Diego laughed, rattling the floor. “How many?”
“Five.”
“Well, shit,” he said. “Tooth fairy owes me.”
Jazz came over the radio, a lone horn whining. Luz went to the bureau, clinked bottles of cologne as she eyed Reina along the windowsill with her vertebrae in four peaks, sacred mountains across her back. “Have they ate?” she asked.
“First thing this morning.”
Diego swiveled around then, facing Luz in polished light. His swelling had eased, though his jawline was lopsided and curdled, as if the upper skin had fused to his throat. Razor-thin lines traced the shaved sides of his head, ending at his mashed mouth, where Teresita’s stitching resembled train tracks. Diego’s face went from purple to green, yellow to black. Luz could see through a hole in his left cheek, clear into his mouth, to the bed of his tongue. In his lap, Corporal was funneled in a dark pile, and Luz must have made a face because Diego winced. He seemed in pain somewhere inside his throat. Bending forward, he gave Corporal a nudge, the snake sliding like a puddle off Diego’s blanketed lap. Luz was angry with herself, angry that part of her blamed her brother, for everything.
“Why were you outside the party?” she asked.
“I had a bad feeling, thought I should get going, but they caught me in the doorway.”
“Who did?”
“Eleanor’s people. Her brothers, her father.”
“Why hasn’t anyone called the police?”
“Come on, Little Light. You know why.”
Luz knew as well as anyone that those men probably were the police, or at the very least, associated with them. The orange curtain wavered then and Reina darted her face around the edges of the bow.
Diego said after a long while, “They’ve let me go at Gates.”
“What will you do? No one has shifts.”
“All snakes, all the time.” Diego struggled through a laugh, his cheek drafty through the stitched hole. “I’ll go north. There’s work in the fields.”
Luz pictured her brother wading through a sea of knee-high crops, laboring over mud-caked beets, buried in long green rows, the sky ablaze with dust and clouds and locusts. “You’re leaving?” she asked, her voice clipped with sorrow.
“Maria Josie’s asked me to get going.”
“But we came here together.”
“And I’m no longer welcome.”
“Why’d they do it, Diego?” Luz asked. “Tell me what happened.”
Her brother wouldn’t answer. He tilted his face, straightened his shoulders. Diego pointed to the window. “Look,” he said. “Reina won’t sit with me.”
“Of course she will,” said Luz.
Diego reached toward Reina, but the snake slinked behind the curtains, fluttering as if by a breeze. “No,” he said, “she’s afraid.”
* * *
—
Within a week, most of Diego’s things were cleared out of the main room. No velvet capes, no satin dress shirts, no hawk feathers or colognes. He had packed a yellowed satchel given to him by Maria Josie. The bag’s leather was worn smooth and resembled a dried kidney. Deceptively large, it swallowed bars of soap, a boar-bristle brush, trousers, and dress shirts. Most everything else Diego sold or gave away. As for the snakes, on his last night in Denver, Luz followed Diego as he carried them in their wicker basket down the tenement’s stairs and into the street. It was twilight. The streetlamps were lit. The air was crisp.
“You can come with us to the creek,” he said. “Or stay. It’s up to you.”
“I can’t watch,” said Luz.
Diego tipped his hat. “A quick spade to the head. That’s all.”
“Why can’t they stay with us?”
He raised the basket some, lightly twirling it by the roped handle. “They aren’t meant to be without me. Besides, Maria Josie would kill them anyway.”
Luz greeted the snakes one last time, giving their basket a tap before sliding off the lid. At the bottom, Reina was on top of Corporal, sleeping over his back as if he were a cot. Luz had known the snakes almost half her life. She’d miss them, awake in the middle of the night, cold and sifting like soil, a bedroom away. They seemed like protection. Against what, Luz wasn’t sure.
“They’re mine, Little Light,” Diego said, as if he could feel Luz’s questioning.
“Fine,” she said. “Goodbye, snakes.”
* * *
—
It was a little after eleven when Diego returned. Luz heard his key, the creak of hinges. She was alone at the kitchen table, the radio on a news program. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were wanted again, this time for murder. They had been hiding out in Dallas, but risked everything to see their families. Luz understood why outlaws would do that. It must be lonely going from town to town. A Dallas grand jury had just delivered a murder indictment, and Luz wondered what that meant.
Diego shot Luz a look of dread, and the room charged with a new feeling. Grief. He had on coveralls and his hair was cut short. His face was clean-shaven and he walked, slump-shouldered, in a pair of new work boots, taking a seat across from Luz. He tossed an envelope onto the table.
“Go on,” he said. “Open it.”
Luz tore the seal with a fork’s prong, revealing fifty dollars and the silver bear claw pendant. “Thank you, Brother.”
“I pawned the chain, but the charm is nice. Should cover some of the rent next month.”
“Was it quick? Reina and Corporal?”
Diego rubbed his face with both hands, as if he could wipe off his skin, remold his expression into something less revealing. “How about you read for me?”
“Your leaves?”
“Nah, the ending of Don Quixote. Yes, my leaves.”
“I don’t want to, Diego. I don’t want to see nothing else.”
On the radio, a woman howled and the detective shouted, In all the alleyways, you crept into this one, you son of a bitch. Diego leaned from his chair and shut off the radio. “Send me away with some hopefulness.”
Luz finally agreed, boiling water on the stove, the kettle screaming. She poured the steaming water into a porcelain cup with blue flowers along the brim. The tea was rooibos, and Luz watched carefully as Diego sipped. She studied his face, told herself to remember. Who knew when she’d see him again? Across his neck was a crease, a faint wrinkle cutting his throat. His lips were scabbed purple along the bottom. He had healed somewhat, and Alfonso had found a friend who fitted Diego’s mouth with porcelain teeth, paid for with a debt. His jawline was nearly back to normal, though it appeared more square than before. It was strange, Luz thought, how one night altered so much.
Diego finished. He handed his sister the cup. “Before you go in, how’s it work? The things you see.”
Luz was surprised. It wasn’t like Diego to ask questions about other people. The cup was cold, as if it had never been filled with tea. “You know how it works.”
“You see the future?”
“No, it’s like a road. Sometimes, even with my memories, I get confused. I don’t know if something happened, or if it could have happened. People are unpredictable, but there’re only so many roads.”