Barefoot Dogs Read Free Page A

her voice. “Your parents asked me not to let you go there, they think it’s better if you wait here, Fernanda.”
    “Then I’m going to call them and see what’s up!” I cry, and it surprises me to hear my own voice, cracking. “I need to talk to them, Jus!”
    “No, don’t do that, please!” Justina’s voice is higher than mine now, and as out of control. “They need to keep the phone lines open at all times, in case Don Victoriano or someone else calls with information. They said they’d call as soon as they can.”
    I don’t know what else to say. As I head to my room I feel my brain getting stuffed, turning heavy. I call Sash and Tammy and Jen from my cell phone, but I only reach Tammy. I tell her I need to see her because something’s happened.
    “What is it, cara mia?” she asks, but I can’t say it on the phone. Actually I can hardly speak. I try to remember the last time I saw Grandpa, and I can’t. Instead, I see him in the back of a taxicab, sandwiched between a couple guys with black balaclavas covering their faces, knives pressed against his ribs. “Okay, don’t worry, Fer. Let’s meet at Klein’s,” Tammy says. “I’ll try to get there as soon as possible. I’ll text Sash and Jen and ask them to reach us there. Ciao, bella.”
    I’m the first to arrive. I don’t know what to do with my hands, with my purse. I call the waiter and ask him to bring me a pack of Marlboros from the tobacco stand next door. I hate smoking, it makes me sick, but tonight I need it. In my head, Grandpa keeps asking the fat guys with balaclavas to calm down, everything can be worked out. I close my eyes and try to force myself to picture Grandpa somewhere else. I try to imagine him at a nightclub in Centro Histórico, going wild, I try to imagine him heading out to Acapulco with his friends for a crazy last-minute sugar daddies’ getaway, but nothing works, the image of him in the taxicab’s stuck in my head.
    It is the year all the members of my family will end up fleeing Mexico, following Grandpa’s disappearance, but at that point I don’t know for sure what’s happened to him. I just need to be around my friends. I need them to take care of me, to tell me our lives will go on as expected, Italy’s calling, it will be splendid. But when I think back on that night, I realize I’m there, waiting for Jen and Tammy and Sash at Klein’s at 10:30 on a Thursday night because I’ll need their help to learn the language I’ll be forced to use in the days to come, the tongue of the missing.
    Fifteen minutes pass and my friends haven’t arrived. When the waiter brings the cigarettes, I no longer feel like smoking. My brain feels twice its original size. I’m sitting at the table wealways use during our conversations with Diane, overlooking the constant traffic jam on Masaryk. At the crêperie across the street, a couple’s been making out on the terrace since I arrived. I can’t see her face because her back is to me, but I could swear it’s Diane. I discard the idea. I can see his face and I simply can’t believe that he could be the man for whom she traded a life of glamour and sophistication in Milan. He’s slightly older than me and not especially handsome or refined. He’s wearing a hideous brown suit that fits him terribly, like cheap clothing always does. He could be a bank teller or an insurance salesman, so she definitely can’t be Diane—also, she could be his mother, for Christ’s sake! I always imagined the Italian polyglot dating a seasoned hedge fund manager, the irresistible cultural attaché of some exotic country or a renowned salt-and-pepper chef, but I’d never once considered she could fall for that . He beckons the waiter, waving the check-please sign in the air, while she fixes up her hair and takes a little mirror out of her purse and corrects her rouge. It’s her. In my mind, Grandpa’s now saying, “Please don’t hurt me, I’ll give you whatever you want. Please!”