Maria Josie stood beside him dressed for leaving. “I can’t for the life of me find a key. So, no, to answer your question, I did not.”
Avel patted his pockets. “I should have one. Say,” he said, “can I borrow that?” He motioned toward a plaid washcloth hanging limp from the stove.
Luz stood from her chair, reached for the washcloth, and passed it over. Avel took it from her, their hands lightly touching, a static shock. He quickly smiled, his expressive brown eyes deep with color.
“Can you fix it?” Luz asked.
“Sure can. I’m what’s known as a jack-of-all-trades.”
A jack-of-all-trades, Luz thought, usually had no trade.
“Oh, I can do it all,” Avel said, as if he had read her mind. He dusted the radiator with a red handkerchief from his pocket, opened and closed the valves. He laid the washcloth on the warped oak floor and removed a brass key from his long chain. He pushed the key into the radiator, turning a knob until a loud hissing sound escaped. Hot water leaked onto the washcloth. Avel moved his gaze around the room, peering down the hallway into Luz and Maria Josie’s bedroom, their makeshift heater visible across the floor.
“Seems like you ladies could really use a man around here.”
Maria Josie sucked in her lips, as if to keep from laughing. The hissing sound stopped. “Did it work?” she asked.
Avel placed his palm against the radiator’s etched metal. He waved his head. “Still cold. Seems to be a bigger issue. I’m thinking we gotta open the wall.”
With a slight bounce to his step, Avel stood and walked toward the front mantel. He picked up a bronze cast of Luz’s baby shoes and held them in his hands, as if to take note of their weight. Pleased, he set them down.
“That’s neat,” he said, gesturing with his hat down the hallway to the bedroom. “My mama has an altar just like that.” Through the open door, Avel eyed Luz’s dried marigolds and old photographs. “Haven’t seen one since I left Califas.”
Luz felt exposed. She made a scrunched face. Why was he searching about their home?
“Excuse me,” said Maria Josie. “How much this gonna cost?”
“For parts and labor, maybe looking at twenty dollars. Can’t know for sure until I open the wall.”
“I could buy a whole new radiator for thirty,” said Maria Josie.
“You could buy a new used radiator for thirty dollars. The new models are upwards of fifty.”
“Says who?”
“Sears Roebuck, ma’am.”
Maria Josie cleared her throat and, for a moment, Luz was worried she’d spit right there on the floor. “Ten dollars. That’s all we can afford.”
“I wouldn’t normally do this, but seeing since you ladies seem to be in extenuating conditions, I can do it for fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” Luz said with irritation. “We can’t come up with that. It’s only heat. It should be free!”
Maria Josie stood over the radiator and slammed her fist. “We’ll freeze like this.”
Avel turned to Luz. When she noticed him noticing her, out of instinct, Luz inched the blanket down around her shoulders, revealing the length of her long and rigid collarbones. She raised her chin into a stream of sunlight, giving full view of what she knew some considered a notable and pretty face.
“Don’t you have a place you can go, somewhere you can stay?” he said tenderly.
“This is where we live,” Luz hollered and Avel flinched.
Avel softened his gaze, revealing his dimples. He was handsome, capable. Luz averted her eyes. “I’m sorry, ladies. Fifteen dollars is all I can do.”
Maria Josie cussed, shook her head in anger. “We don’t have that right now. It’ll take some time.”
Avel paused for a moment. He seemed to be thinking, his face drifting toward Luz. “I could always come back for my pay. Maybe next week?”
“Fine,” Maria Josie said with irritation. “How long this gonna take? I’m due at work.”
“Couple hours. Don’t worry, I’ll get it all patched up right.”
“Get your things,” Maria Josie said curtly to Luz. “You’re coming with me.”
Luz protested, said she never had any days off. “I just want to listen to the radio.”
“Listen at the shop,” Maria Josie said and stepped to Avel. She gazed upward into his face. “If you touch anything in this place besides that wall and this radiator, I’ll kill you myself. Lock the door when you leave.”
Avel grinned as though he appreciated the sentiment. He waved as they left.
* * *
—
Maria Josie had always said she found the mirror factory on an accidental turn down Larimer Street, a brick box the color of a robin’s egg, a HELP WANTED sign hanging in a window. Inside, women of all ages and sizes performed duties normally reserved for men. They cut glass, carved wood, spat blue flames from high-powered torches. Even the factory’s superintendent was a woman named Big Cheryl. She had hired Maria Josie on the spot, putting her near the dock, where recently completed dressers were shipped through the entire West. When Maria Josie asked Big Cheryl why no men worked at the mirror factory, she had said, “Only women can bear to look at themselves all day.” The truth was, the owners were some industrial family from out East who knew they could pay women much less than men.
That afternoon, Maria Josie and Luz entered through the mirror factory’s delivery entrance. Sunlight cascaded from the open garage and plunged across the concrete floor. The factory smelled of singed metal and chemical varnishes. Knives, grips, and tools hung from mounted shelves. Women in slacks and denim coverings scrambled throughout the factory, their eyes visible under black goggles, as if they were airship pilots, voyaging into space. Maria Josie walked Luz to her station and directed her to sit in an uneven chair. Mirrors were all around, stacked together on shelves, on the floor leaned against brick walls, and upright on their backs across tables and sawhorses. Maria Josie flipped on the small radio and got to work
She was finishing the edges of a square mirror, the size and length of Luz’s body, resting over two sawhorses, reflecting the ceiling lights doubly into Maria Josie’s face. Her hair was wild and poking up from her goggles. The mirror factory was a place of work, real work, without men. Maria Josie had described many accidents, a severed hand, a missing eye. Thumbs put on ice with no hope to be sewn back, just a good idea at the time. You should have seen it, she told Luz and Diego one evening over supper, a red painted thumbnail left in a cooler, white bone showing from its stem.
Luz tried to hear the radio, but the chaotic sounds of saws and torches tore throughout the space, the boss’s high clear room overlooking it all. Luz was angry, bored. She stood and walked toward her auntie, heading past hundreds of unfinished mirrors, which spliced her reflection into endless eyes and lips, edges of nose.
Luz stopped before Maria Josie. She stood there, hands on her hips.
“Big Cheryl don’t like roaming visitors, Little Light. Sit back down.”
“I can’t hear the radio,” yelled Luz, the sound of her own voice covered by saws.
Maria Josie gestured toward her ears. She continued working before sliding off her goggles, slipping her gloves into her trouser pocket. A break bell buzzed.