The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,39

name. When the music stopped after the fourth song she asked him where he was from, just so he wouldn’t go away. “Sonora,” he said. “A little town called Imuris. It’s near Cananea. ¿Y tú?”

“El De Efe.”

When it became clear he did not want to run away, she asked Felipe if he knew anyone else at the party. A few people, he said.

“I don’t know anyone.”

“Look, over there,” he said. “It’s the girl who is having the quince-añera.”

Araceli turned to see a tall young woman with mahogany skin who wore a tight white dress covered in constellations of beads. Nicolasa had the confident look of a young woman enjoying her day of neighborhood celebrity, and was listening to an older man and studying him with smart, dark eyes that occasionally darted away from him to the landscape of the backyard party: the crowd, and the strings of lights, and a large white sign attached to the fence that read feliz 15 nica. Her black hair was parted in the middle and long braids ran down over her shoulders: a girl’s hairstyle and a woman’s face and body. Next to her was a boy with the same complexion but a foot shorter: her brother, apparently. He looked small and vulnerable, and possessed all the tragic aura that his sister lacked: without the black suit he was wearing, he might be one of those boys you see weaving between the cars in Mexico City, raising their palms to catch coins and raindrops from the sky. Now the big, beefy man talking to them raised a bicep to show them a tattoo, a portrait of a cigarette-smoking soldier in a steel helmet, with sgt. ray, r.i.p. written inside a scroll underneath.

“They’ve been through a lot,” Felipe said.

“So you know that story?”

“You mean about their mother dying and being adopted and all that? Yeah. Everybody does. Everybody in the neighborhood, at least.”

“I’m not from the neighborhood.”

“Yeah, I know. I think I would have remembered you,” he said, naturally and simply, without any secondary meanings.

“You see that guy next to them? He got back a few months ago from the war. His name is José. He’s a cousin of the lady who owns this house.”

“What about you? What’s your story?”

“I paint houses. And some construction. But mostly I paint houses.”

“That pays well, qué no?”

“It’s okay. But I like to paint other things besides walls. ¿Entiendes? The other day I was painting at this family’s house and I heard la señora asking my boss if he knew anyone who could paint a design on a table for her. I stepped in and said I could do it, because I like to draw. She wanted a dragon for her son’s room, so I made her one. A big red dragon. She liked it and the boy did too. That was fun.”

“You’re an artist!”

“No, I wouldn’t call myself that. But I like to draw. The dragon turned out okay.”

“I studied art,” Araceli offered, making a conscious effort not to speak breathlessly: a dancing artist had fallen into her lap, and she wanted to tell him everything, all at once. “I was at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in El De Efe, but only for a year. Then I had to quit.” Araceli thought she should explain why, but stopped herself: among mexicanos of their status, in this place called California, no explanations were necessary when describing dreams that died.

“I could tell by looking at you that you’re really smart. You look like one of those girls from the show Rebelde. A student. I could tell. That’s why I asked you to dance.”

At the end of the evening, the two of them having danced for two hours, Felipe said he had to leave because he had to be up early the next morning. Tomorrow is a Sunday, why would you have to be up early? Araceli wanted to ask, but she resisted the temptation. He asked for her phone number, which she wrote on a slip of paper he tucked into the front pocket of his shirt.

“I work in a house,” she told him. Trabajo en una casa. It meant, Yes, you can call me, but a gringo will answer, and be polite, please, and don’t call me in the middle of the night because my jefes won’t appreciate that. He appeared to understand and smiled as he turned away, and Araceli got one last good look at the backside of his slacks as he left: he was