The Sleeping World Read Free Page B

was no bartender to swipe away the flies from the tortilla, and a hard skin had developed on the membrillo. The door that led to the print shop was locked and a heavy wooden bench pushed in front of it. Maybe everyone was in the plaza.
    I smoked a cigarette under the tower and waited, but the plaza was empty, too. The huge black hands of the clock twitching slowly. Sometimes it looked like the clock was going backward, if you caught it right when the hour changed. The hands hovered for a moment, unable to decide whether to progress or regress. A man in a rumpled jacket, his hat pulled over his eyes, leaned against a stone pillar on the opposite side of the plaza. He was staring right at me. I stomped out my cigarette and hustled over to El Chico. There Grito and La Canaria were, sitting at the middle table, slugging big bottles of beer. They cheered when I walked in.
    â€œMosca! You found us!” La Canaria yelled. “We were hiding from you!”
    â€œ Hijos de putas, ” I mumbled, and went up to the bar without kissing them hello. “I was standing at the clock for an hour. Why weren’t you there?”
    They looked at each other and then up at me. We didn’t mention last night.
    â€œLet me buy you a drink,” Grito said, sliding up beside me. He was wearing his white T-shirt with the anarchy “A” drawn on it, the pits yellow from sweat. His arms were shaking a littleand covered in bruises, either from fucking La Canaria or from last night. I didn’t care.
    â€œIt’s the least you can do,” I said. Grito ordered us two pitchers to share because somehow La Canaria had finished both of their bottles in the time it took him to walk up to the bar. Under the table I saw his bag, full of books again. Maybe he’d had the chance to study earlier.
    â€œI need to piss,” La Canaria said before I could sit down. She grabbed my arm, blowing kisses to Grito when we squeezed by him. The bar was full of punks and their dogs. Greasy paper napkins and layers of sticky sawdust covered the floor. Newspaper blotted out the windows. La Canaria kicked the dogs we passed but moved by too fast for anyone to notice that she was the one who’d done it. The dogs strained at their rope and chain-link leashes, blaming their owners, blaming the other dogs.
    In the bathroom, La Canaria jumped up on the sink, her back to the mirror. “You do me and I’ll do you.” She handed me a stick of black eyeliner. I leaned in close to her face and layered more makeup beneath her lashes and in thick lines on her eyelids. She turned to the mirror to see how I’d done and smudged the black with her thumb. It looked like she’d gone to bed without washing her face. “Nice. Your turn.” La Canaria wrapped her legs around my torso, bringing me in close to her body. I could feel the zipper of her jeans pressed against my own.
    â€œI don’t want any,” I told her.
    â€œYou never have enough on.”
    I could smell Grito on her, his acrid communion-wine cologne, his hash cigarettes, the powdery baby scent of the detergent his abuela used to clean his sheets. I could feel how those sheets used to press down on me. The sound of the novice Carmelites chanting in the abbey across the street. The senseof suffocating when the air under the sheets grew hot from our breath.
    â€œThat’s enough,” I said to La Canaria, trying to squirm away from her. She had me locked between her legs. She wrapped a thick arm around my neck and twisted my ear so I wouldn’t move.
    â€œI’m trying to make you look good, Mosquita.”
    A roll of skin escaped from underneath her black tank top. I could see ridges of flesh between her pits and her push-up bra, soft spaces prickled with three-day-old black hairs. Grito teased her about being chubby, but we all knew he loved it. Her skin was darker than the rest of ours. Not dark enough to articulate what it meant but dark