Lázaro
Despite his years, Lázaro Peña was still the best picker in the camp. He could still put his claim number “25” on forty-five, sometimes fifty crates of lemons a day, while younger men struggled to fill up thirty-five. At the end of each week, he went into town and cashed his paycheck and wired most of the money home to his family in Mexico, who still lived in the same small village in which Lázaro had grown up. He kept a small amount of cash for himself. With it he bought a new shirt or a pair of pants or some food in tins, then went back to the camp and played checkers or read the Bible quietly. He never lingered in the town to drink and play pool or go to the movies or spend money on women. Lázaro was hard working, pious and sober. He was small and muscular. Manual labor out-of-doors kept him healthy and relatively young, although his joints had begun to deteriorate, and sometimes his muscles ached for a long time at the end of the week.
Recently he had a strange feeling at times. Sometimes when the sun was going down in a hot orange sky over the distant brown hills, and the frogs had begun to croak noisily in the irrigation ditches, and the air was heavy with the scent of lemon and camp smoke, just for an instant he forgot where he was. He was no longer a migrant worker in a distant land; he was somewhere else. He saw himself on a winding dirt road. Behind him the bus that had dropped him there roared away again, leaving behind a dense cloud of yellow dust. When the dust settled, Lázaro could see a familiar church spire in the distance, rising above a cluster of whitewashed houses on a hilltop. He started walking toward the town. But he could never get there.
Once he consulted the doctor, who traveled around from one camp to another and wasn’t always there when a man needed him. The doctor shined a light in Lázaro’s eyes and tapped his knees and elbows with a small rubber hammer. He listened to his chest with a stethoscope. He looked at Lázaro skeptically, just like he looked at all the laborers who complained. “I can find nothing wrong with you,” he said, packing up his little black bag of instruments. He cleared Lázaro to return to the orchards.
Lázaro Peña decided he must be getting old. He decided that one day he would return to Mexico and live out his days in the old village. But not yet.
Then one day in the baño, he slipped on a bar of soap and struck his head on the floor tiles. Afterwards, Lázaro lay naked on the tiles for several minutes, staring up at the ceiling at a single bare light bulb that seemed to him like the sun itself, the one he had labored under for so many years. He didn’t remember slipping on the bar of soap. He didn’t even remember taking a shower in the baño. The blow to his head had knocked him out for a while.
“I should get up now,” he thought. “Time to go back to work. Lunch time is over.”
But a delicious torpor permeated his body. For once in his life, he succumbed to an impulse to lie on the ground, while the warm sun shone down on him— no longer the harsh hostile sun of the field laborer but a warm luxurious orb such as a man might enjoy on his day off. Only gradually did he become aware of the faces of the other braceros that formed a ring of alarm and concern above him, or of the sound of the water that still ran out of the showerheads and down the drain in the floor, or of the man shouting for the médico. He wondered especially about the shouting man, who seemed alarmed about something. Why didn’t he just lie down beside him and let the warm water curl around him and bathe him like a baby— yes, like a baby. He felt just like a baby must feel. He was naked like one; he even made little cooing and gurgling sounds. He smiled like a little angel. Yes, he was sure he did, for he could even see himself now, as if he occupied a position on the ceiling right next to the light bulb. Yes, he was like one of those long-legged spiders he had noticed once, suspended from the ceiling in a nest of cobwebs.
The faces began speaking.
“Did you hear the sound it made?” one of them said. “Just like a hammer breaking a stone.”
“What happened?”
“He slipped on a bar of soap. His feet went right out from under him and his head came down on the tile.”
“What a sound it made.”
The men who had been showering at the same time were all naked like Lázaro. Other men had heard the commotion of the accident and came in from outside or from the bunkhouse. Some had already dressed for town. It was Saturday evening after the last day of the workweek; and the odor of cologne and hair pomade mingled with the scent of harsh soap and disinfectant in the baño.
“Help him get up.”
“He shouldn’t stand up,” someone said. “Get him to his bunk right away.”
A few men picked up Lázaro like a sack of fertilizer and carried him over to the bunkhouse. One man tossed a towel over him to cover his private parts. The whiteness of Lázaro’s torso and legs contrasted with the deep sunburn of his face and neck, his hands and arms.
Lázaro watched the sky as the men carried him across the lane and over to the bunkhouse. The sky was empty and blue, much like his mind. The men laid him down on his bunk.
“We must go get the doctor,” someone said.
“No,” said another man. “The doctor is not in the camp today.”
“Go get the foreman, then.”
“He already left.”
Lázaro lay very still now, his eyes closed.
No one spoke for a few moments. Then the first man said, “Look how pale he is. Do you think he is dead?”
“Feel for the pulse.”
“I don’t feel anything. He must be dead.”
“You’re not doing it right. Move your fingers around.”
“Cabrón, I know how to do it. I tell you he’s dead.”
Once again no one spoke for a while. Lázaro still lay with his eyes closed.
“What shall we do?” said a man.
“We must send for the priest, to administer the Last Rites.”
“Yes, Lázaro was very pious. Someone told me he went to the church every Sunday. He never missed once.”
“I believe he had a family.”
“Yes, someone will have to write to them.”
“Don’t look at me. I am not lettered. Ask Filemón.”
“The foreman must do it. He must also pay an indemnity.”
“Yes, the company must pay. They are at fault.”
“At fault? How? He slipped on a bar of soap. It was an accident.”
“Everyone said many times that the floor of the baño is too slippery. Many men have slipped on it already.”
“If you say so, they will put you on a bus and deport you.”
“Someone must speak up. We must speak up for Justice.”
No one spoke again for a moment. Lázaro listened to their debate, but he didn’t know they were talking about him. He felt sorry for the poor man who had slipped in the shower.
“Wait. I saw his eyes move. Look . . . there. He did it again.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“See, his eyelids are quivering.”
“It’s just a reflex. My brother did the same thing when he died.”
“If he were dead, his eyes would be open. We would have to close them with pennies. Check his pulse again.”
Lázaro knew he ought to get up; he ought to help the poor man who had injured himself. But he just wanted to lie where he was, his body still warm from the shower. He remembered the shower now. He could still hear the gentle rain of warm water coming out of the showerhead and feel the warmth on his skin as it relaxed the muscles in his body, muscles that had become like steel bands from work in the orchards. The heavy sack over one shoulder, the awkward position he had to hold as he clipped the lemons off the branches with the small clippers and dropped them into the sack, the many hours on the ladder: these things made his body stiff and aching and worn down in the joints, arthritic with age and labor. Sometimes he just wanted to linger in the hot shower under the water and become clean again with the lathering soap. If only he could lie down in a pool of water and slide down into the water and go to sleep, even to drowning. But he must never sleep. He must never linger. He must get out again before the call of death, becoming louder with age, seduced him forever. He must return to the trees and the ladder and the heavy sack and collect the meager paycheck and wire the money home. He must never rest.
I have always worked hard, he thought. I have always worked hard, never for myself, always for others— for the family, for God. Only once when I was a youth, I used to go into town like the others and spend the money and not save it. I spent the money on pleasure. Once or twice I even spent money on a woman. I did then what the young men do now, but only once or twice. So why do I remember it now with so much anguish? Why do I, so pious and loyal, fear to go to my grave? It’s as if I can feel the pull of earthly temptations now more than I ever did. Perhaps if I could have them one more time, feel them again just one more time, then I would be ready to leave, without anguish or regret, without this bitter taste in my mouth like lemon rinds.
“There. See he is waking up.”
Lázaro opened his eyes. He could see the same ring of anxious faces, staring down at him from above.
“Get him some water to drink,” said one of the men.
“Gracias a Dios,” said another man. “He is alive.”
Lázaro couldn’t recognize the faces yet. He felt disoriented. But with much effort he sat up and smiled.
The braceros waited patiently in Sami’s Convenience Store for Sami to cash their weekly paychecks. Sami rapidly counted out the bills from the cash register, laying them in splayed stacks on the counter by denominations, plus a few coins. As the men collected the money and stuffed it in their pockets, they glanced over their shoulders at anyone who might have been skulking in the brightly lit store. Sami’s catered to braceros, especially thirsty ones, who liked beer and brandy. Sami always kept a supply of magazines on a rack near the door. He had a lot of periodicals in Spanish, about sports and auto racing, and glossy magazines with half-naked girls on the cover, often blond girls in red high heel shoes, girls with gigantic breasts. On the shelves he kept deodorant and toothpaste, Sterno, meat in tins, Wonder Bread. In a cooler with the beer and milk, he had processed cheese and hotdogs. In a corner display, he kept religious icons, candles and religious tracts and miniature Bibles. A glass deli case contained cold cuts, tongue and brains, pigs’ feet, fried chicken, potato salad, menudo in a pan, and some dill pickles in a jar. Over by the door, a cooler with a sliding glass top contained an assortment of ice cream bars, push-up pops, Nutty Buddies, Eskimo Pies and ice cream sandwiches.
A couple of heavy ceiling fans spun on wobbly gears overhead and stirred up the heated air like paddles in huge pots of hot soup.
Sami also had a Western Union license. He knew all the braceros who sent money home and who ones that didn’t. So he had the form ready for Lázaro when he came into the store.
Lázaro didn’t cash his check right away. He was just thinking about the past. “Bracero” was not a dirty word then— not when he first contracted. Nevertheless it was a strange word. A man hired some braceros to pick lettuce in a field under a scorching sun, to pick lemons out of a tree in an orchard, to drive a tractor. But no man is just a pair of arms. The sun burns his head, too. So he covers it with a big straw hat. With his lungs he inhales the air in the fields and the dirt and the crop dust, and sometimes he gets sick. At the end of the day, his feet ache, or he can’t unbend his back and hobbles back into camp like an old man. His head alone has more parts than an arm: It sees things and smells them and eats and speaks through a mouth. Lázaro used to picture himself as just a pair of arms, braceros. But what about hands? Didn’t the arms have hands, too? Braceros con manos o sin manos. Maybe a bracero with hands could demand a higher wage. What about one with a brain— a disembodied one floating alongside the arms wherever they went? Arms can hug at least; they can embrace as well as pick and plant and lift and fight. Sometimes Lázaro had strange ideas and visions. He had some this night. He wanted to raise a glass with his arms and drink with his lips and embrace with his arms. He wanted to feel a woman’s body pressing into his. So when Sami pushed the Western Union form towards him, Lázaro pushed the form back and said, “Not tonight, Sami. Not this time. I’m going down the street. Have you seen a girl named Rosie? I hear she’s back in town.”
Lázaro was a send-money-home bracero, so Sami hesitated. “No wire?” he said, with his hand on the form on the counter, the yellow form with “Western Union” at the top and the lines the sender had to fill in.
Lázaro shook his head and winked. “I’m waiting for a lady,” he said and clicked his tongue. He winked. Sami stared at him, then looked at the other braceros, who shrugged and whispered something and tapped their heads with their forefingers. Sami shook his head and chewed harder on his toothpick, then opened the cash register and counted out the money and slapped it on the counter in the usual way.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
Lázaro picked up the stacks of bills one at a time and counted them rapidly after licking his thumb. He totaled the sum in his head and folded the bills in half and tucked them into the breast pocket of his jacket, then glanced over his shoulder a couple of times and walked out of the store onto the sidewalk.
Instead of going back to the camp on the next bus— when he went into town just for supplies— Lázaro sometimes lingered. If the weather was pleasant, he liked to sit out on the sidewalk in an old chair and drink a soda and talk to Sami until the bus came along again, going back the other way. Sometimes, if he didn’t want to wait, he just hitched a ride back, since the buses didn’t come often on a Saturday night.
But this time Lázaro followed the other braceros as they walked down the street on their way to El Gato Negro, the favorite cantina of the men of the camp, where they could relax after six days of hard labor in the orchards. They walked to the end of the block and then turned left and walked another two blocks in the direction of the river. Lázaro followed them at a distance, until they came to the cantina, which stood near the river in a small grove of cottonwood trees. When they realized that Lázaro was going to follow them even into the cantina, they stopped and said, “Why are you going in here, Lázaro? You never go to the cantina.”
“You boys never had it so good,” he said. “In my day we didn’t have a Mexican Town. We didn’t have no place to go on a Saturday night. Just some shack out by the river along a road where nobody went because some Anglo hoodlums were there, waiting in the ditches for the braceros to come along so they could roll them and steal their money. But we went anyway because we got so damn lonely sometimes. So we went, to a place called El Gato Negro.”
The braceros stared at Lázaro for a few seconds, wondering what he was talking about. Then they went into the cantina and Lázaro followed them.
Inside, the men began playing pool and drinking beer. Some of them paired off with girls. But Lázaro stood by the door in bewilderment and looked all around and tried to think, despite the loud music coming out of a jukebox.
Finally one of the other pickers took pity on him. He kept looking up from the pool table and seeing Lázaro standing there, like his own conscience staring at him. So he said to his girl, Flora, “Couldn’t you take care of the old guy for tonight, so he stops staring at me the whole time?”
“What’s he doing here anyway?” said Flora, a young girl with a haughty look and a full figure and red hair. “Shouldn’t he be in church or something?”
Flora didn’t want the job. The bracero tried to persuade her by telling her that Lázaro was a rich man. “He’s the best picker in the camp,” he said. “Forty, fifty boxes a day. Sometimes sixty. Seguro, I think this week he set a record. I saw him over at the store, cashing his check. He’s got a wad of bills in his pocket. You’ll see. And he won’t give you any trouble, Florita. I promise. Just treat him right. He’s a nice guy.”
Flora said, “I ain’t seen him in here before. Bet he’s a tightwad. I bet he sends all his money back to Mexico. He doesn’t even keep a little bit for a girl like me.”
“Aw, c’mon, honey. I swear. He’s got a wad of bills in his pocket. Just do me a favor,” said the man, as he gave her a dollar.
Flora swore but tucked the bill into her brassiere and decided to pass off the old guy onto her boss, who would know what to do with him.
Margi Cruz was a stout middle-aged woman who wore her hair piled on top of her head and held it in place with a chopstick. She had worked at El Gato Negro for a long time and had saved her money until she owned the place. She kept order, hired the girls, took a percentage of their earnings, and watered down the beer. Flora, whining like a child, asked her to take care of the viejito, as a special favor. Margi, standing behind the bar with her hands on her ample hips, looked at Lázaro with a cruel and calculating expression. People like him seldom came into the cantina. Probably some guy cheating on his wife, she thought. She could almost see the wad of bills through his jacket, so she went over and said, “Hey, handsome, how about buying me a beer?”
Lázaro didn’t even look at her. Instead he surveyed the room with troubled watery eyes, as he held his hat in his hands like a man who had just stepped into a government office.
Margi persisted. “The moon is full,” she said, with ancient coquettishness through a cracked unctuous smile, “and I got romance on my mind.”
Lázaro knew she was lying. There was no moon in the sky, just a little fingernail clipping of one. But he wanted to ask some questions, and he figured two bits for a beer wasn’t too high a price to get some answers. So he sat down with Margi in her special booth.
“This place doesn’t look like El Gato Negro, not the one I used to know. What happened to it? It was much smaller, I remember.”
Margi was beginning to think this guy might be crazy. But she decided to go along with the gag. “The previous owner of the place was a guy named Jim,” she said. “When he retired, the next owner bought the place and tore it down and built a bigger one. But he kept the name; and when I bought it from him, I was going to change it to ‘Margi’s Place.’ But no one liked the change, so I kept it, too. All this happened years ago.”
Margi now took a hard look at Lázaro to see if she could remember him. She had a photographic memory for faces, especially of the men who had come into her place over the years. But she couldn’t place him. “Dios mio. Where have you been all these years?” she said. “I could have used your business. You’ve been holding out on me, old-timer.”
Even in the dim light of a candle in a red jar, which illuminated Lázaro’s face from the chin up and made him look like a movie monster, Margi could see the bewildered look in his eyes, as he blinked over and over and tried to stitch together the present with the distant past. She could be sympathetic if there was a buck in it for her, so she said, “What’s your name, amigo?”
“Lázaro Peña,” he said. “I work in the campito. I’m a picker.”
“Who would have guessed?” said Margi. “But you’re pretty old for a picker, aren’t you?”
Lázaro was silent for a moment. “There was a machaca who used to come in here,” he said finally, “named Rosie. One day she disappeared. Or maybe I stopped coming. But for a while we really hit it off. She was a little thing, no bigger than so—.” Lázaro held out one hand palm down to show how tall she was but forgot he was sitting down.
“I ain’t seen no midgets in here,” said Margi. “But you can call me Rosie if you want to. Just use your imagination.”
Lázaro looked at “Rosie” skeptically. First he’d have to reconstruct Rosie’s build— from small and petite to something more along the lines of club bouncer and then fill out her frame and make some big hips. In the place of a sweet smile and pouting lips and big innocent eyes like a kitten’s, he’d have to get used to a face like Primo Carnera’s, the boxer’s, and also get used to a booming voice and a cigarette dangling from her lips. Lázaro shut his eyes hard until they hurt and opened them again. But Rosie wouldn’t come back. Time and the ravages of life in a bar had turned her into Margi Cruz.
“Are you going to buy me a beer or not?” said Margi.
A girl brought two bottles of beer and then stood waiting for Lázaro to pay for them. He seemed to have forgotten, or maybe he thought Rosie was going to buy them, until she cleared her throat in a menacing way. Lázaro didn’t know what the price of a beer was any more. Maybe it had changed like everything else. Like the new Rosie, it had swollen like a bladder, gone from kittenish to thuggish. Caressing might be harder to come by tonight, thought Lázaro. He was beginning to understand what he wanted.
Lázaro took out his wad of bills but still hesitated, frozen in time like a tombstone. Seeing the money, Margi wavered between compassion and greed. She just couldn’t bring herself to take advantage of the old coot. She began to question her qualifications to run El Gato Negro.
“You know,” she said, “a lot of girls have come through here over the years. A lot of Rosies and Rositas.” She pinched the corner of a dollar in the wad and tugged on it until it finally came lose from Lázaro’s firm grip. Lázaro got a few coins back in change.
Lázaro drank some beer. He mused. He began to remember— the booze, the girls, the hangovers— getting shortchanged. He looked down at the coins on the table and counted them, while Margi watched with a wry expression on her face. “The old skinflint,” she thought. “Look at him. I bet he was just the same thirty years ago . . .. Or maybe not. Maybe he was different— a gay blade, a lady’s man.”
Lázaro was still handsome, despite the grey hair and stooping posture and callouses on his hands. He began to talk, while Margi listened and spent his money.
He always had a picture in his mind about climbing the ladder, he explained— a ladder which over the years got taller and taller, reaching higher and higher into the evergreen canopy of the trees, where the last fruit ripened among the leaves just out of reach. But always the orchard boss kept telling him to go higher, to get the fruit that hung there, before it spoiled— the yellow fruit like sunshine, yet sour sometimes like life.
“So I kept climbing higher and higher,” he said, “always reaching, while the ladder wobbled underneath me.”
One day he knew he would fall if he didn’t stop climbing. The earth would pull him back down again. But he couldn’t stop getting up every morning and putting on the overalls that reeked of citrus oil, slinging the big canvas sack over his shoulders and putting the small clippers in his pocket and getting on the ladder once again. He couldn’t help doing what he had always done. He was a picker. He had always been a picker, who sent money home to a family he hadn’t seen in years.
“Over the years my family got bigger. My children started families of their own and my wife, Magdalena, needed more money all the time. I worked even harder, to get out of poverty. But I never could. No one could. The money seemed to go down a dark hole. I didn’t really need much for myself, anyway.”
But he missed something. He had been missing something all along— a caressing. He put it to himself in this way. Una caricia, like Rosie used to do, as he laid his head in her lap and she stroked his hair— then thick and full— so she could really get her small hands into it. She liked to caress him in this way, as if he’d been a small animal in her lap, like a cat.
“Rosie, on account of some bad people, didn’t really like the things she had to do with men to make a living. But if she closed her eyes, she could do it. If she closed them with my head in her lap, she could imagine that she held a furry kitten there, one that purred, the one she always thought of, her very own gato negro. Then she could relax and let the kitten care for her, too— yield to something she had almost forgotten about, had put away very carefully in a little box under the bed where no man could take it from her ever again.”
Lázaro Peña hadn’t spoken so many words in a long time. He had to stop to catch his breath.
“Whatever happened to Rosie?” said Margi.
“Quien sabe?” said Lázaro. “I stopped going to El Gato Negro. I got religion instead. I was getting drunk every weekend and spending all my money. A couple of times I got rolled on the way home. They worked me over pretty good. So I got sober and stayed away. I climbed the ladder and saved my money and sent it home before I got tempted. But more and more, my body hurt, just like I was getting rolled in the orchards instead, going up and down, hauling the big sack.”
Lázaro paused and drank more beer, just like old times. “Mui duro, mui duro, es la vida,” he said finally.
“You’ve got to stop climbing the ladder,” said Margi. “You need a new Rosie. I think I can help.”
Flora, who didn’t want to have anything to do with Lázaro earlier in the evening, found herself drawing a bath for him upstairs in a private room, while Lázaro sat on a chair and watched. At first he watched only her refection in a full-length swivel mirror in a frame. He knew he ought not to look at her. But gradually he looked at the girl and not the mirror.
“Por dios, stop staring at me,” said Flora. “Ain’t you ever seen a naked girl before?”
Flora wasn’t really naked, but nearly so, in a loose kimono with a white gardenia pattern. The garment slipped open from time to time as she poured boiling water from a large kettle into a porcelain tub with lion’s feet. When she finished, she left the room and came back with another kettle-full. Slowly the room began to fill with steam.
“Listo,” said Flora, when the bath was ready. She poured some salts into the water. But Lázaro still sat on the chair and wouldn’t move. “Well?” said Flora. “Do you want a bath or don’t you?”
Lázaro was too embarrassed to take off his clothes in front of a woman he didn’t know. Flora, shaking her head and muttering something about “pinche viejito,” stepped out for a moment and smoked a cigarette and sang an old song she hadn’t been able to get out of her head. Then she came back in without knocking, just in time to catch a glimpse of Lázaro’s lean and withered buttocks and white back as he slipped hurriedly into the water and sank down to his eyes.
Flora, laughing, took hold of Lázaro’s hair and started pulling him back out, so she could apply a large sponge of soapy water and begin washing his hair. “My boss says to wash your hair, amigo, so I’m going to wash it. No use resisting. I always get my way.”
Lázaro emerged reluctantly, cradling himself in his arms and spitting water. Gradually he succumbed, in spite of himself.
Flora began to remind him more of Rosie, even though she didn’t look much like Rosie. She was a little bigger and not as much like a kitten. But they started to get along. She realized he was going to be an easy trick, this old guy. Gradually she began to enjoy washing his hair with the soap and seeing how much he enjoyed it. He didn’t try to get out of the water and grab her like a lot of guys would. He only wanted to lie in the tub, it seemed— his arms hanging over the sides, his head lolling backwards. He got sleepy. A couple of times he snored.
She’d been working pretty hard. He owed her a little more money now. She almost didn’t want to take it. He was such a nice guy. He had talked about his family before he fell asleep, about going home someday, about his kids, who must be all grown up now. No one sent him pictures anymore, he said. He had set aside a little money to buy some land. She saw the wad of money in his coat pocket, where he’d carelessly left it exposed. She thought she would just take a little more for her trouble— not more than she was entitled to, of course, but just a little more. Watching him carefully, in case he woke up, she started to pull out a couple of bills with her finger and thumb— a trick she had done many times before when a guy got too soused. She figured he probably didn’t know how much money he had anyway. Then she got a little greedy and took some more and stuck it in her brassiere. As she pulled the money out of his pocket, the rest of it spilled out onto the damp floor and lay there soaking up the soapy water. She thought, “What a shame.” But if she took it all, certainly Margi would figure out that she’d gone too far, and she’d want the money she’d taken, and she’d punish her. Margi could be hard sometimes.
Lázaro woke up for a moment. “I got a headache,” he said, wincing.
“I’ll get you some aspirin,” said Flora, hastening to pick up the money on the floor. Behind his back she stuffed the soggy bills back into his coat pocket. “Maybe you should get dressed now,” she said.
Lázaro started to get out of the tub, hoisting himself on trembling arms. He didn’t wait for modesty, but Flora held up a towel for him anyway. She had to support him when he almost slipped, and the towel fell to the floor. Lázaro emerged naked and stood in the room and didn’t try to cover himself. Flora handed him the towel and said, “You get dressed now, honey, and I’ll come back in a minute with the aspirin.”
When she left, Lázaro picked up the towel, winced again, dropped the towel again, and held his head in both hands. He felt nauseous. The room seemed to fill with a light that scorched his eyeballs. When the wave of light passed, he picked up the towel again and wrapped it around his loins and looked around the room— a strange room that he no longer recognized. A small bed stood against the wall. Lázaro stumbled over to the bed and lay down. He stared at the ceiling, his head throbbing. Time had made a network of cracks in the plaster. Spiders lived in the cracks. Yes, he remembered now. He slipped on something— something slippery— and hit his head.
Lázaro lost consciousness. He lay on the bed for a long time. Once he sat up, but he couldn’t breathe, so he lay down again.
After leaving the room, Flora rummaged through a white box with a red cross on it that hung on the wall of the girls’ baño. She found an old bottle of aspirin. She stopped to brush her hair and freshen her lipstick. Another girl came in— a fragile girl with long black hair and running mascara. The girl was crying about her pinche boyfriend, who liked to beat her up. Flora said, “There, there, now,” stroking the girl’s long hair. In the meantime other girls came and went, and Flora lingered.
About an hour passed, then Flora remembered Lázaro and hastened back with the aspirin. She didn’t see him at first and turned to leave, then saw him lying on the bed against the wall, still in a towel, as if sleeping.
“Your time is up,” she said irritably. But Lázaro didn’t move. His mouth hung open as if unhinged. He stared at the ceiling.
Flora touched his cold flesh and looked into his dead eyes and said “Oh, crap,” while thinking of excuses and running down the stairs to get Margi.