Mosca and I sat in the shade.
“You gonna do it?” I asked.
“For a hundred, I don’t think so. But I’ll bet you anything he comes back with another offer. Pepino hates to lose.”
“And if you lose?”
He shrugged. “I’ll be the guy who played a marble against a couple of hundred pesos, no?”
“Pinche Mosca, you’re smarter than I thought.”
“It’s all about reputation. I mean in the end, the devil’s fire is just a stupid marble, no?”
Across the yard Ximena was leaning against the chain link fence, talking to some guy I didn’t recognize. He was older, tall, and wore a clean white cowboy hat with a green, white and red band.
Mosca nudged me. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t want him to know I had a thing for Ximena. I would never hear the end of it. I kicked at the dirt. “My parent’s aren’t back from Toluca. I have to go to the panadería after school.”
“Ah, don’t worry, we’ll shine shoes on the weekend.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that they should have been home by now. Or at least called.”
“Take it easy.” He nudged me with his elbow. “You know how it is in Toluca. They’re probably having a good time.”
“But they could call, no? They always call.”
“Boli, you worry too much. Let them do their thing. Enjoy your freedom.”
Now Ximena had her hand up on the fence, and the guy on the other side had his hand in the same place, their fingers touching. It looked as if they were kissing.
My parents were still not home. Gaby was flushed, pacing back and forth in the living room with her arms crossed. “It’s not right,” she said. “Something must have happened.”
“Something like what?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was quiet. She chewed her thumbnail. “I’ve tried Papá’s cell phone over and over, but it goes directly to voicemail.”
Jesusa walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Is it possible they had car trouble?”
“And? What does that have to do with his cell phone?”
Jesusa smiled, but it was a strange smile, as if she was trying to convince herself. We all knew there was nothing wrong with the car. Besides, Gaby had called my parent’s friends in Toluca. No one had heard from them.
I could see the fear in Gaby’s eyes. I tried calling the number myself, but all I got was my father’s deep baritone: “This is Alfonso Flores, please leave a message after the tone and I’ll call you back. Gracias.” Those were his last words, because when we tried to call him later, the voicemail didn’t even come on.
That night and the following day, I was in a daze. The anxiety was like a puzzle I couldn’t solve, like something had broken and I was the one who was supposed to fix it. It didn’t make any sense. Why hadn’t they called?
After school, I met Gaby at the panadería. We closed early and went to see Captain Pineda. The municipal building was across the street from the plaza, perpendicular from the church. It was a two-story old stone and concrete building with a long arcade in the front with big arches where food vendors sometimes set up. On the second floor it had big windows with balconies. Everything around the plaza was like that: old stone buildings with red-tile roofs and wrought-iron bars on the windows. Like the church. It dated back to the 1600s. But the municipal building was rundown. The paint had faded and the political posters from the last election were peeling off the walls.
Pineda’s office was upstairs. The only person in the room was a secretary—a heavy-set woman—sitting behind an electric typewriter. Her hair was made up in a large bun just like some of the women in the old Santo movies.
When Gaby told her we wanted to see Captain Pineda, she slowly raised her eyes, spread her fingers in front of her, and studied her nails. “He’s busy.”
“It’s important.”
The woman glanced back to a door with a small plaque: CAPITÁN EFRAÍN PINEDA DEL VALLE. “He’s in a meeting.”
Gaby took a place near the open window and sat with her back straight, chin up. “We’ll wait.”
The thing was, it was Gaby’s fear that kept fueling my own. Whenever her voice cracked or her eyes widened, I shivered. It reminded me that something was wrong. I guess I was trying to convince myself that this was normal, that they would turn up at any moment with a perfectly logical explanation. Then Gaby would sigh and it would all come back to me: they’re gone. What if they don’t come back? And then, what if instead of el profe’s head it was my father’s—and instead of Rocío’s naked body, it was my mother’s.
The same picture of Benito Juárez that was in the civics textbook we used in el profe Quintanilla’s class hung on the wall of the office. Next to it was a color photograph of the President. And, at the end of the wall near the door to Pineda’s office was the same calendar with Tania Rincón in a bathing suit that Lucio had hanging in the back of the bakery.
The smell of fresh tortillas came and went with the soft breeze that blew in through the open windows. It caused the papers on the empty desks to flutter. The man who sharpened knives and scissors around town whistled the tune that announced his arrival in the plaza. Someone kept revving the engine of a Volkswagen Beetle. A woman yelled an obscenity and a radio played a ranchera. It was strange how the sounds of the plaza were different than the sounds from school or those at the panadería or at home. It was the same town but different sounds. At home it was mostly dogs and roosters, sometimes a television. In the panadería, it was people and cars and the squeak of the machine in the tortillería across the street.
I walked to the window and stepped out on the balcony. The treetops blocked my view of the plaza, but I could see Father Gregorio in the side yard of the church talking with Chucho, the mayordomo who took care of the grounds. The church looked like a sculpture with its ornate empty bell towers and the big central cupola. During the revolution, the people of the town had to melt the church bells to make ammunition. A hundred years had past and they still hadn’t replaced them. Father Gregorio joked that Izayoc was the only town in Mexico where mass was not announced with tolling bells. But my father and the men of the town saw it as a source of pride. They said everyone needed to remember the sacrifice the town had made. They were proud that in all its history Izayoc had never been occupied by an army, federal or revolutionary.
At the other end of the plaza, a worker swept the sidewalk in front of Los Pinos restaurant with a reed broom. The man
who sold fruits and vegetables and chicharrón had parked his cart by a bench where he lay asleep in the shade. A boy and a girl sat on the planter where we had found el profe’s head. No one was shining shoes.
Father Gregorio crossed the churchyard and met a well-dressed man in a black western hat at the entrance of the church. They shook hands. Father Gregorio opened the door to the church, allowing the man to pass. Then he followed him inside.
Behind the buildings across from the plaza, the mountain rose tall and steep like a brown monster. My eyes followed a narrow road which climbed up the side of the cliff to the neighborhood of Santacruz, but I couldn’t make out Mosca’s house from here. Above the neighborhood of unpainted concrete houses I could see the giant cross, white against the gray sky. It looked like rain.
I went back to my seat and waited. Gaby had her hands folded on her lap, her fingers moving one over the other like