Useful fools, p.2
Useful Fools, page 2
“Get moving, Alonso,” his father said.
Alonso tried to speed up. Within seconds, it seemed, his father had painted an area the size of a pickup truck. Alonso looked at his own patch of yellow. A Volkswagen, he thought, dipping his brush. He stroked faster, and the Volkswagen grew.
A melodic beep sounded, and he turned to see the elevator doors slide open. A heavyset man stepped out, a hulking shadow with grease-slicked hair and a cheap brown suit. He fixed Alonso with a glare. “Who the hell are you?”
Cheeks reddening, Alonso glared back.
“Buenos días, señor.” Alonso’s father gestured at the wall. “We’re painting the lobby.”
The man lumbered toward them, opening a trail of tile as his feet dragged through the drop cloths. “Lemme see your I.D.s.”
“What are you, a cop? We—OW!” Alonso jumped as his father pinched his arm.
“Just show him your I.D.,” his father muttered, pulling his own I.D. from a back pocket.
“But he can’t . . .” Alonso gave a little bounce of impatience. “We have rights, Papá.” They had just read the Constitution in school. His teacher had spent an hour talking about human rights. “Señorita Morales said—”
The Hulk frowned.
“Show him your I.D., Alonso!”
Hot-faced, Alonso reached into his pocket. Empty. Bouncing his heels against the tile, he groped in his other pocket. Nothing but lint. He looked sullenly at his father. “If he’s a cop, he has to show us his badge,” he muttered.
His father’s eyes widened. “You forgot it?”
Stepping back, the Hulk swept open his jacket. Below his left arm, a semiautomatic pistol nestled in a holster.
“Papá, I—”
“Shut up!” Alonso’s father shoved him, hard, against the wall, and stepped between him and the Hulk. “Por favor, señor.” He held out his hands, pleading. “Please. He’s my son. Mejía hired us. The super. Just ask him.”
The Hulk reached inside his jacket and pulled out a walkie-talkie.
“Mejía knows us, señor.” Alonso winced as his father’s wheedle sharpened to a whine. “Please, just . . .” His father stepped away and pounded on the super’s door. “Mejía! Mejía! Come out here, please!”
The Hulk had eyes like a fattened pig, nearly hidden in folds of flesh. Sweating, Alonso met his gaze. The wall at his back felt sticky with paint.
Mejía stepped into the lobby with a piece of bread in his hand. He chewed slowly, glancing at the three of them. Then he swallowed and smiled at the Hulk. “Is something wrong, Señor Gálvez?”
“Who are they?”
“Señor, they are the painters.” Still smiling, Mejía pointed at the half-painted wall.
“How long have you known them?”
Mejía spread his arms wide. “Carhuanca? He’s from Mica, my pueblo. I’ve known him all my life.” His expression shifted to one of mock concern. “Is something wrong, Señor Gálvez?”
“And the boy?”
“His son, Señor Gálvez. Alonso.” Mejía turned to Alonso, and Alonso nodded.
The Hulk grunted and slipped the walkie-talkie back into his pocket. “Next time you bring a couple of cholos in here, you let me know first.” He strode to the front door and turned to face them. “You hear me? If you wanna keep your job.”
The front door slammed, and the Hulk’s mountainous figure faded behind the smoked glass. Alonso’s father blew out a whistling breath.
“Asshole,” Alonso muttered.
“Bodyguard,” Mejía corrected. “His boss, Señor Villanueva, sends him out to buy the newspaper every morning.” He chuckled. “Gálvez hates that. Makes him feel so small, and he likes to feel so big.”
Alonso thought of the Hulk, sent out like an errand boy with his pistol. Relief bubbled out in a laugh, but his father smacked him across the side of his head. “Idiot! You know what they’ll do to you if they arrest you? Where the hell is your I.D.?”
Alonso rubbed his stinging scalp. “But Papá, he’s not a cop! He had no right—”
“So what if he isn’t a cop? You got any idea who his boss is? Villanueva?”
Mejía nodded solemnly. “Remember that banker Sendero killed?”
“That was Villanueva’s brother,” his father snapped. “So now Villanueva owns the bank.” He picked up his paintbrush and slapped it against the wall. “My son the lawyer. Talkin’ about his rights.”
Alonso flushed, but Mejía cocked his head. “Forget rights,” he told Alonso. “They got guns or money, you don’t mess with them.” He chuckled once more. Then he thumped Alonso on the shoulder and went back to his breakfast.
Seated at a desk in the cement hallway beside the Cesip’s main exam room, Rosa put down her pen and stretched her fingers. She’d been writing all morning. Heights, weights, names. Baby after baby. Pilar, Marco, Valentina. Every last one of them got a checkup and a line in the research log. She picked up her pen as another mother trailed past, clutching a fuzzy-haired baby and a yellow Cesip health card.
“Diego Quispe,” Magda called. Rosa printed the name in the log. “Six kilos even.” Magda hefted the baby off the scale. “You’re feeding him well, señora.”
Rosa watched as the baby’s fat brown hand swiped at Papá’s stethoscope. Then she glanced at her watch. It was already past noon, and no sign of Alonso. Would he ever come looking for her? Would he head straight for the comedor, the ramshackle lunchroom right across the street? In the exam room, Magda and Papá were taking their time checking the baby. Bantering with Diego’s mother. Explaining about family planning and the cholera epidemic and how to keep Diego healthy.
They’re a perfect team, Rosa thought. It’s hard to imagine one without the other.
Magda jotted something down on Diego’s health card. “Has the latrine brigade been by your house?”
Diego’s mother nodded. “They gave us a sack of lime.”
“Toss some into the pit every time you go. It kills the cholera germs.” Magda wagged a warning finger. “Don’t forget.”
“No, señora.” To Rosa’s relief, Diego’s mother snapped open a blanket. The exam was over, and the blanket flashed red as it settled across the examining table. Señora Quispe put Diego on it, grasped the corners, and with a little grunt swung baby and blanket onto her back. Handshakes and gracias all around, and then finally Señora Quispe was heading down the corridor, Diego jiggling on her back, flip-flops slapping the naked cement.
Rosa stood. “I’m hungry,” she announced. Papá murmured something about doing charts, so Magda promised to bring him lunch, and she and Rosa left the Cesip together.
The comedor across the street had the rustic look of a stable, patched together of woven cane esteras and adobe. Feeling her pulse quicken, Rosa stuck her head inside. She smelled hot oil and garlic and cilantro, saw men, women, and children crowding hip-to-hip on the wooden benches. But no Alonso. Maybe he was farther back in the shadows, by the frayed estera wall. But wouldn’t he have come to get her first, anyway?
Would he? Well, maybe not. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe she was an idiot, thinking that he and she—
“Rosa!”
Behind her, down the hill. Two figures stretched like lengthening shadows as they drew near. One was a tall man with a swift stride, the other a teenaged boy. As Rosa watched, the boy broke into a run.
Alonso, she thought. Alonso, Alonso, Alonso! She fought down a maniac urge to race into his arms.
He wore castoff jeans, double-rolled at the cuffs and streaked with yellow. Saffron grains of paint flecked his hair.
“Hola.” Alonso kissed Rosa’s cheek, rueful. He hadn’t been able to control himself. He’d seen her and his legs had taken off running.
Alonso’s father nodded a greeting as Rosa stretched out her hand. She would have liked to kiss Señor Tomás, the way everyone kisses everyone, but it was impossible. Not with those black eyes, gazing sternly down at her. That proud and unfriendly silence. They shook hands, and Tomás turned away.
Magda frowned. “Where are the kids? Didn’t you stop by Ana’s?”
Ducking to enter the comedor, Tomás jerked his head. “Go get the kids, Alonso.”
“But Papá, I have to go downtown! I can’t . . .” Alonso broke off in despair. Getting the kids would take at least half an hour. The way they dawdled . . . He turned to his mother. “Mamá, por favor! I have to go buy a book! For school!”
His father stepped back outside. “I told you to get the kids, Alonso.”
Magda smiled. “I’ll get them, cholito. You two worked all morning.”
“Worked?” Alonso’s father snorted. “Your brilliant son nearly got us arrested.” He shook his head. “Forget it, Alonso. You’ve gotta disinfect those water barrels.”
Rosa listened in horror. They’d send Alonso for the little ones, and then he’d go home. Saturday would end and she wouldn’t have seen him at all.
Magda’s voice was mild. “Can’t he do the barrels tomorrow?”
Yes, Rosa thought. Tomorrow.
“No,” Tomás snapped. “Tomorrow you’ll be dragging him off to Mass.”
Magda’s smile evaporated. “Mass won’t take all day.”
“Don’t baby him, Magda.”
“I’m not babying him.” Her voice softened. “Go on,” she encouraged. “You must be starving.”
Tomás scowled as Magda tilted her head and gazed up at him. Then, with an exasperated snort, he turned and stepped into the comedor.
Alonso grinned, but Magda turned on him with a frown. “Arrested?”
“I forgot my I.D.,” he mumbled.
“You know better than that. Get it before you go downtown.” She pulled a wrinkled bill from her pocket. “Have some lunch first.”
“Ay, Mamá, can’t we just get some empanadas off the cart?”
“We?”
“You want to come, Rosa?”
Rosa’s heart rose, and the grin on Alonso’s face spread to hers.
“You two . . .” Magda glanced sternly from one to the other, one finger up and ready to wag. Then she broke off with a laugh. “Okay.” She held out her arms to Rosa. “Just tell your father where you’re going. And don’t forget. Remind your mother about the Cesip anniversary, okay? It’s just two weeks now. You are all coming, no?”
Rosa stepped into the hug. “Of course,” she promised. She thought of Tía Virginia and hugged back, hard. “We wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
TWO
“¡Somos libres!” Alonso’s voice rang joyously across the Cesip’s dusty front lot.
Rosa giggled. It was the national anthem. We’re free! They had bus fares and permission to go and they were finally free. The two of them.
Alonso was bouncing by her side. He seemed delighted with himself. With her. With the way the sun was turning motes of dust into diamonds. Beyond them, the dirt road curved up, up toward the whitewashed parish church, and down, down, between shacks and flat-topped houses and pile after pile of bricks. Far below, sunlight struck silvery glints off the cars flitting along the highway. A bicycle horn bleated. The bakery man pedaled toward them, straining up the hill with his cartload of empanadas. The day had turned perfect.
Rosa bit into her empanada, powdered sugar and pastry and spiced meat. “What book do you need?”
Alonso didn’t answer. He was licking the sugar off his empanada, his eyes on a gray Volkswagen toiling toward them. It sputtered to a halt and as the window rolled down, a thickset man in a priest’s collar smiled up at them.
Alonso stepped to the open window. “Hola, Padre Manuel.”
“Hola yourself. Buenas tardes, Rosa.”
“Buenas tardes, Padre.” Rosa bent through the window to kiss the priest’s cheek. It was a soft cheek, oddly mismatched to the body below it. Padre Manuel’s forearm, resting on the open window, was as sinewy as a wrestler’s.
Padre Manuel glanced at his watch. “Coming to soccer practice, Alonso?”
Alonso shook his head. “I have to buy a book.”
Padre Manuel frowned and Alonso knew what was coming. You want to play on the team, you come to Mass and you come to practice. He spoke before the priest could start in on one of his you-know-the-rules sermons. “You been saying Mass, Padre?”
The priest rubbed his neck tiredly. “No. I went to see the Archbishop. Your mother wants more food for the comedor.”
“Too many mouths to feed, Padre?” Rosa teased.
The priest shook his head. “Not enough sharing, I think.”
Rosa and Alonso grinned. “Feed those dying of hunger,” they intoned. “Because if you haven’t fed them you’ve killed them.”
Padre Manuel slapped a hand to his forehead. “I repeat myself that much?”
“As the early Christians used to say . . .” Alonso mimicked the priest’s gravelly Spanish accent. Six years in Peru and he still sounded like he’d flown in from Madrid the night before.
“Ya, ya, get on with you.” Laughing, the priest shifted into gear. “Have fun.”
Alonso turned to Rosa as the Volkswagen gurgled up the hill. “Hey, Rosa.” He kicked her a stone, passing it like a soccer ball. “When was the last time you saw Rodolfo?”
Toeing the stone, Rosa thought. Rodolfo was Alonso’s best friend, a teasing broomstick of a boy who never stopped cracking jokes, even when he was too bruised to sit down. An electrical cord! My old man went after me with an electrical cord! You shoulda seen me light up the shack! When his father finally ran off, Rodolfo’s family moved away from Salvador to live with Rodolfo’s uncle. “Not since they went to Canto Grande,” she replied.
Alonso stole the stone and began dribbling downhill. Rosa followed, watching his back. His shoulders had broadened in the last few months, and his sleeves didn’t quite reach his wrists. “You want to go to Canto Grande?” she asked. “What about your book?”
Alonso turned with a sly wink. “Later,” he said. “Let’s have some fun.”
Rosa shrugged, then laughed, then took off down the hill. “Race you!”
At the highway, they flagged down a battered purple microbús. “There’s room at the back,” the ticket boy yelled, and they shoved their way to the rear, wedging themselves among the other passengers. As the micro lurched forward, a woman’s bosom squashed against Rosa’s back.
“Good thing you didn’t wear a watch.” Alonso touched Rosa’s wrist.
“I learned my lesson,” she replied. On their last micro ride, a little boy had torn off her watch and jumped from the bus.
“I shouldn’t have let that happen,” Alonso said. His fingertip lingered on her wrist, tracing her birthmark. A little brown oval the size of a kiss.
“Don’t be machista,” Rosa retorted. “I should have known better.” She could feel goose bumps speckling her birthmark. Her Alcázar birthmark. La Huella, Tía Virginia called it. The Mark.
Alonso thought for an instant of slipping his hand under Rosa’s curls, hanging like loosely coiled springs down her back. Instead, he slid his fingers between hers. He felt a weird thump in his chest as their hands locked. Contact!
As his fingers twined with hers, Rosa stared out the window, struggling for the right look. Nonchalant, but not too nonchalant. Alonso’s skin—on his fingers, the back of his hand—was so smooth. A baby’s perfect skin, stretched over a man’s sinew and bone. She wanted to caress it, to follow that skin up to those broadening shoulders, but she kept her hand still. Motionless.
The micro bounced down the highway, slamming into pot-holes that felt like craters. It stopped and started, rolling past factories and shantytowns. The crowd of passengers ebbed and flowed. Rosa and Alonso barely noticed. Rosa had the feeling that if she looked at Alonso she might burst into flames. Alonso was fighting a wild urge to pull her closer and touch her everywhere at once.
Hold on, he told himself. Knuckles, fingers, palm. Just hold on.
After a time they talked, standing side by side, their eyes on the garbage-strewn median. They talked about the new school year, which had just started. About Rosa’s week at her grandparents’ beach house and Alonso’s morning in Miraflores. About everything they could think of. Every few minutes they fell into a hot-faced silence. By the time they reached Canto Grande, their hands were slippery with sweat.
“We’re getting off at the corner,” Alonso shouted.
“Getting off at the corner,” the ticket boy echoed. “Getting off!” The micro ground to a halt and Rosa bumped once more into the soft bosom at her back. The ticket boy began to rush them, shouting. “Get off, get off!”
Rosa’s hand slid from Alonso’s as he jumped down the steps, but they had done it. They had held hands the entire trip. She followed him up a dirt road like the one into Salvador, all half-built houses and the flat taste of dust, and wondered how it would feel when he kissed her.
“Rodolfo’s sister got into the teachers’ college,” Alonso said. He pulled Rosa off the road as a tricycle cart hurtled past. “Mariela.”
“That’s great,” Rosa said. “I’d love to be a teacher.”
Alonso snorted. “You’re too pretty to be a teacher!”
Glancing at him, Rosa saw a flush spread up his neck like red wine over a tablecloth. She laughed in delight, and a half-naked baby, watching them from the doorway of a shack, laughed with her. Out of the shack’s dusky interior came a woman’s voice, cooing in response.
Alonso recovered quickly. “You like little kids, don’t you?”
Rosa nodded. “I wish I had . . .” She broke off with a shrug. “You’re lucky.”
“I guess.” Alonso laughed. “But I have to share everything.” Even his bed. He didn’t mention that. It embarrassed him, sleeping with his brother. Sometimes Gustavo wet the bed. “Hey.” He bumped his shoulder against Rosa’s. “You might get lucky. Baby sister?”
Rosa faked a laugh. “Nah.” She looked down. The dust had turned her sneakers gray and she had the niggling sense that the conversation was taking a wrong turn. Brothers and sisters. Soon it would be Mamá’s condition, and she didn’t want to spend her afternoon with Alonso talking about that!
