Though I couldn’t make out much, I heard everything clearly. Her voice. The woman’s. She said, screamed: Ian. And after yelling his name over and over, there, in the brightest spot, in the heart of the light, a little boy around eight years old emerged.
He wasn’t a clever pup but a strange, lost-looking boy. The light that shone from his body was weak, sickly, sad. The woman kept saying “Ian, Ian” without waiting for an answer.
She gripped him hard by the hand and started tugging at him. I tried to make out the boy but couldn’t. A man appeared beside the woman and spoke to her:
“Did you find him?”
“Yeah. Can’t leave the kid alone, not even to pee.”
“Where was he?”
“Behind the birthday party. On his own.”
“Who took him there?”
“I did, thought he could wait five minutes.”
Like a secret, a secret the man didn’t want to know, they fell quiet. They were looking at him. Then the man asked:
“Why’d you leave him on his own?”
“’Cause I can’t right take him to the bathroom with me, can I? He’s eleven.”
“Means nothing, though. His age means nothing,” the man said and they both went quiet again, as though the sad light that radiated from Ian were weakening their bodies, too.
The man got mad again and recovered some of his strength.
“Stop making excuses. Don’t you care about him?”
The boy stood between them. Then he began to shuffle to the side. Like he wasn’t even listening. He looked up, ahead of him. I tried to make out what he saw but found nothing.
They spoke as if the little boy wasn’t there. I tried to get a better look, but he slipped away from me. The voices grew quieter and quieter. I got tired of trying to listen to what they said, of trying to see what the earth chose not to show me.
I opened my eyes.
The house was darker than the night that swaddled the lost boy.
“It’s no use,” I told the woman. “I can barely see him. Only you, doña. Arguing with a man who keeps asking why you left Ian alone.”
The woman grew even sadder. All of a sudden, she bounced back and said:
“His dad.”
“I can see the two of you, doña. But the kid keeps slipping away.”
The woman dropped her head and cried in silence. She opened her purse. To look for something to dry her eyes with, I thought, except she pulled out a wad of money and a stack of photographs instead. She placed the pictures on the notes—there were so many of them—and pushed them toward me. It was the little snot. I thumbed through the first few photos. In them, he was older and wore the same lost expression.
“That’s not how it works.”
“Okay,” she said, looking up. “So how do we make it work?”
Hernán laughed on his moped.
“It’s not that far,” he said. “How come you’ve never been?”
I said nothing. I didn’t even go to the grocery store anymore.
“We’re close, already on Route 8.”
That much I knew. I also knew about the market, which had opened a couple of years ago. But no, I’d never been.
“What should we hit: Mega or Fericrazy?”
I laughed.
“What do I know. Whichever you’re most into.”
“Mega,” read a billboard over the entrance to the road, and I could make out a parking lot thronged with mopeds, people, and cars. The road was in fucking bad shape. We kept having to dodge water, mud, trash.
“Let’s go to that one,” I said, pointing to the spot where buses stopped to let out smiling families.
Hernán parked the bike as close to the entrance as he could. He tried to say something, but it was so noisy I couldn’t hear him.
“Inside,” I mouthed, and we started walking.
A massive warehouse. Concrete floor. No real plants, just gross plastic ones. I’d never felt so far from the earth and I didn’t like it one bit.
I opened my backpack and for a split-second showed it to Hernán, like it was a game. He went real wide-eyed, and asked:
“Where’d you get a hold of so much cash?”
“I got it and that’s that. What do you care?” I said with a smile.
“You aren’t going around sticking people up, are you?”
We both cracked up.
“We’re gonna make it rain,” I said, brandishing a couple of five-hundred-peso notes, and shaking them in the air. Hernán laughed.
“For sure,” he said, winking.
We strolled. There were four rows of stands, one next to the other. The passages between were crammed full of people. Everybody looked happy. On a corner, people hawked sweets as though it was a public square: candied almonds, popcorn, chocolate peanuts. I took some cotton candy and tried to pay with a five-hundred-peso bill. “I haven’t got any change,” the woman serving me said. Hernán pulled out twenty pesos and handed it to her. I put mine away.
“Girl, you’re gonna cost me steep,” he said and took my hand.
It felt weird but good.
He took me to a beer counter where a guy was emptying bottles into disposable cups. Each cup held a liter for the hands awaiting them. “Two,” I ordered and paid. I pocketed the change and we walked on. Cotton candy in one hand and a liter of beer in the other. We paused in front of an enormous booth. Strings of movies in plastic sleeves that hung in rows on the front and sides. Boxes filled with CDs and DVDs and a bunch of folks flipping through them. The movies were sorted by category: Domestic, New Release, Comedy, XXX, Horror.
“These are the ones I’m always bringing you,” Hernán said, gesturing toward two boxes. He took a real long sip from his disposable cup. The first box was for “compilations” and there was a chick in a red thong and a Santa Claus hat. The other just said “Latinos.” I browsed that one. I turned each sleeve over and read the song titles. I set three aside. Hernán asked to see them so he could check out the list of songs, too. We glanced at one another and laughed.
“Your mouth’s full of pink goo,” he said, and I felt the beer go to my head. I sucked on two of my fingers so he wouldn’t have the chance to complain about my sticky hands too.
“Let’s see,” he said, and came up to me. He gave me a long kiss, a sugary mix of lips, beer, and his soft tongue, which I loved. I wanted more, but Hernán pulled away.
“Best check out the CDs instead. Your brother’s gonna kill me.”
We laughed. Why should Walter give a shit?
In the end, we picked out five CDs and Hernán threw in a horror flick. He said we could watch it later on the PlayStation if there was nobody around. I said maybe we should eat something first. We paid and they handed us a bag, which I shoved in my backpack, and made our way toward the stands in the back. Hernán drank his whole beer. I still had half left, so I shared it with him.
We ordered two cheeseburgers and fries. We didn’t wait long. We ate with our hands at a table for two. They didn’t sell beer there, only pop, so we didn’t order anything to drink. We made do with what was left in my cup.
“These fries are mad good,” Hernán said a couple seconds after he’d finished chewing. “Let’s head back to yours?”