“And what did you do?”
“Nothing. Pablo told me that if I wrote her back and asked to stay together, she would say yes, because that’s what girls do. But I didn’t feel like it.”
“You don’t like her?”
“Yeah, I like her, but I don’t know what to talk to her about, she doesn’t talk much.”
Gaspar heard his father laugh softly. “I can’t help you there, son, I don’t know a thing about women.”
They were silent for a while. Gaspar closed his eyes. There wasn’t a sound in the house. He felt his father stroking his hair, slowly, with an almost feminine gentleness. What he hadn’t told him was that Belén’s letter, short and written in all uppercase letters, had made him punch the tiles in the bathroom. Not so much because of her—she bored him a little, except when she let him kiss and touch her—but because he was mad at himself for not knowing how to keep her. He shifted on the cushion to stretch out his legs and lean his head against his father’s ribs. He remembered how it had felt to sleep beside him when he was little, beside that enormous body and the heart with its violent and irregular beat.
“Gaspar, your friend is at the door.”
“What friend?”
“Adela, I think.”
“How do you know?”
“She was calling you. She threw something, a pebble, at your window. You dozed off.”
“I’d rather stay here with you.”
“And I’d rather you went. She’s waiting for you, go on.”
Gaspar stood up grumpily; he had drifted off, it was true, he could taste the sleep in his mouth. He picked up the Keats book and stood looking at his father from the door. He was going to say something （what? That he loved him?）， but his dad had already taken another drink from the bottle, and his eyes were closing.
Adela was waiting in the street; at that hour, on weekend nights, there wasn’t much traffic. Any approaching cars could be seen and heard from far enough away that there was no danger, and both kids and adults had gotten in the habit of walking on the sidewalks and streets indiscriminately. She was sitting cross-legged on the pavement with her eyes on the ground. She had changed her clothes, Gaspar noticed; she was wearing her light blue Kickers, burgundy school sweatpants, and a shirt printed with tiny flowers that had ruffles at the waist. Gaspar felt overwhelmed by the silence of the street, and he went over to Adela and gestured with his head for her to walk with him on the sidewalk toward the avenue. She didn’t speak, just trotted to keep up, nor did she look at him, so Gaspar decided to start. He didn’t like to hold things back, he never had, just as he didn’t like evasive looks or uncomfortable silences, the way people—especially adults—would exchange glances and bite their tongues, or the way his father would tell him this is all I’m going to say and you will know nothing more. He felt like if he were ever allowed to talk and ask questions he would never stop; he felt curiosity invading him like ants on a jar of jam left open in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry if you didn’t like the box,” said Gaspar. “I thought maybe it would help you.”
Adela grabbed him unexpectedly by the elbow, hard. Sometimes Gaspar forgot how strong her one hand was.
“It’s the best gift anyone’s given me in my whole life,” she told him. Her cheeks were flushed from crying.
“Then why’d you get mad? Tell me. If one more person just says ‘I don’t know’ . . . I’m sick of it.”
She started walking again. They were getting close to the house on Villarreal, and Gaspar instinctively turned them away from it and toward the small arcade, which was open very late on Sundays.
“I got mad at my mom, not you. Why did she never think of it? Why didn’t she ask the doctor? She never believed me that my arm hurt or itched. I wasn’t mad at you. Still, you guys took off, you left me alone.”
“We felt weird, and I thought you were mad at me.”
“Not at all. You’re the best. I already saw the others and I told them they were chickenshit for leaving.”
Gaspar felt his ears burning. He had liked hearing that “you’re the best.” So, he pushed the hair back from his forehead and said:
“Whenever you need it, I’ll help you scratch or massage your arm, whatever you need. But I won’t always be there, sometimes you’ll have to ask your mom.”
“My mom can go to hell. I already asked Pablo and Vicky. If you’ll help me too, I’m good.”
Gaspar had managed to guide Adela away from the house on Villarreal in a detour that had taken them back to the front door of his own house. Like everyone else in the neighborhood, he felt creeped out by the abandoned house, and he’d already heard Adela suggest that maybe they could sneak inside. An adventure, a visit to the neighborhood haunted house. Gaspar didn’t think that sounded at all fun. He was hungry, but he couldn’t invite Adela in to eat: he was forbidden from having guests over unannounced. The bike locked up to the bars outside gave him an idea.
“Have you eaten?”
Adela said she wasn’t very hungry after the cake and hot dogs. That’s how girls are, thought Gaspar, they don’t like to eat: so weird. He was always hungry, and his guy friends were too.
“Well, if you don’t want to eat you can still come with me. Let’s go to Curva, okay?”
“Yeah, I could eat a slice of pizza,” said Adela.
“Hop on.”
Gaspar adjusted his belt: he’d grown thinner and his pants were falling off him.
“Why don’t you buy a belt your own size?” Adela laughed, and Gaspar said he always forgot.
“It’s my dad’s, that’s why it’s so long. Do I look like a clown?”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t know why, but it looks really good on you.”
Adela climbed on to the footrests on either side of the back wheel. That way she could ride standing up, holding on to Gaspar’s shoulder. She asked him to go fast, to pedal hard, and since there was no one in the street, Gaspar did, and he took the long way to the pizzeria so she’d have more time to enjoy the speed and the wind in her hair.
There were many stories about the house on Calle Villarreal, though not all of the stories were told. One day Haydee, the wife of Turi the grocer, had told her customers about the owners. She said they’d been an old couple who lived alone without help from anyone, no nurses, no children around, and they went crazy in there. Old-people crazy: senile dementia. The old lady, when someone went by the house, would go to the window and open her mouth as if she were screaming, but didn’t scream. Then she’d run away. Sometimes she was naked. The old man was much more placid, but he refused to take the trash out. One day someone had come—a relative or social worker—and hauled away bags of stuff, mostly rotten food, while the old man sat in the front yard—which in those days had a plant or two—and cried, muttering about how “they would find him now, now they would.”
Turi said he hadn’t heard that story, but he did know that when the old woman had died, they found her in bed with two cat skeletons beside her, one on the sheet, the other on the pillow. The owner of the restaurant in the park mostly corroborated that story, except he was sure the cat skeletons were around the refrigerator, which was full of mold and old cold cuts and unopened loaves of sliced bread.