the dining room, then went out the window. Oscar filed it away. The guy probably knew something.
He was bursting with nerves as he led Oscar up a worn path, prickly pear and teddy bear cholla and sage stretching toward the Catalinas. There in a clearing, hummingbirds buzzing around the saguaro, was a little cabin. Mr. Elmer knocked on the door like a man used to knocking on doors behind which something was going on that whoever was doing it didn’t want him knowing about. There was no answer. He pulled the correct key from his pocket and opened it. There was a narrow stairway just to the right. Mr. Elmer looked at those stairs like he was looking at a snake with an open mouth. He gestured to Oscar, go on up. Didn’t want to be seen from behind, maybe.
Oscar eased into a room under the eaves. That’s where it happened, and nobody knew why. A few 45s illuminated by a single bare bulb, a program from a high school play wedged between the floorboards, a paperback western in the closet behind two single mattresses, and a boy, not even sixteen years old, hanging from a frayed lariat.
It had taken him precisely 203 hours to travel to this outpost in the American desert. Women boarding the bus, crying “Arroz y gallina!,” men with cases of patent medicines, even clowns doing their hackneyed routine for spare change. Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora. Leaving the ocean behind, the air grew so dry that he choked on it.
And maybe he was sick. He felt dull in the heat that descended from heaven and rose again with a great bounce. He’d let himself think he’d grow old on the coast of Jalisco. Might as well admit he’d imagined himself in Maria’s soft arms, fleshier now that they had the boy and the girl—it was a pathetic dream. He shoved it roughly aside.
His partner, Jones, had cabled him at the hotel where he’d holed up in Puerto Vallarta—BOY DEAD AT RANCH STOP CAN YOU TAKE CASE STOP And what else was there. Perhaps one death would erase another.
Mostly he wished he were anywhere but in the corner of this low-ceilinged, wood-beamed, white-plastered room with the leather chairs that were supposed to say something like “gaucho” when you sat in them. When you sat in them, you were waiting for something.
The manager of the Flecha Caída came up, rubbing his palms. The man was short, an eastern type, like a marshmallow. Could be he came out west himself to take a cure, found a demand for his bookkeeping skills, maybe not much to go back to in Des Moines or Scranton or wherever it was he came from. Oscar straightened up. The man’s eyes were sliding around the room. When he finally looked at Oscar it was only for a second, literally one second, and then they slipped south again, veered over to the entrance to the dining room, then went out the window. Oscar filed it away. The guy probably knew something.
He was bursting with nerves as he led Oscar up a worn path, prickly pear and teddy bear cholla and sage stretching toward the Catalinas. There in a clearing, hummingbirds buzzing around the saguaro, was a little cabin. Mr. Elmer knocked on the door like a man used to knocking on doors behind which something was going on that whoever was doing it didn’t want him knowing about. There was no answer. He pulled the correct key from his pocket and opened it. There was a narrow stairway just to the right. Mr. Elmer looked at those stairs like he was looking at a snake with an open mouth. He gestured to Oscar, go on up. Didn’t want to be seen from behind, maybe.
Oscar eased into a room under the eaves. That’s where it happened, and nobody knew why. A few 45s illuminated by a single bare bulb, a program from a high school play wedged between the floorboards, a paperback western in the closet behind two single mattresses, and a boy, not even sixteen years old, hanging from a frayed lariat.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Flecha Caída
Oscar slumped in an armchair in a corner of the room. He watched the men looking awkward but eager in their stiff jeans, the women affecting bandannas around their necks and pert western hats on their way out to pose against the rails of the corral, he supposed—a few kids running around outside in leather chaps, just bought at the outfitters in town. It was swell. People came here from back east because they were sick. To pretend they were Gary Cooper, Dale Evans, maybe even Cochise or Geronimo—he didn’t know or care. He was here to do a job.
It had taken him precisely 203 hours to travel to this outpost in the American desert. Women boarding the bus, crying “Arroz y gallina!,” men with cases of patent medicines, even clowns doing their hackneyed routine for spare change. Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora. Leaving the ocean behind, the air grew so dry he choked on it.
And maybe he was sick. He felt dull in the heat that descended from heaven and rose again with a great bounce. He’d let himself think he’d grow old on the coast of Jalisco. Might as well admit he’d imagined himself in Maria’s soft arms, fleshier now that they had the boy and the girl—it was a pathetic dream. He shoved it roughly aside.
His partner, Jones, had cabled him at the hotel where he’d holed up in Puerto Vallarta—BOY DEAD AT RANCH STOP CAN YOU TAKE CASE STOP And what else was there. Perhaps one death would erase another.
It had taken him precisely 203 hours to travel to this outpost in the American desert. Women boarding the bus, crying “Arroz y gallina!,” men with cases of patent medicines, even clowns doing their hackneyed routine for spare change. Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora. Leaving the ocean behind, the air grew so dry he choked on it.
And maybe he was sick. He felt dull in the heat that descended from heaven and rose again with a great bounce. He’d let himself think he’d grow old on the coast of Jalisco. Might as well admit he’d imagined himself in Maria’s soft arms, fleshier now that they had the boy and the girl—it was a pathetic dream. He shoved it roughly aside.
His partner, Jones, had cabled him at the hotel where he’d holed up in Puerto Vallarta—BOY DEAD AT RANCH STOP CAN YOU TAKE CASE STOP And what else was there. Perhaps one death would erase another.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Oscar discovers "the truth"
The women burst in, breathing hard. They were covered with sweat and dust billowed around them like a whirlwind had set down in the middle of this forsaken yard in this town in the middle of nowhere. They lunged. Oscar grabbed an aged palm frond and swung. The man in the chair struggled and fell over. He lay squirming weakly like a dying fly.
Oscar suddenly understood. "You killed those people, Lupita!" Though he knew he’d never understand, he shouted, "Why?"
"Por qué?" she spat. "You think I did? Hijo de la chingada. Should I even pretend to think you could understand? Fine. He came here—everyone could tell he was on the run. He hid out at Maria’s parents’ house. They were kind—Maria had taken to him, for her sake they welcomed him. He was a gringo—a gringo husband, something you don’t get a chance at everyday in our little corner of Mexico. He had parents from Spain, he was an Americano. But his Spanish—what a shame, they never taught him their own mother tongue. De todos modos he was handsome, elegant—she cackled. Look at him now! Carolina was my cousin’s daughter. You should have seen her, how long her legs and how smooth her skin, and her eyes were the color of water hyacinths. We all knew it, he had something valuable. He didn’t take too much trouble to deny that. Pride. He wasn’t careful. Rey güero, güero canelo more like it. Just ordinary hospitality for us—plus a little extra, he was a man, he was a gringo, they wanted him in the family. Went straight to his head. Soon he and Carolina married, Maria was born, and Xaviercito. No one had forgotten he was hiding something. There were stories, whispers when he passed, looking as tall as God. Last thing I heard he had brought a chest of diamonds from the Sierra Madre and he kept it hidden in a cave out by the swimming hole. Then Felix’s son—always in trouble. Had these big ideas that never worked out. He went to Mexico DF for awhile and when he came home he had a couple of friends with him. I think they were drinking, smoking, cocaina. Felix’s son and two of his friends. They took Carolina and little Xavier and tied them up como rehénes. I heard this all later. I knew it was true. And while they had his wife and his son he did nothing. He went up into the hills. He was afraid. He deserted them. When he tried to leave town that was when I got him for myself. I have made him my slave, though he deserved much worse. I have tried to make his life a hell. You think I eat these tamales? I smile, I promise piña and puerco, and back here he’s working, sweating, doing what I tell him." She glared at the man with her dark bird's eyes, her face twisted.
"Lupita," the man cried, "I know how bad my Spanish but I try to say you are wrong. I know, was wrong to come here. Wrong to have a family." She stared at him blankly. "But I try to defend my family. Pablo and the other—other—I don't have the word—run into the hills, I try to find them but you bring me here before I can—and what I can not fight is these rumors and lies.
"Maria had gone with wife’s father to Guadalajara that day"—he stammered in English, looking up at Oscar—"the only reason she was spared, until—until—she—and—it has been—it is impossible—she wouldn’t let me die. She forced me to eat the tamales. I’ve tried to leave this world. After I saw what they did there was nothing more for me. There is nothing more for me."
"But what happened to my Maria?" Oscar burst out. "Why is she dead? Did she know where those boys went? Was she going to make them pay?"
They looked at each other. Felix? Or did she fall?
Oscar took Maria’s father back to the Hotel Santana. He could hardly walk. He leaned on Oscar’s arm, limping down main street. It was siesta. A few children were leaping from a barbed wire fence into a pile of gravel in the shade. The woman who did laundry looked up from folding sheets with mild curiosity. Long ago she had ceased to be surprised by things the gringos did.
They couldn’t stay in the hotel. Oscar packed his suitcase with economy and they left only a faint smell of aftershave. Sitting on the bus, feeling the hot wind from the open windows. They got off a few miles away and walked back among avocado trees to a cinderblock room with palm fronds for a roof. He hoped they would be safe here.
The next day, Oscar walked out to the road again and waited. He got off the bus in the next town over, walking slowly, the sun like warm hands held close against his face. In the calle principal, women sold sliced cucumber, beets, and jicama, hunks of melting papaya, tiny green mangoes. Men with their carts offering raspados and a pale coffee-colored drink he’d never learned the name of. Doorways opened onto billiard halls, a child playing with a litter of kittens on a dirt floor, a ragged dog burying its face to sleep, the smell of new tires and bags of feed. He found the young man hunched over a book. He looked up, startled at the knock against the doorframe. His hair was golden and he had light brown eyes with green flames around the pupil. Adelante. "You are—? I am—" Oscar looked for a place to sit and found only the edge of the bed. "I’ve come to talk about your father," he began awkwardly. "I don’t know my father," the man responded abruptly. He turned his head and stared out at a purple vine climbing a wall made of rusting box springs. "I do," said Oscar. "I've spent these past weeks searching for him—well, not for him, but for a trace, his essence—something that would allow me to understand things—and then I found him behind the tamale lady’s shop, in a corrugated hut—"
"Oh, I know the tamale lady," said the blond man. "Good tamales."
"I thought he was dying," Oscar continued—"but he’s up and around now, you know, he’s—"
"I came here to find him too," the blond man said at last. "I came a long way. My grandmother heard he was here in Jalisco. I didn’t know what it would be like to have a father. So I came looking for him. I listened to what people believed. What they wanted me to believe. I followed innuendos and lies here to Cihuatlán." Hummingbirds hung on the air outside the window and Oscar could hear a horse whinny in the neighboring yard. "Eventually I heard that a gringo had come, and somehow I knew it was him—you know, when pieces connect, you don’t have any more questions. And by then I had realized that it was too late to find out. I didn’t care so much. But I had come this far, and I stayed. I study chess. I help the veterinario down the street with his animals. I don’t think too much about some things."
Oscar left Maria’s father hiding inthe shack under the avocado trees. He left the abundant mangoes and the dusty streets, the crashing waves, the fishermen casting their nets into the surf. He left the mountains that conserved their secret history beneath canopies of mahogany trees and falling yellow blossoms. He boarded another bus. The town closed like an oyster shell behind him, an irritated grain thickening, iridescent in the darkness.
In our next episode, Oscar visits a dude ranch in Tucson...
Oscar suddenly understood. "You killed those people, Lupita!" Though he knew he’d never understand, he shouted, "Why?"
"Por qué?" she spat. "You think I did? Hijo de la chingada. Should I even pretend to think you could understand? Fine. He came here—everyone could tell he was on the run. He hid out at Maria’s parents’ house. They were kind—Maria had taken to him, for her sake they welcomed him. He was a gringo—a gringo husband, something you don’t get a chance at everyday in our little corner of Mexico. He had parents from Spain, he was an Americano. But his Spanish—what a shame, they never taught him their own mother tongue. De todos modos he was handsome, elegant—she cackled. Look at him now! Carolina was my cousin’s daughter. You should have seen her, how long her legs and how smooth her skin, and her eyes were the color of water hyacinths. We all knew it, he had something valuable. He didn’t take too much trouble to deny that. Pride. He wasn’t careful. Rey güero, güero canelo more like it. Just ordinary hospitality for us—plus a little extra, he was a man, he was a gringo, they wanted him in the family. Went straight to his head. Soon he and Carolina married, Maria was born, and Xaviercito. No one had forgotten he was hiding something. There were stories, whispers when he passed, looking as tall as God. Last thing I heard he had brought a chest of diamonds from the Sierra Madre and he kept it hidden in a cave out by the swimming hole. Then Felix’s son—always in trouble. Had these big ideas that never worked out. He went to Mexico DF for awhile and when he came home he had a couple of friends with him. I think they were drinking, smoking, cocaina. Felix’s son and two of his friends. They took Carolina and little Xavier and tied them up como rehénes. I heard this all later. I knew it was true. And while they had his wife and his son he did nothing. He went up into the hills. He was afraid. He deserted them. When he tried to leave town that was when I got him for myself. I have made him my slave, though he deserved much worse. I have tried to make his life a hell. You think I eat these tamales? I smile, I promise piña and puerco, and back here he’s working, sweating, doing what I tell him." She glared at the man with her dark bird's eyes, her face twisted.
"Lupita," the man cried, "I know how bad my Spanish but I try to say you are wrong. I know, was wrong to come here. Wrong to have a family." She stared at him blankly. "But I try to defend my family. Pablo and the other—other—I don't have the word—run into the hills, I try to find them but you bring me here before I can—and what I can not fight is these rumors and lies.
"Maria had gone with wife’s father to Guadalajara that day"—he stammered in English, looking up at Oscar—"the only reason she was spared, until—until—she—and—it has been—it is impossible—she wouldn’t let me die. She forced me to eat the tamales. I’ve tried to leave this world. After I saw what they did there was nothing more for me. There is nothing more for me."
"But what happened to my Maria?" Oscar burst out. "Why is she dead? Did she know where those boys went? Was she going to make them pay?"
They looked at each other. Felix? Or did she fall?
Oscar took Maria’s father back to the Hotel Santana. He could hardly walk. He leaned on Oscar’s arm, limping down main street. It was siesta. A few children were leaping from a barbed wire fence into a pile of gravel in the shade. The woman who did laundry looked up from folding sheets with mild curiosity. Long ago she had ceased to be surprised by things the gringos did.
They couldn’t stay in the hotel. Oscar packed his suitcase with economy and they left only a faint smell of aftershave. Sitting on the bus, feeling the hot wind from the open windows. They got off a few miles away and walked back among avocado trees to a cinderblock room with palm fronds for a roof. He hoped they would be safe here.
The next day, Oscar walked out to the road again and waited. He got off the bus in the next town over, walking slowly, the sun like warm hands held close against his face. In the calle principal, women sold sliced cucumber, beets, and jicama, hunks of melting papaya, tiny green mangoes. Men with their carts offering raspados and a pale coffee-colored drink he’d never learned the name of. Doorways opened onto billiard halls, a child playing with a litter of kittens on a dirt floor, a ragged dog burying its face to sleep, the smell of new tires and bags of feed. He found the young man hunched over a book. He looked up, startled at the knock against the doorframe. His hair was golden and he had light brown eyes with green flames around the pupil. Adelante. "You are—? I am—" Oscar looked for a place to sit and found only the edge of the bed. "I’ve come to talk about your father," he began awkwardly. "I don’t know my father," the man responded abruptly. He turned his head and stared out at a purple vine climbing a wall made of rusting box springs. "I do," said Oscar. "I've spent these past weeks searching for him—well, not for him, but for a trace, his essence—something that would allow me to understand things—and then I found him behind the tamale lady’s shop, in a corrugated hut—"
"Oh, I know the tamale lady," said the blond man. "Good tamales."
"I thought he was dying," Oscar continued—"but he’s up and around now, you know, he’s—"
"I came here to find him too," the blond man said at last. "I came a long way. My grandmother heard he was here in Jalisco. I didn’t know what it would be like to have a father. So I came looking for him. I listened to what people believed. What they wanted me to believe. I followed innuendos and lies here to Cihuatlán." Hummingbirds hung on the air outside the window and Oscar could hear a horse whinny in the neighboring yard. "Eventually I heard that a gringo had come, and somehow I knew it was him—you know, when pieces connect, you don’t have any more questions. And by then I had realized that it was too late to find out. I didn’t care so much. But I had come this far, and I stayed. I study chess. I help the veterinario down the street with his animals. I don’t think too much about some things."
Oscar left Maria’s father hiding in
In our next episode, Oscar visits a dude ranch in Tucson...
Friday, June 27, 2008
Oscar's adventures continued
He walked down the dusty street toward the table in the shade where the Senora was lifting tamales out of the deep aluminum pot. I want to talk to you, he said. Let’s go inside. She tried to slip subtly between him and the door, a curtain hanging across it. We can talk here, she said, almost cajoling. There’s no one around. Everyone’s gone to the circus. I went last week already. You should see it. It’s starting now—can you hear? They have lions that piss--she was babbling. He took a step closer and saw her daughter rise, her usually genial face now blank and menacing, but he couldn’t feel afraid. He was looking at a Halloween mask from the five and dime, only the eyes were alive. He dodged between them. This wasn’t what he’d planned to do. Before he could stop himself he was pounding along a corridor. He glimpsed a withered couple slumped in their chairs as if petrified, the thick lenses of their glasses making their eyes looked like huge shimmering cataracts. A philodendron trailed along the tiles. The hall grew longer and longer until at last he burst out into a dirt yard where a fire was burning and stumbled over crockery into a pile of cornhusks. He swore and heard an answering curse in English. It had come from the corrugated shed to his right, a stream of liquid running toward the dusty mango tree. With sweating hands he grasped a rope handle attached to a metal panel. In the sudden gloom he saw a man bound to a chair, his matted beard touching his chest, reeking of urine. The man raised his eyes. Please get me out, he said. I’ve made thousands of tamales and I can no longer stand the smell of corn.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Oscar Sloane returns
Felix was voluble today. Oscar sighed, relieved.
"Xavier fue de Monterey," he recounted.
"No Monterrey"—he added, a rich effusion like froth from the motor of a sleek luxury vessel around the r. "In California. He was from there. He used to come into my shop. He was good with his hands, he helped me fix things—sometimes he helped my brother-in-law repair his nets. He chose his words carefully, as if he were carving them in stone. Each one a commitment. Each one an effort. Each one a burden. He was running from something, I had figured that out. He met Mariangeles’s mother when she served him supper one night. She thought he had money. He did have something valuable with him. I heard it was pearls. There were rumors. But I wouldn’t say they didn’t love each other. Tu sabes—whatever that means. I think you know what that means. I mean, I think you know what I mean. It was like that with you and Maria, no?"
A creaking in the hull woke him. He lay for a minute in between before pushing himself up and pulling on his clothes.
The days had begun to glide past and thoughts were like burrs catching on a silk sheet. The image in the cave returned to him with a shock followed by a long ache—as if he had done something he was doomed to relive—twist and turn though he might, it would return when he closed his eyes.
That morning at breakfast Oscar glimpsed his reflection in his tin cup, wan and elongated. His head seemed to go on forever. He could just make out the dark stubble around his thin moustache, which had been a crisp line ashore. His eyes looked almost bruised in the silvery convex. He tipped the cup so that his nostrils loomed. His hair stood up like a soft brush. The men at the table looked at him and looked away.
His mind rehearsed the days he had spent in the town. He sifted for details. Again he saw Lupita sitting outside her door like a sentry, her daughter a stoic giantess nursing a thick-bodied child. There were no more tamales. Lupita’s laugh was hollow as she told him to come back tomorrow for puerco and elote. She seemed wary as he stood there. He was just trying to figure out what else to have for dinner. Pozole? She smiled, but her eyes were cold. Yes, you should go, she had said without warmth. You should go west. I think it is time for you to go.
A thick coiled rope flying through the air, a dark hand closing on it. The crew dispersed. Oscar went south.
He stepped down from the bus and it chugged away with a burst of exhaust. The rains would come soon. The rays would thrust themselves with an ecstatic convulsion above the surface of the lagoon, the mangoes would ripen—apricot teardrops, swollen red livers filled with jelly, globular coconut-scented mangoes—thousands of them. Birds would peck at the pits in the split lush orange, leaving them clean.
"Xavier fue de Monterey," he recounted.
"No Monterrey"—he added, a rich effusion like froth from the motor of a sleek luxury vessel around the r. "In California. He was from there. He used to come into my shop. He was good with his hands, he helped me fix things—sometimes he helped my brother-in-law repair his nets. He chose his words carefully, as if he were carving them in stone. Each one a commitment. Each one an effort. Each one a burden. He was running from something, I had figured that out. He met Mariangeles’s mother when she served him supper one night. She thought he had money. He did have something valuable with him. I heard it was pearls. There were rumors. But I wouldn’t say they didn’t love each other. Tu sabes—whatever that means. I think you know what that means. I mean, I think you know what I mean. It was like that with you and Maria, no?"
A creaking in the hull woke him. He lay for a minute in between before pushing himself up and pulling on his clothes.
The days had begun to glide past and thoughts were like burrs catching on a silk sheet. The image in the cave returned to him with a shock followed by a long ache—as if he had done something he was doomed to relive—twist and turn though he might, it would return when he closed his eyes.
That morning at breakfast Oscar glimpsed his reflection in his tin cup, wan and elongated. His head seemed to go on forever. He could just make out the dark stubble around his thin moustache, which had been a crisp line ashore. His eyes looked almost bruised in the silvery convex. He tipped the cup so that his nostrils loomed. His hair stood up like a soft brush. The men at the table looked at him and looked away.
His mind rehearsed the days he had spent in the town. He sifted for details. Again he saw Lupita sitting outside her door like a sentry, her daughter a stoic giantess nursing a thick-bodied child. There were no more tamales. Lupita’s laugh was hollow as she told him to come back tomorrow for puerco and elote. She seemed wary as he stood there. He was just trying to figure out what else to have for dinner. Pozole? She smiled, but her eyes were cold. Yes, you should go, she had said without warmth. You should go west. I think it is time for you to go.
A thick coiled rope flying through the air, a dark hand closing on it. The crew dispersed. Oscar went south.
He stepped down from the bus and it chugged away with a burst of exhaust. The rains would come soon. The rays would thrust themselves with an ecstatic convulsion above the surface of the lagoon, the mangoes would ripen—apricot teardrops, swollen red livers filled with jelly, globular coconut-scented mangoes—thousands of them. Birds would peck at the pits in the split lush orange, leaving them clean.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Oscar Sloane at sea
He lay on his bunk listening to the sound of water against the steel hull, the unreasoning, unrelenting force of the sea. He had been playing solitaire. Now the cards appeared to be the tortured machinations of a malign consciousness that dogged his efforts to exist. In his windowless cubicle he imagined the sound of the waves rushing past the hull as the rush of blood in the womb. How terrible to be confined in the womb, tossed and jolted by an unseen, uncontrollable, invisible presence. The image of his dinner came to him unbidden. Ham and biscuits—it seemed strange that he had never realized how inherently unappetizing—no, how deeply revolting—these foods were. He closed his eyes again, begging elusive sleep to remove him from the wasteland of the waking world.
He found himself wearing the uniform of a gas station attendant, squinting up at the receding window in the cab of a gigantic semi. The driver looked down slowly, flames licking around his head. The tanks were bottomless and he stood for what seemed like hours with the pump in his hand, breathing bittersweet diesel until it had lodged in his lungs. Then the truck combusted, the driver rising up in a jet of orange, his malevolent laugh blending with the apocalyptic boom of the explosion. Oscar jerked awake. Feet were pounding along the deck. He pushed himself upright and grappled his way to the door of his cabin. Something had happened and through the haze obscuring his thoughts, he grasped that his journey had come to an end.
The ship’s frame shuddered amid waves that sent torrents over the gunwales, spray catching him in the face as he wrenched open the steel door of his cage. He saw whitecaps illuminated against the fluctuating dark surface of the sea, the familiar points of Ursa Major benign in the still, ecstatic arc of the sky.
With a crippled engine it would take days to return to port. The radio was bleating static and exotic accented English. He vaguely understood that another ship was coming to assist. He knew only that their vessel might never return, that Vallarta might not exist—his single certainty the present, endless moment in which he lay rocking in the prehistoric swells.
He had grown to anticipate meal times with the enthusiasm of a prisoner. One afternoon he lay, again, on his bunk after lunch. The tall African cook had sent out the food, which was growing pale and strange, with a faintly Gallic shrug. A paperback was propped in his hand, his mind straying from the suddenly pointless activity on the page. As the book dropped to his chest and the air around him grew heavy, Felix, the old man at the repair shop, appeared. He was wearing a blue bowtie and sunglasses that completely obscured his eyes.
He found himself wearing the uniform of a gas station attendant, squinting up at the receding window in the cab of a gigantic semi. The driver looked down slowly, flames licking around his head. The tanks were bottomless and he stood for what seemed like hours with the pump in his hand, breathing bittersweet diesel until it had lodged in his lungs. Then the truck combusted, the driver rising up in a jet of orange, his malevolent laugh blending with the apocalyptic boom of the explosion. Oscar jerked awake. Feet were pounding along the deck. He pushed himself upright and grappled his way to the door of his cabin. Something had happened and through the haze obscuring his thoughts, he grasped that his journey had come to an end.
The ship’s frame shuddered amid waves that sent torrents over the gunwales, spray catching him in the face as he wrenched open the steel door of his cage. He saw whitecaps illuminated against the fluctuating dark surface of the sea, the familiar points of Ursa Major benign in the still, ecstatic arc of the sky.
With a crippled engine it would take days to return to port. The radio was bleating static and exotic accented English. He vaguely understood that another ship was coming to assist. He knew only that their vessel might never return, that Vallarta might not exist—his single certainty the present, endless moment in which he lay rocking in the prehistoric swells.
He had grown to anticipate meal times with the enthusiasm of a prisoner. One afternoon he lay, again, on his bunk after lunch. The tall African cook had sent out the food, which was growing pale and strange, with a faintly Gallic shrug. A paperback was propped in his hand, his mind straying from the suddenly pointless activity on the page. As the book dropped to his chest and the air around him grew heavy, Felix, the old man at the repair shop, appeared. He was wearing a blue bowtie and sunglasses that completely obscured his eyes.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
the continued adventures of Oscar Sloane
He walks toward the taco stand, the smell of tongue in oil. The woman behind the grill smiles briefly at him, her front teeth framed in gray. He reads a couple of the fourteen prescriptions of Dr. Jesucristo painted red and yellow on the wall behind her. A solemn, skinny girl brings him a bottle of beer. The woman flips a tortilla on the grill without looking at it. She lifts a charred onion to a plate and stares at him with unexpressive eyes. You knew Maria de los Angeles? But it’s not a question. She already knows the past and the present, possibly the future. Yes. It was her father, she says. Everyone said there was something. Such a shame, we said. He was only passing through. I know—she leaned toward him—what you’ve seen. Her eyes were still dull but her voice had changed. Go, she said.
The monkey moved sinuously, flattening itself against the wire of its cage. He plucked a frangipani blossom and tossed it among moldering banana peels. The sound of the waves blotted out the heavy door closing.
He drove along the river--barely running now, the hills dry except for yellow flowers tumbling from bare branches when the wind blew. An old man appeared at the side of the road. The crown of his straw hat was broken. He lifted his arm and the car slowed in billowing dust and when it cleared the man was gone. La Palomita, it’s not far. They drove on in silence. I knew someone would come one day, the old man said finally, barely moving his lips, as they approached three shanties, burros and cows grazing and chickens pecking in the brush, pink impatiens and oleander. It’s up that way. Derecha. There’s a fork, derecha derecha. You see a stream coming down a hillside and the cottonwoods grow big. He turned and walked toward a hut covered with dry palm fronds, a clothesline where worn cotton dresses rose and fell.
He was trying to remember what she had told him. He took a pull from his canteen. Suddenly it rose up beside the narrow ruts. He stopped and got out of the car. Already he could smell the cold breath of the earth. This was something that men did. He no longer had much to lose. He walked toward the ragged entrance, dripping with vines, their blind brown roots reaching out to clutch at stone. The skulls of three birds formed a triangle in the center of the arch. He stepped over it. The quiet click of his lantern bounced back toward him and he heard something skitter deeper into the shadows. Someone had built a fire here long ago. The two bodies, one of them small, were mostly bone. They faced the rock—rivulets of condensation, nests of mice and spiders the size of children’s hands, implacable eyes gazing out of the darkness.
Señora Lupita is still selling tamales. Hay de pollo y de elote! she cries. No, mi vida, no tamales de piña hasta martes, she laughs. Señora, he tells her, I know you will never have tamales de piña. I no longer believe in them. He asks for dos de pollo and dos de elote, preparados. As she unhusks them she tilts her head and glances up at him, her black eyes like a lark’s. Mijo, she says, I know you’ll be going soon. You should have asked me before you started keeping company with Maria de los Angeles. Que chingadera. Tamales de pollo y de elote! Si, mijo, there was something not right. We all knew it, even before she was born. Her father came from somewhere else. They say he came from California. You know, it used to be Mexico, but now—my son lives in San Jose. He married an American woman and they have three daughters, all bien blancas, ojos azules. After it happened we never saw him. He just disappeared. My sister-in-law told me she heard he went somewhere on a fishing boat. Her cousin said he went out into the sea, across the ocean. I don’t know what’s over there. But what kind of life could he have anywhere, after all?
He cabled his office overlooking Market Street, the scent of Chinese food wafting in the open windows, their sills covered with flies. Heading west, it read. Take a holiday.
In the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers left this bay to blazon the seal of the crown across the Philippine archipelago. Their ships were built by Indians from virgin mahogany felled in the hills. The phosphorescent tree covered with clam shells glowed like moonlight by the lagoon. But the white sand had turned an ordinary color, flecked with glass and charcoal, as he headed north to Vallarta and took the first tramp steamer bound for the islands.
The monkey moved sinuously, flattening itself against the wire of its cage. He plucked a frangipani blossom and tossed it among moldering banana peels. The sound of the waves blotted out the heavy door closing.
He drove along the river--barely running now, the hills dry except for yellow flowers tumbling from bare branches when the wind blew. An old man appeared at the side of the road. The crown of his straw hat was broken. He lifted his arm and the car slowed in billowing dust and when it cleared the man was gone. La Palomita, it’s not far. They drove on in silence. I knew someone would come one day, the old man said finally, barely moving his lips, as they approached three shanties, burros and cows grazing and chickens pecking in the brush, pink impatiens and oleander. It’s up that way. Derecha. There’s a fork, derecha derecha. You see a stream coming down a hillside and the cottonwoods grow big. He turned and walked toward a hut covered with dry palm fronds, a clothesline where worn cotton dresses rose and fell.
He was trying to remember what she had told him. He took a pull from his canteen. Suddenly it rose up beside the narrow ruts. He stopped and got out of the car. Already he could smell the cold breath of the earth. This was something that men did. He no longer had much to lose. He walked toward the ragged entrance, dripping with vines, their blind brown roots reaching out to clutch at stone. The skulls of three birds formed a triangle in the center of the arch. He stepped over it. The quiet click of his lantern bounced back toward him and he heard something skitter deeper into the shadows. Someone had built a fire here long ago. The two bodies, one of them small, were mostly bone. They faced the rock—rivulets of condensation, nests of mice and spiders the size of children’s hands, implacable eyes gazing out of the darkness.
Señora Lupita is still selling tamales. Hay de pollo y de elote! she cries. No, mi vida, no tamales de piña hasta martes, she laughs. Señora, he tells her, I know you will never have tamales de piña. I no longer believe in them. He asks for dos de pollo and dos de elote, preparados. As she unhusks them she tilts her head and glances up at him, her black eyes like a lark’s. Mijo, she says, I know you’ll be going soon. You should have asked me before you started keeping company with Maria de los Angeles. Que chingadera. Tamales de pollo y de elote! Si, mijo, there was something not right. We all knew it, even before she was born. Her father came from somewhere else. They say he came from California. You know, it used to be Mexico, but now—my son lives in San Jose. He married an American woman and they have three daughters, all bien blancas, ojos azules. After it happened we never saw him. He just disappeared. My sister-in-law told me she heard he went somewhere on a fishing boat. Her cousin said he went out into the sea, across the ocean. I don’t know what’s over there. But what kind of life could he have anywhere, after all?
He cabled his office overlooking Market Street, the scent of Chinese food wafting in the open windows, their sills covered with flies. Heading west, it read. Take a holiday.
In the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers left this bay to blazon the seal of the crown across the Philippine archipelago. Their ships were built by Indians from virgin mahogany felled in the hills. The phosphorescent tree covered with clam shells glowed like moonlight by the lagoon. But the white sand had turned an ordinary color, flecked with glass and charcoal, as he headed north to Vallarta and took the first tramp steamer bound for the islands.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
On the brightly striped bedspread, under the fan, its chain bobbing
with each exuberant arc, he opened the envelope. Inside was a
photograph. Her hair pulled back, shining in the sunlight, his arm
around her shoulders. Worn leather shoes, a carefully trimmed
moustache. They smiled at the camera. Who was behind it? Flowers
posed delicately upon the leafless branches of a tree. Hillside
faceted like glass, the cave’s entrance receding darkness. There was
a cabin with a palm roof, a boy perhaps five years old playing in the
dust. He turned the photo over. Carolina y Xavier, 1936. And a lock
of blond hair.
with each exuberant arc, he opened the envelope. Inside was a
photograph. Her hair pulled back, shining in the sunlight, his arm
around her shoulders. Worn leather shoes, a carefully trimmed
moustache. They smiled at the camera. Who was behind it? Flowers
posed delicately upon the leafless branches of a tree. Hillside
faceted like glass, the cave’s entrance receding darkness. There was
a cabin with a palm roof, a boy perhaps five years old playing in the
dust. He turned the photo over. Carolina y Xavier, 1936. And a lock
of blond hair.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Further adventures of Oscar Sloan, world-weary gumshoe
The Lulu Merceria sold clothes in the timeless style of Mexican grandmothers, bolts, blankets and garlands, bouquets of fake chrysanthemums and laces bought from a traveling salesman, the fragile cardboard rolls forever awaiting some wedding or quinceañera. He stopped to buy three yards of silk for the waitress at Fonda Maricela and walked toward the lights carrying it wrapped in rough paper. The crowd spread out into the street, almost to the pool hall where three old men impassively puffed their puritas. She had fallen near the gaudy Christmas tree, improbable snowflakes and a wreath of tinsel, tiny lights flashing on the spreading pool behind her head. He tossed the package aside. Her dress rode above her knees and her eyes stared up at the bright letters spelling “Feliz Año.” He touched her thigh gently. The cook was talking into a large black phone. Soon an ambulance screamed along the main road, and a truck full of federales shouldering rifles shuddered around the corner of Calle Mazatlán.
He found himself walking the cobblestone streets in search of a man he’d never met. He found a storefront with a glass case containing pieces of blenders, ovens, toasters and outboard motors. Felix’s. Felix sat with his back to the street, asleep in front of a blaring television. When he finally awoke and turned toward the noise in his doorway, he was wearing sunglasses and a bowtie. He got to his feet in front of a pastel portrait of a young man wearing sunglasses and a bowtie. They sat in the back near the refrigerator. Suspended dust motes caught light coming from the dirt yard crowded with washing machines.
A man strolls in wearing shoes with holes that revealed his toes, carrying a piece of fish and three wide, matte-yellow bananas. Cabrón. They exchange greetings and the man with old shoes presents the dorado and bananas, which came from a friend in the country he visited after his truck was fixed, taking some good wood he’d gotten from his wife’s uncle. Felix passes him a blender and accepts ten pesos in small change. A car pulls up and Felix ambles to the door. It’s a cousin with his son and two daughters in the back—his wife is cleaning houses. The younger girl feeds her brother a bottle while the father tells how his fishing boat got run over with a cement truck. Oscar gets up to go. Esperame, Felix says suddenly. He walks haltingly toward the back door and disappears behind the washing machines. He returns with an envelope in his hand. She left this for you, he says, and turns away.
He found himself walking the cobblestone streets in search of a man he’d never met. He found a storefront with a glass case containing pieces of blenders, ovens, toasters and outboard motors. Felix’s. Felix sat with his back to the street, asleep in front of a blaring television. When he finally awoke and turned toward the noise in his doorway, he was wearing sunglasses and a bowtie. He got to his feet in front of a pastel portrait of a young man wearing sunglasses and a bowtie. They sat in the back near the refrigerator. Suspended dust motes caught light coming from the dirt yard crowded with washing machines.
A man strolls in wearing shoes with holes that revealed his toes, carrying a piece of fish and three wide, matte-yellow bananas. Cabrón. They exchange greetings and the man with old shoes presents the dorado and bananas, which came from a friend in the country he visited after his truck was fixed, taking some good wood he’d gotten from his wife’s uncle. Felix passes him a blender and accepts ten pesos in small change. A car pulls up and Felix ambles to the door. It’s a cousin with his son and two daughters in the back—his wife is cleaning houses. The younger girl feeds her brother a bottle while the father tells how his fishing boat got run over with a cement truck. Oscar gets up to go. Esperame, Felix says suddenly. He walks haltingly toward the back door and disappears behind the washing machines. He returns with an envelope in his hand. She left this for you, he says, and turns away.
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