Signs Preceding the End of the World Read Free

pronounced.
    Most important were the ones awaiting her without caring what tongues she spoke or how she couriered. Her kid sister, who’d press close up beside her to eavesdrop on adult troubles, eyes round with attention, hands on knees. Makina could feel her absorbing the world, storing away the passions that came and went along the phone cord. (Of course I still love you, Very soon, Any day now, Hold your horses, Did you get it? Did she tell you? When was that? How did it happen? How in the name of God is that possible? His name is so and so, Her name is such and such, Don’t get me wrong, I never even dreamed, I don’t live here anymore.) She was growing up quickly, and in a man’s world, and Makina wanted to educate her as to the essentials: how to take stock of them and how to put up with them; how to savor them. How even if they’ve got filthy mouths, they’re fragile; and even if they’re like little boys, they can really get under your skin.
    And the boyfriend. A boyfriend she had and who she referred to that way though they’d never discussed it and she didn’t feel like anyone’s girl, but she called him her boyfriend because he acted so much like a boyfriend that not calling him so, at least to herself, would have been like denying him something written all over his face. A boyfriend. She’d shucked him for the first time back during the brouhaha about the mayors. The day it all ended Makina felt a little like getting wasted, but she didn’t so much feel like liquor, it was more an itch to shake her body, so she’d been reckless and gone and shucked him as she had others on a couple of trips to the Little Town; what’s more, it had been an entirely forgettable foray. And, no question, she’d shaken off the exhaustion of an ordeal that was now over; but even though she hadn’t wanted to be fawned over, just wanted a man to lend himself, he had touched her with such reverence that it must have been smoldering inside him for ages.
    She’d seen him before at the door of the elementary school where he worked, had noticed the way he wouldn’t look at her, looking instead at every other thing around her; that was where she picked him up, sauntered over saying she needed a shawl so that he’d put his arms round her, took him for a stroll, laughed like a halfwit at everything he said, especially if it wasn’t funny, and finally reeled him in on a line she was tugging from her bedroom. The man made love with a feverish surrender, sucked her nipples into new shapes, and when he came was consumed with tremors of sorrowful joy.
    After that the man had gone to work in the Big Chilango, and when he came back months later he showed up at the switchboard to tell her something, looking so cocksure and so smart that she guessed what it was that he wanted to say and fixed it so she wouldn’t be left alone with him. The man hovered in silence for hours on end until she said Come back another day, we’ll talk. But when he came back she asked him about his gig and about his trip and never about what was going on inside. Then she asked him to stop coming to her work, said she’d seek him out instead. And she did: every weekend they’d shuck, and whenever she sensed he was about to declare himself, Makina would kiss him with extra-dirty lust just to keep his mouth shut. So she’d managed to put off defining things until the eve of the journey she was being sent on by Cora. Then, before she could silence him, he threw up his hands and though he didn’t touch her she felt like he was hurling her from the other end of the room.
    You’re scared of me, he said. Not cause of something I did, just cause you want to be.
    He’d stood and was facing her, straightening his sky-blue shirt; he was leaving without making love, but Makina didn’t say anything because she saw how hard it had been for him to get up from the bed; she could play dumb—I don’t know what you’re talking about—or accuse him of making a scene,