Chapter 8·Tomás Arreola · Guadalajara

Tomás Arreola. Guadalajara. Sunday 14 March 2032, 07:30.

The small one was on his lap before he had finished sitting down, and had the crab.

A plastic crab, red, the size of a hand. It went where the boy went. It was in the photograph on the visor of the car, held up. Tomás held him with one arm and reached past him for the coffee Lucía had put down and drank it with the crab pressed into his chest.

"Tío. Tío. Tío."

"Mm."

"Are you staying today?"

"I'm staying today."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow too."

The boy slid off and went to show the crab the television. The television was on with the sound down. It had been on with the sound down in every room Tomás had been in since Thursday.

The older one, Mateo, ten, sat at the end of the table with his cereal and watched his uncle over it. A checking look.

Lucía had her back to all three of them, at the stove, in the dressing gown she had had since before her marriage. She had the radio on low as well as the television, one in each ear, and she cooked through both without turning round.

He had driven eight hours on Thursday night and arrived at two in the morning. She had opened the door in that dressing gown and taken in him and the bag in his hand and said, "Which one is it." He had said, "Which one what." She had said, "Which one are you running from, the twelve lines or the men," and he had said nothing, and she had let him in.

Three days ago. She had not asked again.

"Eggs," she said now, and put a plate in front of him, and one in front of Mateo, and got the little one off the floor and into his chair and cut his up for him, without once looking at Tomás.

The bag was in the hall cupboard under the coats. She had put it there herself on Friday, when the boys were at the neighbour's, without opening it.

He had opened it for her Friday night, at this table, after the boys were in bed. He had unzipped it and turned it to face her. She had looked into it for two seconds and zipped it shut herself.

"No."

"Lucía."

"No. Not in this house."

"It's for the boys."

"Then it's for the boys after." She had pushed it back at him across the table, hard, the push she had used on his plate when they were small and he had taken something off it. "You listen to me. I don't know what you do. I've never asked, and I've never asked because I'm not stupid, and I want you to understand that I am not stupid, Tomás. I have known for twelve years. So don't sit at my table and tell me it's for the boys."

He had sat there.

"After Thursday," she had said. "If you're here after Thursday. If you're in that chair on Friday morning eating eggs, then you can give me whatever you want, and I'll take it, and we'll never say another word about where it came from. Not before. Not one day before."

And she had got up and taken the bag herself and put it under the coats.

The radio said the name at eight minutes to eight.

Uruapan. A magistrate. Her name, both parts. Found in her office on Saturday evening by a colleague.

Lucía turned the radio up.

The man on the radio had little. He had the name and the office and the word Saturday. He said the state prosecutor's office had issued a statement, and read it. It was a statement about a great loss and about the rule of law. It did not say who. It was Sunday morning and the whole country knew what Saturday was for.

Then the television, on a different channel, caught up and had a picture.

Her official one. The robe. The flag behind. The picture was old. They had not had a newer one. She looked straight out of the screen as she had across the desk. Her hands were not in the picture. He looked for them anyway.

Lucía had stopped cooking. She stood with the spatula in her hand and watched the picture. The back of her neck. Her not turning round.

Mateo watched him.

"Did you know her?" Lucía said. To the television.

"I met her once."

It was true. The second visit. He had stood beside the man who did the talking and watched her hands.

"When?"

"Two years ago."

"What was she like?"

Mateo's spoon had stopped.

"Brave," he said. "Not the loud kind. The kind that keeps its hands flat on the desk."

Lucía turned round then.

She looked at him across the kitchen, with the spatula, in her old dressing gown. The small one said something about the crab. Neither of them heard it.

"Eat your eggs," she said.

She found him in the yard at ten, in the strip of shade off the neighbour's wall, on an upturned bucket, with nothing in his hands.

She stood. Arms folded, like their mother. She faced the wall he was facing.

"Was it going to be you."

The wall had a crack in it from the corner to the ground.

"Yes."

"On Saturday."

"Yes."

"And you came here instead."

"Yes."

She let out a breath. In the house the small one laughed at the television.

"Did you come because of her," Lucía said, "or because of Thursday."

He kept his eyes on the wall.

"I don't know," he said.

"That's not good enough."

"I know it's not."

"Somebody did it, Tomás. Somebody drove to Uruapan yesterday and did it because you didn't, and you knew they would, and you sat in my kitchen and ate my food and let them."

"Yes."

"And on Thursday he's dead, whoever he is. And you're not. Is that it. Is that the plan. You wait it out at your sister's and he does your job and dies for it and you eat eggs."

"I didn't plan anything."

"No," she said. "No, you never did."

She stood there. She did not go in.

"Mateo asked me last night what you do," she said, in a different voice. "For work. He's ten. Kids at school. I told him you drive trucks, which is what I've always told him, and he looked at me, Tomás. He looked at me like I look at you." She unfolded her arms and folded them again. "He knows something. He doesn't know what. And after Thursday he's going to look at every man in this country who's still standing and wonder what they were. Including you. If you are."

"I know."

"So be here." Hard, at the wall. "Be here on Friday. Be sat in that chair. Because I can't tell him you drive trucks for the rest of his life, and I can't tell him the other thing, and the only thing I've got left to tell him is that his uncle was in the kitchen on Friday morning, and I'd like it to be true."

She went in.

He sat on the bucket. The small one came out with the crab and stood in front of him and held it up, as in the photograph, and waited.

Tomás took it.