He continued to win. The people who had congratulated him became disgruntled and drifted off, and when there was only a handful of players left, the woman closed down the game. A grimy street kid materialized from the shadows and began dismantling the equipment. Unbolting the wire cage, unplugging the microphone, boxing up the plastic cubes, stuffing it all into a burlap sack. The woman moved out from behind the stall and leaned against one of the roof poles. Half-smiling, she cocked her head, appraising Mingolla, and then—just as the silence between them began to get prickly—she said, My name’s Debora.’
‘David.’ Mingolla felt as awkward as a fourteen-year-old; he had to resist the urge to jam his hands into his pockets and look away. ‘Why’d you cheat?’ he asked; in trying to cover his nervousness, he said it too loudly and it sounded like an accusation.
‘I wanted to get your attention,’ she said. ‘I’m… interested in you. Didn’t you notice?’
‘I didn’t want to take it for granted.’
She laughed. ‘I approve! It’s always best to be cautious.’
He liked her laughter; it had an easiness that made him think she would celebrate the least good thing.
Three men passed by arm in arm, singing drunkenly. One yelled at Debora, and she responded with an angry burst of Spanish. Mingolla could guess what had been said, that she had been insulted for associating with an American. Maybe we should go somewhere,’ he said. ‘Get off the streets.’
‘After he’s finished.’ She gestured at the boy, who was now taking down the string of light bulbs. It’s funny,’ she said. I have the gift myself, and I’m usually uncomfortable around anyone else who has it. But not with you.’
‘The gift?’ Mingolla thought he knew what she was referring to, but was leery about admitting to it.
‘What do you call it? ESP?’
He gave up the idea of denying it. ‘I never put a name on it,’ he said.
‘It’s strong in you. I’m surprised you’re not with Psicorps.’
He wanted to impress her, to cloak himself in a mystery equal to hers. How do you know I’m not?’
‘I could tell.’ She pulled a black purse from behind the counter. ‘After drug therapy there’s a change in the gift, in the way it comes across. It doesn’t feel as hot, for one thing.’ She glanced up from the purse. Or don’t you perceive it that way? As heat.’
‘I’ve been around people who felt hot to me,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t know what it meant.’
‘That’s what it means… sometimes.’ She stuffed some bills into her purse. ‘So, why aren’t you with Psicorps?’
Mingolla thought back to his first interview with a Psicorps agent: a pale, balding man with the innocent look around the eyes that some blind people have. While Mingolla had talked, the agent had fondled the ring Mingolla had given him to hold, paying no mind to what was being said, and had gazed off distractedly, as if listening for echoes. They tried hard to recruit me,’ Mingolla said. But I didn’t see much point. Those guys think they’re mental wizards or something, but all they do is predict stuff, and they’re wrong half the time. And I was scared of the drugs, too. I heard they had bad side-effects.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know… I heard they did bad stuff to your head, changed your personality.’
‘You’re lucky it was voluntary,’ she said. ‘Here they just snap you up.’
The boy said something to her; he swung the burlap sack over his shoulder, and after a rapidfire exchange of Spanish he ran off toward the river. The crowds were still thick, but more than half the stalls had shut down; those that remained open looked—with their thatched roofs and strung lights and beshawled women—like crude nativity scenes ranging the darkness. Beyond the stalls, neon signs winked on and off: a chaotic menagerie of silver eagles and crimson spiders and indigo dragons. Watching them burn and vanish, Mingolla experienced a wave of dizziness. Things were starting to appear disconnected as they had at the Club Demonio.
‘Don’t you feel well?’ she asked.
‘I’m just tired.’
She turned him to face her, put her hands on his shoulders. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s something else.’
The weight of her hands and the smell of her perfume helped to steady him. ‘There was an assault on the firebase a few days ago,’ he said. It’s still with me a little, y’know.’
She gave his shoulders a squeeze and stepped back. ‘Maybe I can do something.’ She said this with such gravity, he thought she must have something specific in mind. ‘How’s that?’ he asked.
‘I’ll tell you at dinner… that is, if you’re buying.’ She took his arm, jollying him. You owe me that much, don’t you think, after all your good luck?’
‘Why aren’t you with Psicorps?’ he asked as they walked.
She didn’t answer immediately, keeping her head down, nudging a scrap of cellophane with her toe. They were moving along an uncrowded street, bordered on the left by the river—a channel of sluggish black lacquer—and on the right by the windowless rear walls of some bars. Overhead, behind a latticework of supports, a neon lion shed a baleful green nimbus. ‘I was in school in Miami when they started testing here,’ she said at last. ‘And after I came home, my family got on the wrong side of Department Six. You know Department Six?’
‘I’ve heard some stuff.’
‘Sadists don’t make efficient bureaucrats,’ she said. ‘There were a lot of people taken into the prison the same day we were. We were all supposed to be tested, but the guards started beating people, and everything got confused. No one was sure who’d been tested and who hadn’t. It ended up that some of us were passed through without the tests.’
Their footsteps crunched in the dirt; husky jukebox voices cried out for love from the next street over. ‘What happened?’ Mingolla asked.
‘To my family?’ She shrugged. ‘Dead. No one ever bothered to confirm it, but it wasn’t necessary. Confirmation, I mean.’ She went a few steps in silence. ‘As for me…’ A muscle bunched at the corner of her mouth. I did what I had to.’
He was tempted to ask for specifics, but thought better of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and then kicked himself for having made such a banal comment.
They passed a bar lorded over by a grinning red-and-purple neon ape. Mingolla wondered it these glowing figures had meaning for guerrillas with binoculars in the hills: burned-out tubes signaling times of attack or troop movements. He cocked an eye toward Debora. She didn’t look despondent as she had a second before, and that accorded with his impression that her calmness was a product of self-control, that her emotions were strong but held in tight check and let out only for exercise. From the river came a solitary splash, some cold fleck of life surfacing briefly, then returning to its long, ignorant glide through the darkness… and his life no different really, though maybe less graceful. How strange it was to be walking beside this woman who gave off heat like a candle flame, with earth and sky blended into a black gas, and neon totems standing guard overhead.
‘Shit,’ said Debora under her breath.
It surprised him to hear her curse. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ she said wearily. ‘Just “shit.”’ She pointed ahead and quickened her pace. ‘Here we are.’
The restaurant was a working-class place that occupied the ground floor of a hotel: a two-story building of yellow concrete block with a buzzing Fanta sign hung above the entrance. Hundreds of moths swarmed about the sign, flickering white against the darkness, and in front of the steps stood a group of teenage boys who were throwing knives at an iguana. The iguana was tied by its hind legs to the step railing. It had amber eyes, a hide the color of boiled cabbage, and was digging its claws into the dirt and arching its neck like a pint-size dragon about to take flight. As Mingolla and Debora walked up, one of the boys scored a hit in the iguana’s tail and it flipped high into the air, shaking loose the knife. The boys passed around a bottle of rum to celebrate.
Except for the waiter—a pudgy young man leaning beside a door that opened into a smoke-filled kitchen— the place was empty. Glaring overhead lights shined up the grease spots on the plastic tablecloths and made the uneven thicknesses of the yellow paint appear to be dripping. The concrete floor was freckled with dark stains that Mingolla discovered to be the remains of insects. The food turned out to be decent, however, and Mingolla shoveled down a plateful of chicken and rice before Debora had half-finished hers. She ate delicately, chewing each bite a long time, and he had to carry the conversation. He told her about New York, his painting, how a couple of galleries had shown interest even though he was just a student. He compared his work to Rauschenberg, to Silvestre. Not as good, of course. Not yet. He had the notion that everything he told her—no matter its irrelevance to the moment— was securing the relationship, establishing subtle ties: he pictured the two of them enwebbed in a network of
